Jeddah: It has been three weeks since Abdullah Alzulmi left Jeddah for Qatar to watch the World Cup football tournament. This Saudi young man who came down on foot in the middle of last month to see the World Fair in Doha in November has already covered more than a thousand kilometers. The 33-year-old says he became obsessed with coming to Qatar and watching the game ever since he heard a senior Qatari official explain the upcoming soccer World Cup while watching a television show earlier this year.
The young man says that his own relatives who heard the wish dismissed the young man as ‘crazy’, but he was ready for this brave adventure. It took him two months to travel 1,600 km from his hometown Jeddah to the Qatari capital Doha as a lone traveler.
Alzulmi says the trip, faithfully documented for thousands of Snapchat followers, is meant to highlight local excitement for the Middle East’s first World Cup. The young man, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a bag with Saudi and Qatari flags attached to it, has already passed the city of Riyadh. Alzulmi, who has extensive trekking experience in Canada and Australia, where he has previously lived, noted that the journey through the Arabian Peninsula was tough.
Abdullah Alzulmi on his walking trip to Qatar
The trip starts at sunrise and lasts till 10.30 am. Then rest for a while. The journey will resume in the followingnoon. The walk will continue at night. In this way, 35 kilometers are walked per day. The journey continues by buying food from petrol stations, bathing in mosques and washing clothes to satisfy hunger. The details of the journey are communicated to the followers daily through social media. He said that the support he gets from the people is encouraging him to complete the journey.
Abdullah Alzulmi said that Argentina is his favorite team, but he has high hopes for the Saudi team, which has qualified for six World Cups but advanced to the knockout stage only once during its debut in 1994, and hopes to reach Doha on November 22 during Saudi Arabia’s opening match once morest Argentina.
Zulmi travels with water collected in a bottle from the Red Sea as a symbol of the journey. On reaching Doha, this fan’s journey will be completed by pouring a bottle of water from the Red Sea in the Arabian Gulf.