Qatar, Qatar, Qatar

The World Cup (soccer) was held in Qatar this year.  Argentina won. Cool,  I guess.

My nephew Nick has returned from a two month sojourn in India. He visited Delhi and points north up to the Himalayas. I imagine he had some good times, but his trip to the mountains was an adventure, as in an ordeal. Anyway, his flight from Seattle took him over the North Pole and Russia to Doha, Qatar. That struck me as a little weird, I mean Qatar seems to be a bit out of the way. And they flew over Russia. I guess that's okay since we aren't technically at war with Russia, are we? Whatever, let's try and plot that flight.

Google Maps makes a hash of it
That is not a polar route

Google Earth gets it right,
but at the expense of detail.
It was also a pain in the neck to use.

Well, that sucks. Surely someone out there can do this.

Great Circle Map might be technically accurate,
but the drawing is horribly distorted

GC Map did it better,
but it was awkward to use and not much detail

I swear last year plotting these kind of routes was much easier.

LNG Tanker Loading in Qatar

In other news, Europe is trying to replace the natural gas they were getting from Russia with Liquefied Natural Gas from Qatar. Someone recently tried to build a natural gas pipeline across the Mediterranean from the middle east to Europe, but Uncle Joe squashed it. Biden must hate Europe as much as he hates Russia.