Day 287b: Riyadh - Kuwait City (مدينة الكويت)

Jan 15 - Our flight is 80% Indian, Pakistani, and Nepalese workers. I wonder why they are just going from KSA to Kuwait. We land in a cold afternoon fog at Kuwait International Airport, which is probably not how many people first see the country. My question about the workers is answered when they all troop off to the transit lounge rather than to immigration. The budget airline we flew here (Jazeera Airways) must be the cheapest means to connect to other budget flights back to their home countries.

I had already organized our Kuwaiti visas online. In the airport, this required us to go to a special office rather than the normal immigration line and get a stamped printout of the approved document. The process took about five minutes.

Having looked into local transport, I decided we should try to get into town on the bus, rather than deal with taxis. I had the numbers of four different bus lines that went down the street where our hotel is located. Once at the bus stop just left of the terminal exit, I found that most of the buses I intended to take are not operating, though it is not clear to us if this is permanent or just today. I do know we are going to the Sharq district, and soon a bus happens by (21A) with that district listed on the side. So we take that one, at a cost of 0.60 Kuwaiti dinars for the three of us (1 dinar = US $3.28). Traffic is bad and it takes about 40 minutes. This affords us ample time to get a feel for how Kuwait City is so different from anywhere we went in Saudi Arabia.

One thing I notice right away is the use of space. Here, all the businesses are active. I see no storefronts abandoned and filled with garbage. The streets themselves are narrower, with less grandiose monuments in the center of the roundabouts. Stuff just seems more organized and taken care of. We unload on Mubarak al-Kabiir Street and check into the hotel. It is the only ‘cheap’ one I could find in the downtown area (still over $100/day), and is comparable to anywhere we stayed in KSA.

We go out on the street in search of food. There is a falafel place across the highway, which we have to dodge traffic to get to. Behind this place is the Souq Al-Mubarakiya. This is a warren of pedestrian streets and shops, where a great deal of trading has gone on since before the discovery of oil.

Kuwait City holds over 3 million inhabitants, about 70% of the population of the entire country.