Unlike last year, this year we planned to do something meaningful during Eid holidays, and we decided to visit Dubai. We opted to travel by road in the state-owned ONTC bus. Though we started off early, holiday rush was enough to make our lives miserable at Oman and UAE road borders. At the Al Walaja border in Oman, I had some tense moments as the driver of our bus misplaced my passport at the immigration counter. At the Hatta border on the UAE side, we were stranded for nearly two hours in the immigration counter owing to large crowds. Finally we reached Dubai at around 2.30 pm, a cool eight hour journey instead of the normal six hours.
On the way to Dubai from Hatta, we could see sand dunes and hordes of camels. Dubai, according to me, is simply international. Coming from Muscat, I could feel the difference between a happening city and a sleepy town.
Dubai Creek Park offers cable car ride for over 35 minutes. The tickets are priced at 25 dirhams for adults and 10 dirhams for kids. The ride offers a stupendous view of Dubai decked up in lights. It’s better to have a Dubai resident with you while you are in that city for the first time. We had with us — Mohananna – who can be termed a mini Dubai encyclopedia. He had an in-depth view of anything and everything on Dubai. Thanks to him, now we have enough and more stories to unleash on others!
Being the only seven-star hotel in the world, Burl Al Arab has become the ‘must see’ destination in Dubai. The hotel has been constructed over an artificial island in the sea. Tiger Woods has teed off many golf balls into the sea from its helipad, while Federer and Agassi have played a promotional match in the helipad. The hotel is known to have more than 200 suites and unique restaurants. At night, the hotel has an eye-catching illumination in place.
Dubai is also known as the ‘city of gold’. The Gold Souk is frequented by Westerners than other nationalities. A majority of the shops in the souk are owned by Indians.
Dubai offers a spectacular view in the night with the illuminated tall buildings dotting the landscape.
Dubai is quite notorious for its traffic snarls. During Eid the congestion picked up in the latter part of the evening, reminding me of the usual traffic jams in Bangalore. Like in any other Gulf state, accidents are plenty in UAE.
For me, Dubai looked like a concrete city with skyscrapers all around. There is construction activity at every possible place. Hordes and hordes of workers from the sub-continent can been seen sweating it out at these locations. The demand for housing is so huge that every other day a new project gets kicked off, and advertisements are splashed in local dailies. Dubai is growing at an enormous pace, and there are plans in place to make it the most happening city in the world.