5 Reasons to Visit Doha, Qatar, With Puget Sound Alumni Tours

Professor of Anthropology Andrew Gardner will lead a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the dynamic city of Doha, Qatar, from Dec. 29, 2024 to Jan. 9, 2025 with Puget Sound’s Alumni Tours program. There are still a few spots left, but the trip is filling up fast, so sign up today to join us. Here, Professor Gardner shares five reasons why you won’t want to miss this trip!

Participants in Puget Sound’s first-ever alumni trip to Qatar will be visiting during the best time of the year. In Doha, travelers will encounter one of the safest and cleanest cities in the world. From our home base in the gorgeous and boisterous bazaar known as Souq Waqif, we’ll adventure all over the city and beyond. The full trip itinerary promises all sorts of experiences and adventures, but here are some of the most exciting highlights that travelers will encounter.

1. A Global Food Scene

Doha, like all the capital cities of the Arabian Peninsula, is an urban crossroads crowded with cultures and cuisines like nowhere you’ve ever encountered. We’ll sample Qatari cuisine, certainly, but we’ll also dine on Sri Lankan food, explore Turkish cuisine, feast on the many Persian offerings, and that’s not to mention Lebanese, Indian, Moroccan, and Damascene cuisine. This trip will satiate even the most adventurous foodie!

2. World-Class Art

In the last decade, Qatar has emerged as an artistic mecca. Near our hotel, an art center collects the work of local Qatari artists. We’ll also travel deep into the desert to see one of Richard Serra’s last sculptures. Travelers will spend time in the Museum of Islamic Art, home to an astonishing collection of art and sculpture from around the Islamic world. And we’ll drop in on Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, on another afternoon.

3. Fascinating History

Qatar and the Persian Gulf have been central to regional and global history for millennia. Vistors can experience this history through the country's stunning collection of museums and historic sites. Travelers will learn about Bedouin history, the peninsula’s colonization by a sequence of different empires, and the history of slavery on the Arabian Peninsula. Travelers will visit historic forts, tour cutting-edge museums, and dive into the history of the city itself.

4. Friendly People

Doha lies at the crossroads of the world. Thanks to the Arab tradition of hospitality, the city’s diversity is central to Qatari national identity. The constellation of different people who reside in the city puts American notions of diversity to shame—nearly nine out of every ten residents on the Qatari peninsula are foreign workers. Unlike most tourists, you’ll have an opportunity to meet some Qatari citizens, as well as some of the South Asian workers who live in labor camps at the margins of the city. And you’ll meet all sorts of other people along the way.

5. Stunning Architecture

With its vast reservoirs of oil and gas wealth, Qatar has plowed much of its income back into the city. The city contains structures designed by some of the world’s most renowned architects, and together we’ll explore developments from Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, Taha Al-Hiti, Jean Nouvel, I. M Pei, and Zainab Fadil Oglu. If you’re interested in architecture and design, this trip will put multiple feathers in your cap.

Why Travel With Puget Sound?

When you book an experience with Puget Sound Alumni Tours, you get to explore less-traveled regions of the globe with expert faculty members, enabling you to gain a new perspective and deeply immerse yourself in the places you visit.

Space is filling up fast! Register for our Alumni Tours trip to Qatar by Sept. 30 at pugetsound.edu/alumnitours.

About Professor Andrew Gardner

Professor of Anthropology Andrew Gardner

Andrew Gardner is professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Puget Sound. A sociocultural anthropologist and ethnographer by training, for the past two decades Professor Gardner’s fieldwork has focused on the places, peoples, and societies that interact in the petroleum-rich states of the Arabian Peninsula. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar, throughout South Asia, and elsewhere. His most recent book is The Fragmentary City: Migration, Modernity, and Difference in the Urban Landscape of Doha, Qatar (Cornell, 2024).

His longstanding scholarly pursuits explore transnational migration, urban planning, and urban life, as well as the social formations on both ends of the migration flows that lead to the Arabian Peninsula. A well-regarded speaker, Professor Gardner has led previous study abroad tours with students to Doha and Amsterdam.