Zekreet Rock Formation

These wind-carved rock pillars on Qatar's Zekreet coast once stood beside a supply jetty built by drilling crews sinking a well at nearby Dukhan in 1938, when ships anchored offshore and camels carried drinking water inland across empty desert. The guide follows Shaikh Mansour, the local guide who navigated surveyors across this featureless coast by memory, and kept doing so even after losing his sight to illness during the Second World War. It also traces the wind and salt spray still thinning the narrow stem holding up each mushroom-capped rock.