A rising star of a city

Walking on Doha's (Hub city in Qatar) 7.7 km corniche today, experiencing the calmness and breeze of its cooling months (November to February) leaves you spiritually healthy and feeling almost spectacular playing actor against the modern back drop of its formidable movie set, the growing high rise city. It's breathe taking turquoise waters light up beautifully at night reflecting the beauty of a true Pearl.

Ten years ago there was not much of a view other than the Sheraton and a few odd buildings and before that not much at all. In fact, Qatar was not very well known to the world until its famous lead in LNG (Liquefied natural gas). Its oil and gas have made Qatar the second highest per-capita income country in the world. More recently its popularity has come from buying Harrods (London) or more notably its bid for the FIFA 2022 world cup or even that Qatar Airways flew the first GTL-fuelled commercial airliner, from London to Doha, with paying passengers.

[5 photos in this set - click here to view]

The Sheraton Hotel at Doha West Bay - circa 1980's. Plse see comments. LOOK right at the next pic and you see the port ----->

Before: Qatar before its high rise buildings, photo courtesy of DesertBlooms (Flickr)

Now: Qatar now with more and more buildings coming up, photo courtesy of Brian Candy (Flickr)

With all this popularity now, Qatar had to revise its city and so over the years, Qatar has been hard at work building what is now called the "New Doha". Following in the footsteps of its brother country, Dubai, Qatar is fast becoming a super power of this millenium. Old Doha (the old city) has been restructured and under going massive reconstruction with some new projects (like the heart of Doha project) placing it as the traditional Islamic town which plays home to most of its resedential suburbs, souqs and town like shopping while New Doha is a sprouting strip playing host literally to dozens of skyscrapers. The latter can be dubbed as the commercial hub of Qatar offering many hotels which also boast access to the sandy mile, cooperate companies, the famous city centre shopping mall and ofcourse a scenic drive way to the Pearl.