Dubai!

28 Nov

I started from Mysore in the morning and reached Bangalore in the afternoon and was surprised when Swetha said she would come to see me off! I boarded the flight to Dubai from Bangalore. Gowd, my friend who stays in Dubai, picked me from the airport from Costa café (our pre-destined meeting place). We went home and had our dinner and slept after a long chat.

29 Nov

My first day out in Dubai and I wanted to take it easy. Gowd had some work and had to go early to office. I woke up at ease, got ready, had corn flakes for breakfast (stressing on cornflakes as I've had corn flakes for breakfast for almost a year). I took a Taxi to Wafi city center, an Egyptian concept mall, close to Gowd's office. I spent almost 2 hours in the mall, clicking photos of the architecture, enquiring about the Big Bus tour rides and making a list of things to do from the bus route map. I had a strawberry shake at Cafe ole and then I met Gowd and Preetham, our classmate, for lunch. I met a few of Gowd's colleagues and was invited to Dinner at one of his colleagues, Rao's, home. I enjoyed the sunset from his office building and then we went home to get ready for the dinner. After the dinner started exploring Dubai by night. We drove through Sheikh Zayed road, went to Jumeriah beach, one can see many families camping on the beach, it seemed a lovely idea, the famous Burj Al Arab hotel is 150 meters off this beach on its own island! We moved on to Dubai Marina, a newly developed region in Dubai which beats Manhattan in the number of sky scrapers! What I didn’t like is the claustrophobic feeling the residents of these towers would have. Gowd and I had a great time catching up with our lives, past and the future. We then moved to the creek side docks in Bur Dubai. I was shocked to see the well manicured grass and beautiful gardens in this dessert. We returned home at 3AM and rested our tired souls.

on 30Nov

The next day we woke up in the afternoon. Archana, a classmate of ours, is studying in Dubai and she joined us today. We drove to Al-Ain and Jebel Hafeet Mountain. One of the amazing things in UAE is the traffic round abouts. They are confusing for first timers, but regulate traffic well. The road to the summit of the mountain is inclined at over 30 degrees and offers beautiful views. We reached the top and found that there was a 'mallu' tea stall on top of the mountain! I was really impressed by the reach of 'mallu's' in this land. It was really cold and we enjoyed sipping the hot tea. There was a luxurious resort on the mountain, but we were getting late and wanted to start our journey back. The foot of the mountain is an artificial oasis, with underground irrigation and thousands of families holidaying. We found a hot stream and traced the origin of the stream to a hot water pump! Yes pump, it was not a spring, the ground water is pumped out to give a feeling of a stream. One strange thing we noticed in Al Ain is the information boards had directions as "other tourist destination" and not specific direction to a destination. Can some one tell me which are these other tourist destinations! On the way back Archana was imitating how I spoke to Swetha over phone. She had heard me speak to Swetha and thought I never spoke to anyone like that. Isn't that obvious.

1 Dec

Gowd, Preetham and I had Lunch at little hut. I had the pleasure of having Mughlai Chinese Schezwan fried rice! By now I had my cell phone activated after making 10s of calls to Etisalat customer care.

We came home and rested. At 330 in the afternoon, Suhail, the Land cruiser driver, picked us from Qusais. We were on our way to Habib dessert near Hatta. We shared the land cruiser with a family from Bangalore. We drove to a point on the highway where all the SUVs of the convoy meet. Our convoy had seventeen SUVs and the leader guided the others in the convoy. Now we were in complete dessert, not a blade of grass. We did dune bashing, skidding and roller coaster kind rides in the SUV. I was trying to kid around with Suhail and asked him silly questions entertaining the others in the SUV.

After the safari we went to the camp, we smoked Sheesha, wore a Kandoor, enjoyed Belly dancing, rode buggy bikes, Camels, and ate a Vegetarian buffet - Hummus, Kuboos, samosa like dish, rice, and lentil. The whole package was value for money for 140 Dh. We returned home at 930 in the night.

Once we were home our old classmates called and we decided to meet at 11 PM. Bobby & Gullu, drove from Abu Dhabi. We went to a funny, entertaining boolywood theme restaurant in Al Sayeed Club, Mughal Durbar. There were doubles of Amitabh, Sunny, Salman, Aishwarya and Hritik who were all dancing and singing to their original songs. It was funny and we laughed to our hearts content. We returned home in after a couple of hours.

2 Dec

Gowd called up Archana to know if she would join us to the mall of Emirates. She did. We went to Nandini for lunch and then drove to the mall. The mall of Emirates is the largest mall in the world except US. We reached the mall around 2 in the afternoon and started exploring it. The mall experience is no different from the US, but the people around are really cosmopolitan, from different parts of the world, none in majority. I did a bit of shopping and was in awe to see the indoor ski dome. I've decided that I will spend a skiing holiday in Dubai, sometime soon. In the evening we went to a Lebanese restaurant - Beirut, and had hummus, kubbus and some vegetables roasted/fried. Gowd and Archana had Shawarmas. We dropped Archana and called it a day.

Dec 03

I always like exploring cities by walk and had planned for a walking tour of old and new parts of Dubai (these are my naming conventions) today. Gowd had a meeting at 7 and couldn’t join us. Archana wanted to take a similar tour of Dubai. We met at 10 and went to the gold souk on Al Khaleej road. The place bears high resemblance to Ckickpet in Bangalore, of course the
gold displayed in the souk is no where in comparisons. We had breakfast in a small Indian restaurant and headed for the spice souk, which is adjacent to the creek. There was variety of spices, most of which I knew as my grand father has a kirana shop. I purchased a curio which has the sands of all the seven emirates. For the sake of Trivia - the color of sands differs in each emirate.

We then hopped on to an abra and crossed the creek. The view beautiful and all the souks, buildings and bazaars on either side of the creek were buzzing with activity. Being in the land of gold, I was searching for an ear ring for my sister and Swetha. We went to some well known shops, JoyAllukas, damas and after half an hour got the pair I liked. To my bad luck there was some problem with the screw in it and the jeweller didn’t have another pair. I quit looking for jewellery after this experience. The next stop was Dubai museum. On entering the museum there is nothing that one notices and we were wondering why we came here. But we could hear some noises in one of the door and went exploring. The door opens into a small hall with a few displays and then leads to the basement. The basement is the actual museum. The museum narrates the history of Dubai, its people, its rise and growth. It was a very educative tour and at the end of the tour I appreciated the spirit of the people in Dubai even more.

After a quick Andhra style lunch we headed to Sheikh Zayed Road, the start of new Dubai. Preetham another classmate of ours worked in one of the hundreds of high rise buildings on this road. We all met at Starbucks and had a chit chat. He suggested us to check out the mall in the Jumeriah Emirates towers, one of the architectural wonders of the present world. We walked to the tower and entered the banquet area and took a walk to the mall. We were in awe looking at the opulence in the building. We were walking casually and suddenly a huge automatic door opened and we entered the lobby. The nearest comparison I can make is the titanic ballroom kind ambiance. The mall was a high end mall with most of the European brands. I was still looking for ear rings and entered damas only to know that they had only diamond jewellery. It was 5 in the evening and we called Gowd. He said he would join us by six. We then went out of the Emirates tower only to get into the Dubai International Financial center. The air felt like that of wall street! We then stumbled upon the fountains outside the Emirates tower. The fountains remind me of the famous Bellagio fountains in Vegas. Gowd joined us at 6 and we went to shop for Pavan's laptop, I didn’t find a good deal and returned with a digicam for Didi. We then dropped Archana to her home.

Gowd and I went to Jumeriah Madinat, a posh luxurious resort, mall and multiple restaurants. We had mock tails at the restaurant with a view of Burj-al-Arab. We were there till 1AM and headed to Karama to have a veg pulav and go home.

Dec 04

I went to Palm Jumeriah with Gowd, he is doing the design of BMS for one of the hundreds of buildings on this man made island. The trip made me realize that no dream is too big. We then went to Ibn Batuta mall. The design of the mall is around the architecture of different regions of the world the famous Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta had traveled in the 16^th century. The first court is Chinese, followed by Indian then Persian, next was Egyptian and the last was Tunisian. The creators of the mall have also put up small information boards which tell the history and greatness of the Arab world. After this wonderful trip my image of the Arab world has changed forever.