I see, that is good to know. Thanks for the suggestion but because some of my destinations don't have non stop flights in between them, I'm already at 15 segments total. So I could only add another direct flight. OW does not have many non stop flights from New Delhi to other destinations in Europe. I would have loved to go through London as we could fly directly to Rio instead of going through Sao Paulo. But when I use that routing instead of the DOHA-Sao Paulo, it increases the price of the tickets by about $1500usd.
In any case, our priority on this trip is not so much accumulating miles but more to be able to survive & enjoy doing this trip in a 3 months period, lol