Natural Sites in Kuwait

The Danish explorer Barclay Raunkiær said in 1913, “Kuwait is emphatically a town of the desert and the sea.” Freya Stark published Baghdad Sketches in 1937. The majority of the work centers on Stark’s travels in Iraq, but she also visited Kuwait, which she describes as, “nothing but desert and sea.” In her work, Wildflowers of Kuwait, Linda Shuaib describes how, “in the 1960s Kuwait City was a small town. The airport was near the centre close to the new suburb of Shamiya. Roads were few and the established routes out of Kuwait down the coast… were main tracks of sand. Urbanization increased… as Kuwait grew in the 1970s and 80s the traditional pattern of exodus to the desert in the spring and a picnic by the sea on summer evenings altered. In 1966 the Kuwait Hotel Company had leased some lands to the south… building weekend chalets for rent. Unfortunately the unspoilt natural scenery of the southern coastline gradually disappeared as the unregulated buildings of chalets took place. The desert suffered likewise… it was now abused by trucks and pollution. Then the final blow–the polluting of the desert with the fallout from the oil fires in a ‘scorched earth’ act of war. The war added greatly to the deterioration of the environment in Kuwait but on the other hand it made people more aware of the issues.” Here is some more information about the nature to be found in Kuwait:

Wildflowers

Animal Life

In his work Birds of the Arabian Gulf, Michael C. Jennings tells us that there are over 350 different species of birds in the Gulf States. This website is a dedicated source to the bird life of Kuwait.

The Desert

In Wildflowers, Linda Shuaib writes, “the land of Kuwait is composed of sand and gravel desert with occasional outcroppings of rock. Jal az Zor, the escarpment along the north of Kuwait Bay, is the only feature that really makes a scenic impact. Skirting Jahra one can see the line of the Zor Hills to the north. The road to Basra cuts through them at the Mutla gap. From here the hills continue westwards to Artrat becoming lower further inland. The highest part of the escarpment and the most impressive scenery is to the east of Mutla. Between the sea and hills, running along the north side of Kuwait Bay, is the road to Sobiya.”

Shuaib tells us that in the southern part of the coastline of Kuwait there is, “a vast expanse of sabkha (the Arabic term used by all for saline flat or salt marsh: only plants that can tolerate salt grow here).” And that, “not counting grasses, at least sixty different plant species have been found here.”

The Waterfront

According to Modern Architecture Kuwait, a waterfront design competition held in the 1960s promised to reclaim “new land from the sea… by then filled with the demolished material of the old town. The 1951 Master Plan had defined several aspects of the city’s development, but not the sea front.” The 1961 proposals were never implemented but, “the competition had foreseen several further developments: such as the realization of the Gulf Road. It also paved the way for the 1976 Waterfront Project, which, when realized, reshaped the relationship between Kuwait and its coastline.” In 1978, the ambitious waterfront project was finally implemented, aiming to, “restore the sea to the city’s inhabitants after that access was broken by high-way construction. A continuous strip of 21 kilometers, from Ras-Al Salmiya to Shuwaikh, was segmented into twelve zones. Different points of interest, recreational spaces, and other public facilities were implemented along the waterfront. The focal major area was, and still is, the artificial Green Island. Along the pedestrian promenade, more structures were subsequently added in a random way since its inception.” AbeBooks has listed for sale for 20,000, “a unique ensemble, unpublished and not documented elsewhere: the complete set of plans for an extensive, never-realized redesign of the north-western shore of Kuwait City to both sides of Seif Palace, covering approximately the area from today’s Ministry of Oil in the west to Dasman in the east. – In 1961, ten years after the first urban master plan was commissioned for Kuwait and four years after the city walls were demolished, the Kuwaiti government’s Development Board commissioned proposals for a scheme to develop the waterfront of the City of Kuwait over an approximate length of 6.5 kilometres. The scheme was to include the construction of sea walls and a new boat basin as well as a double carriageway, the relocation of the existing small craft harbour, reclamation of land for future facilities, and extensions of the existing storm water drains. Their proposal for Kuwait City’s refashioned waterfront, however, was not carried out.”

Here are some points of interest along the contemporary waterfront:

Shuwaikh Beach:

Harbor Walk:

The old harbor across from Bait Dickson:

The walkway in front of Souq Sharq:

Porto Ponas, a nice cafe right along the seafront:

The strip between the Kuwait Towers and Army Officers Club, which has the Head of the Bridge and Dasman Beach:

Green Island & Halloween Beach:

Marina Beach:

Marina Walk:

Alblajat:

Parks in Kuwait

Shaheed: The best known park in Kuwait is Shaheed, which was established in 2015. It is located within the “green belt” around Kuwait City, which was established in 1959, after the old mud brick wall was torn down. According to Kuwait City Parks by Subhi Abdullah Al-Mutawa, “the Greenbelt is located in the southern section of Kuwait City. Originating as a noncommercial or residential buffer zone in 1958, it is used to separate Kuwait City from the rest of the country.”

Municipal Park: According to Al-Mutawa, the municipality park in Kuwait was “formerly a public cemetery until was designated a park in 1961 because of the city’s expansion. The task of designing the public park in busy downtown Kuwait began in 1962 when most of the graves were removed.” Here are old postcards of the Municipal Park found either on eBay or Delcampe.