DUBAI THROUGH MY EYES

                       It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in the month of January. My wife was scrolling through the newspaper as always when the colorful advertisement of the Dubai Shopping Festival caught her attention. “Shopping”, which is every women’s favorite pass-time, with a festival in a foreign land was enough to grasp her attention. She started googling about it to find out more. And of-course that became our next vacation plan!!! Who can go against the wishes of the “Home Minister”!

Dubai Shopping Festival is an annual month-long event put together by the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment which is part of Dubai’s Department of Tourism. During the festival, shops offer discount on their merchandise, daily car raffles and prize drawings are held to win items such as gold and cars and there is fireworks display. There are also several family activities to keep everyone entertained.

I called my son and told him about our interest in going to the Dubai festival. My son looked up various travel agents and narrowed down on “Thomas Cook”. We went to their office at MG road, Bangalore to discuss and plan the trip. They took a session with us for about half an hour to explain the trip details. They also gave us bags and caps as souvenir. We were excited about the trip and started shopping to get ready for the shopping festival, funny isn’t it, shopping for the shopping festival 😊. Clothes, Shoes, travel size kits were on the list to start with. My daughter-in-law helped us exchange the Indian currency to Dirham. We were all set to travel.

On the D-Day, we took the flight to Sharjah at midnight. It was about 4-hour journey from Bangalore. We reached Sharjah in the morning. As soon as we landed at Sharjah, we urged for bed-tea. We went around the airport trying to find a café where we could get “Kadak-Chai” – full desi style! We were in luck; we did manage to find a café at the airport who served hot tea. After the quick tea stop, we headed to the exit and found two queues, without thinking too much we just joined one of them and followed the crowd. While in the queue, we learnt from a bystander that this queue is for those people who regularly visit Dubai. They were being checked by an eye scanner to validate their entries, wow!!!! That is some technology!!! They maintain a record of every entry and pass you through the eye-scanner to verify and record right at the airport exit just through a scanner! As it was our first time, we were asked to move to the other queue.

At the exit we found the bus sent by the hotel waiting for us. The journey to the hotel was short and the Dubai roads were well maintained and exceptionally clean. At the hotel, we were welcomed by the manager, juice was offered to all the passengers as refreshment. The manager addressed all of us and welcomed us to Dubai. As our check-in time was 12 noon, we were requested to have breakfast before we could get to the rooms. After a nice and fulfilling breakfast we went to our rooms and rested. We were asked to assemble at 7 pm at the reception.

We reached the reception at 6:45 PM well ahead of time (Punctuality is something we are known for in our family!). The tourist bus took us through the city, and it was a mesmerizing view. The entire city was illuminated, it did feel like a festival in the true sense! There were skyscrapers all around. Our first destination was the Marina Show Cruise Dinner! All the cruises at the shoreline were fully illuminated. The skyline looked beautiful at night. The sky was lit up with fireworks. It was a breath-taking sight. We were already in love with this place. My wife, being more tech savvy as compared to me, took beautiful videos of the shoreline and the fireworks and was already uploading them to the social media. We were then led to the cruise where we had been booked for dinner. We found our table and we were seated across a newly-wed couple from Bangalore, a small world indeed! It was a fun time with the couple as they were entering a phase of their life which we had lived for more than 30 years. We did share some expert advice with them. While we were chatting with them a lady walked up to us and offered to take our pictures from her professional camera. We all posed happily for the camera. The entertainment program started immediately. There was the most famous belly dance and fire dance. The dancers were wearing a costume full of light bulbs (reminded me of the famous Amitabh Bachchan number – Saara Zamanaa). When the dancers started dancing the lights lit up in different colors, a beautiful sight indeed. The whole cruise was enjoying the beautiful dance. Dinner was served during the entertainment and the cuisine was Asian – we loved it! After about 2hr ride on the cruise full of entertainment and good food we made our way out of the cruise. On our way out, the lady who took professional pictures offered us our pictures for 200 Dirhams. We were still accompanied by the newly wed couple from our dinner table and we both decided not to take the pictures but instead clicked a few more pictures from our mobile phone around the cruise of each other and saved 200 Dirhams. I love the mobile phones for their inbuilt cameras if not for anything else!

The second day in Dubai started with breakfast at the hotel. Now that we were a little more relaxed and got used to the hotel, we started exploring the hotel and spoke to the chef at the hotel. The chef was from Darjeeling. His name was Bahadur. His omelets were something I wouldn’t forget; they were one of the yummiest I have ever eaten. And they were perfectly round. Out of curiosity, I asked him the secret of his round omelets and he showed us how he used an iron ring to make those omelets. Some good lesson learnt that day! After breakfast we were taken for a city tour. Our guide was from Pakistan. While sitting in the bus we got chatting and he was very friendly. Soon we became friends and he even invited us over to his house in Pakistan. He told us he is originally from Amritsar and he was speaking Punjabi language just like what we speak in our house. Our waiter in the hotel was also from Pakistan. Strangely enough, when Indians and Pakistani’s meet in a foreign land, we feel connected. Our lands are divided but not our hearts.

Our guide took us to the famous Heritage village in Dubai. It showcases the heritage and culture of Dubai. There were many museums showcasing the cottage industries and pearl diving which was the main livelihood of Dubai until the discovery of oil. Our guide told us that Dubai was a small village where fishermen used to live. The transformation of Dubai to a desert metropolis that it is today is indeed interesting. The stunning desert surrounds the city of Dubai with absolutely no grass growth. Water is expensive in Dubai. They buy all vegetables and food grains from other countries. But God has balanced this out by giving Dubai the gift of liquid gold - oil. Dubai was under the control of British till 1971. Abu Dhabi, Dubai and five emirates joined together and it became United Arab Emirates. It is the third richest country in the world after Luxembourg and Qatar. Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown Prince a great visionary is responsible for the development of Dubai. He started promoting tourism, instead of oil. Millions of tourists came here. Now there are more than 30 Billionaires in Dubai. Temperature in August is 55 degree Centigrade. That is why we find air-conditioned bus stands. Jan and Feb are pleasant months and a lot of tourist come during the Dubai festival. And that of course was our reason to travel to Dubai at this time of the year!

The UAE culture mainly revolves around the religion of Islam and traditional Arab culture on its architecture, music, attire, cuisine and lifestyle are prominent as well. Meat, fish and rice are staple food of Emirate cuisine. Dubai is known for its luxurious restaurants.

A typical breakfast in Dubai is Baith Tamat which is a delicious combination of scrambled eggs with tomato herbs and luxurious saffron. From vegetarian to Non vegetarian Dubai has something for every foodie. When in Rome be a Roman and here we were trying all that Dubai had to offer from food to the culture. My wife looked up the famous food to try in Dubai and we added and ticked of the Baith Tamat on one day and on another day we ordered Manousheh Pizza of Dubai, It had lot of cheese n exotic herbs with other toppings. Chelo kabab was another one we tried, it was served with rice and yummy kababs. We tried something else called as the Sangak, it was like our local bread (roti)- one of the healthier options.

On our third day we went to the miracle Garden. There are millions of varieties of flowers, a beautiful sight indeed! It was a much larger version of the flower festival at Lalbagh park, Bangalore. My wife took many pictures in this amazing Botanical garden with various flower structures. We then headed to the Jumera beach in the evening. There were lots of tourist enjoying in beach. Beaches have always been my favorite, a relaxed evening sitting by the water, watching the waves! The beach also has a lot of VIP bungalows. One of them belongs to our Bollywood Celebrity Shahrukh khan as pointed out by our guide. After a relaxing time at the beach we went to the Sheik Zayed mosque in Abu Dhabi. The Mosque has a beautiful architecture and I also found the carpet in the mosque very beautiful. While returning our guide let us have a little bit of shopping time at one of the Dubai malls, and my bad I do not remember the name of this one! You see, there are many malls in Dubai 😊! For someone who isn’t into shopping as much, all the malls look the same.

Next day we went for the most popular Desert Safari. It is one of the highly rated things to do in Dubai. And true to its reviews, it is a wonderful experience and a must if you ever visit Dubai. Thousands of tourists come from all around the world to enjoy the thrilling experience. We had the best time at this magnificent Arabian Desert. We were taken into the desert by a SUV Vehicle. The most adventurous part was when our SUV took a 30 ft jump in the desert, it was a thrilling experience. We totally loved it! We took a lot of pictures during sunset in the desert. Scooter riding is another wonderful experience. Many scooters fell in the sand. We got lucky this time and had a safe scooter ride. It was a nice experience and we really enjoyed the scooter ride in the desert. Then, in the evening there was belly dance and fire dance which we enjoyed along with Hukka’s for those who liked to try. There was veg/non veg dinner served along with the entertainment.

Our next day was going to be another exciting one. Our hotel gave us a travel card to visit the city by either bus or metro. We decided to take the bus as the bus stop was close to our hotel. The hotel staff had booked our tickets for the Burj Khalifa. Burj Khalifa is located next to the Dubai mall (and this is the one I know only because that’s the landmark - world’s tallest building!). We took the bus to the mall as it was close to our hotel. We reached the mall around 10 AM. The Burj Khalifa entrance is inside Dubai mall. The Burj Khalifa, known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration in 2010 is a sky scraper in Dubai with a height of 829.8 meter and roof height of 828m. Burj Khalifa has been the tallest structure in the world. Its cost is USD 150 crore. It has 163 floors. We went to the top of the Burj Khalifa by lift. There was swing at top. The view from the observatory deck was amazing. We could see the whole city. We took a lot of pictures at the deck. After getting a beautiful view of the city we made our way down the Burj. There is a dancing fountain show at the bottom of the Burj. We managed to get a spot at the 1 pm show. We enjoyed the fun show and post the show we walked into the Dubai mall. It gives discount on clothes, shoes, electronics and accessories. It is the second largest mall by total land area and 26^th largest shopping mall in world by gross leasable area. We had lunch at an Indian restaurant. We went around the mall. We saw aquarium and shops. After spending the day at the mall and picking up some souvenir’s and gifts for our loved one’s, at night, we took a bus back to the hotel. Our hotel was 1 km away from the bus stand. We requested the bus driver to stop near the hotel at a traffic light in our typical (swalpa adjust maadi Bangalorian way!!!!)  but he refused and rather dropped us at the bus stand. The driver mentioned that there is a heavy penalty for stopping buses at the traffic signals for onboarding or offboarding passengers. We were very tired after walking around the mall and due to the strict traffic rules, had to still do a 1 km walk to get to the hotel. Thereafter, we headed to the hotel restaurant for dinner before a good night sleep.

Our next day was going to be golden!!! In the morning we decided to visit the gold market. We took the bus to the gold market. Dubai gold souk is a traditional market, located in Deira. When in Dubai, it is a must to visit the gold market. This is one of the popular destination of Emirates. There is rebate on custom duty. That is why people purchased gold while coming from Dubai. Souk consists of about 380 retail most of which are jewelry traders. There are many Indian jewellery stores like Tanishq, Malabar, Joyalukkas and Kalyan jewelers. The market is full of gold, we also saw dresses made of gold. Gold is lined up from aisle to aisle, we saw the largest gold ring in the world weighing 64 Kg on display recognized by Guinness book of world records. In our presence one sheikh purchased the gold dress! A few of us actually were window shopping around just to see how someone purchases the gold dress!

After the golden appetite, it was time for lunch. We had lunch at the Lahore hotel. We ordered Rajma, two rotis and lassi. The hotel owner walked up to us and asked us to take one roti first as the size of roti was very big almost double the size of a normal roti. He was right, we couldn’t finish 1 big roti amongst the two of us! After lunch, we decided to go to the global village. We took a bus to this place. There was a lot of crowd who had come to visit the place which combines culture of 90 countries at one place. It claims itself to be the world’s largest tourism, leisure, shopping and entertainment project. It is the regions first cultural entertainment destination. It has over 5 million to 6 million visitors over area of 1600000 sqr mtr area. It is located on sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed road. There are four sections in village. These sections consist of events and concerts, carnival, food and shopping. At the entrance the first stall belongs to USA and has a replica of the statue of Liberty. We saw Japanese, Chinese, Pakistani, African stalls. We went to the Indian stall too. At the Thailand stall, my wife took a picture with the two pretty girls dressed in their culture. It was a lot of cultural information and a fun evening!

On our last day, we went to the visit the nearby Market. It was Friday and many people were doing prayers in the mosques. Those who could not find space, they were praying outside. We purchased Dates, cashew nut, other dry fruits and a few other souvenirs. While in the market, we saw hoardings of Sonam Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan. They were visiting the Dubai festival as brand ambassadors of Kalyan Jewelers. It was a nice feeling to see our celebrity hoardings in the city. After a stroll through the market we caught a quick bite at a nearby Indian restaurant before heading back to the hotel. We spent the rest of the day packing up for our flight in the night back home. A bus drove us down through heavy traffic to the Sharjah airport in the evening after we bid farewell to the wonderful hotel staff and our tourist guides, the people who made our stay memorable at Dubai. We grabbed a quick bit at the airport before boarding our flight to Bangalore. We reached India at midnight and back to our home sweet home with beautiful memories to cherish for life.

RAMESH CHANDER KALRA

Email:       rameshckalra@gmail.com