durations, locations

18 hours in dubai: mid november, pending the receipt of my third passport of the past five months.

[An aside: If you ever run out of things to do while travelling, here is a fun game you can play: Leave your passport in a taxicab, then attempt to recover and replace it. You are guaranteed interesting interactions with policemen (bonus points if they only speak Arabic), American embassies (bonus points if you sneak your friends in to wait with you posing as bodyguards, only to have them fall asleep in the waiting room and get kicked out by the irate security guards), and thrilling border crossings with passports listed as stolen on Interpol (bonus points for serenading the Syrian border guards with classical guitar while you all lounge in their smoky office, double bonus points if you get the Qatari immigration officers to serve you tea and proudly turn their computer monitors around to show you what your passport copy looks like on the Interpol network).]

6 days in egypt: late november

11 days in america: mid december

12 days in india: late december

doha: in the meantime

I've been trying approach living in Doha like I approach travelling, and here is a technique I am perfecting: hop on a bus - any bus - and ride it until it seems like a nice place to get off. Get off. My most recent attempt resulted in a nice evening walking and eating my way through Souq Waqif and Little India. We filled ourselves with fluorescently colored and achingly sweet Pakistani goodies, samosas out of a greasy paper bag, masala chai while playing backgammon (on my new board!) at a corner juice stall, and finally paneer tikka masala with blazingly hot peppers hidden in the sauce, tempered by perfectly fizzy sweet fresh orange and avocado juice at a restaurant near the very bright street where they sell all of the light fixtures.