The Doha Zoo

We thought we’d investigate the Doha Zoo, which is only a few blocks away from our compound. The unfortunate thing is that our least favoured road is the one leading to its entry. The road is big, long and not well sealed and there’s usually far too many dodgy trucks ferrying human’s and construction materials to wherever they’re going…but we made it perfectly safely – thanks to Michael!

We stood at the ticket booth and handed over the equivalent of $4 aud – for the three of us! Ashur’s child rate was a huge 75c!! we thought that was a pretty good deal for an afternoon out.

Once inside, we were impressed by the layout of the property – walking through water troughs/fountains, through a botanical garden and then towards the animals. The zoo is kind of oldish looking – though that is most probably from the settled dust from the sandstorms that happen around here.

Before we’d arrived at the ‘caged’ areas and the open enclosures we could see the most adorable little lion cub just wandering along with a baby deer and their human keeper who had a long, fine stick which he gently used to keep them on the ‘right path’. We were amazed at how ‘bouncy’ the little cub was when walking – and I just wanted to give it a big noogy on his head! The gorgeous thing had no concept of the fact that he was walking along with a potentially tasty treat! We didn’t get a photo as we thought it might frighten him. It was certainly something we never thought we’d see.

Next stop – the Indian elephants. One was painted and ‘performing’ for lettuce and carrots – it made me sad and Michael and I disagreed that I felt the other elephant in another part of the enclosure was swaying due to stress. Although, I battled with feeling like I was perpetrating the spectacle – I was drawn to watch. Ashur and I stood amongst the black and white locals watching the poor elephant do tricks for treats.

We also met the most adorable chimpanzee’s who were enjoying an iceblock each…a mix of sadness at that, but a niceness about the level of human interaction they were having – kind of weird. One of them spotted Ashur’s OJ, which I was holding and swung around the dome enclosure to put his hand out in a gesture for me to hand it over.

We saw the usual kinds of animals you would expect and a few interesting ones we’d never seen before…we were surprised at how big porcupines are and finally got to see some oryx’s – but, I think Michael was more impressed by them than I was…to me they just look like deer things with long sticks on their heads...neither of us are still not quite sure why they have a guinea pig and a cane toad on display though!

Overall, the enclosures are spacious, well kept and as natural as possible (in these parts) , the animals appeared at ease and the zoo people appeared to treat them better than I expected. The zoo hours are mid afternoon till evening – which is a great time to go as the animals are lively and doing their thing – even the snakes are slithering around their glass cages!. We ended up leaving at nighttime around 6.30pm after I spent most of the evening collecting feathers of all sorts – just couldn’t quite manage to find a pink flamingo feather – but I did ask them nicely to leave me some for next time…

We could hear over the speaker system someone rambling on in Arabic – which we assumed was the standard “everyone out – park’s closed’ kind of announcement. We discovered the next day – it was actually more likely the announcement that the moon had been spotted and Ramadan had commenced!.