I was flying to India with my son and his partner, the main purpose of which was to meet her family. We were flying with Kuwait airlines, and about a week before we flew we were told that our two hour wait in Kuwait had now been extended to 19 hours! Not to worry though, under Kuwait law, the airline must provide us with a hotel for free, with complementary meals. I immediately spotted an opportunity to do some birding in Kuwait and see a few really special species.
Sounds good except that once in the free hotel you're not allowed to leave it until two hours before your outbound flight because the hotel is still within the airport security zone. So no chance of a few hours touring Kuwait if you take that option. I decided to decline the free hotel and booked the Holiday Inn just outside the airport at my own expense. No problem leaving the airport, I simply went to immigration when I got off the plane and they took my details and gave me a visa. It took about 10 minutes including queueing, and the hotel sent a driver to pick me up.
The next day my flight was at 17:00 and with my hold luggage still somewhere within the depths of the airport waiting to be tranferred to my next flight, I only had hand luggage with me, so no need to check in and no need to be back at the airport until 15:00. So at 06:30 I was picked up at the hotel by a local birding guide, AbdulRahman, and he took me birding for the eight hours or so that I had available. In total we saw 67 species of which 14 were new to me. A trip report from India is under the India thread on this forum.
The main species that I wanted to see was crab plover and we managed to find a flock of 31 birds on the beach at Sulaibikhat Sports Club. It was an amazing eight hours, with four species of wheatear, three species of eagle, hypocolious, namanqua doves, pied kingfishers and many other great birds.
