CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 1152 km round trip from Doha - roughly 19 h 52 in the saddle. It goes by way of Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field, Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field and back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field. It crosses from Qatar into Bahrain - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Doha is a young city on a flat, dry peninsula, and it grew almost from nothing in a lifetime. Fishing and pearling villages were what the coast held until oil and gas arrived, and in the decades since, the skyline of West Bay has risen along the curve of the harbour like a glass forest. The Corniche, a long waterfront promenade, is the place to see the contrast, with the towers on one side and the traditional wooden dhows drifting on the other. Across from the promenade, the Museum of Islamic Art stands on its own island, a pale, geometric building designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 2008, with collections that reach from Spain to India.
Read the complete Doha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Doha is where the day begins. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
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.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site comes up 145 km in. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
287 km in you reach Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. Next is Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field.
Bahrain was once covered with burial mounds. Over thousands of years, between roughly 2200 BC and the early centuries AD, the people of Dilmun, an ancient civilisation that controlled trade in the Gulf between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, built tens of thousands of tombs across the northern part of the island. Many have been lost to modern development, but some fields survive, and in 2019 a selection of them, including the Madinat Hamad mound fields, was inscribed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Dilmun Burial Mounds.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field, about halfway. Next is Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Flat, pale and apparently empty, the central plain of Bahrain hides one of the oldest cemeteries on earth. Some four thousand years ago the island of Dilmun, as it was known to the Sumerians, buried its dead under thousands upon thousands of low stone mounds, and in places like Madinat Hamad and A'ali the mounds still stand in dense, grey fields. At one time there may have been several hundred thousand of them, which would have made Dilmun a famous necropolis in its day, and many have since been flattened by roads, housing and quarrying.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field sits at 577 km, about halfway. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field comes up 720 km in. Next is back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
865 km in you reach back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. Next is back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, late in the day. Next is Doha.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Doha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 1152 km.
Doha → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 350 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 205 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 205 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → Doha is 350 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.