Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
The most visible building is not part of the old town at all. Al Zubarah Fort, a square, sand-coloured structure with round and square corner towers, was built in the 1930s as a coastguard post and now houses exhibits on the history of the area. Climb its walls and you look across a flat landscape of scrub and salt, with the sea beyond and, on a clear day, a sense of how close Bahrain is across the water.
The ride here is about space and light. Good, wide roads run north from Doha through open desert, straight for long distances and largely empty once you leave the city's outer suburbs. That sounds dull, and partly it is, but the emptiness has its own appeal: dunes and low ridges, camels grazing by the road, farms with patches of green, and the strange sight of mirages trembling over the tarmac. Watch for sand blowing across the road, especially in the afternoon when the wind picks up, and for camels, which wander freely and are very big.
Heat is the defining condition. From late spring to early autumn temperatures easily climb past forty degrees, with high humidity near the coast, and riding in the middle of the day is genuinely dangerous. Go in winter, roughly November to March, when mornings are pleasant and evenings cool.
There is nothing at the site in the way of fuel, and only limited facilities. The nearest town is Madinat ash Shamal, about twenty-four kilometres away, with fuel and shops. Carry plenty of water, keep a full tank and plan your day around the early morning and late afternoon light, when the ruins glow gold against the sea.