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At the crossroads of the world
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Dubai is a microcosm of the world, says AMEYA CHARNALIA
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LUXURY BECKONS Dubai by night
This festive season, I made a quick but exciting trip to Dubai with my mother, aunt, uncle and cousins. I was very excited, because I had not been to that part of the world at all. Dubai conjured up images of kebabs, Bedouin tents and extremely glamorous malls. I was not disappointed.
Dubai is the world in microcosm. It has a mix of peoples and races from all over. The country has borrowed its culture from the East and lifestyle from the West. The buildings are huge chrome and glass structures, well lit at night, so that a drive through Sheikh Zayed Road, the main street of Dubai, is like a drive through any European city.
Apart from the exciting architecture, Dubai is very clean; one is not surprised, because littering and spitting are punishable by a stiff fine and possibly a jail term!
Although everybody is well off in the city, the wealthiest are the Arab sheikhs, who also rule the country. They are all fabulously rich and own several homes and some of the world's most expensive cars.
Expensive cars
It is as common to see BMWs, Ferraris and Mercedes' on Dubai's streets, as it is to see buses and autorickshaws in Delhi!
The Europeans are next in wealth. They have the plum jobs in Dubai. Then come the Indians. The well off ones are either working in multinational companies or have businesses of their own. But a number of Indians also work as cheap labour on construction sites and they do not have a very good life.
Even though it is extremely hot in the UAE, you don't feel it because all buildings are centrally air-conditioned.
But if you step out in the daytime, it is like being in a sauna... extremely hot and muggy!
Sites of tourist interest are Dubai's famous gold souk, Jumeira beach, the water parks, the desert safari and the malls. I visited all of them.
The gold souk amazed me. There was heavy, gold jewellery that weighed several kilos. Some shops even had ladies' tunics made entirely of delicate gold chains! Displays consisted of chains that were long enough to hang till an adult's knees and its hand worked flowers were as big as my palm! It was difficult to get my mom and aunt away from those shops. What was interesting was that the shops were mostly owned by Indians.
Dubai's Jumeira beach was lovely. My cousin Dhruv and I swam in the salty waters of the Arabian Sea. The beach is a little high, so running down the slope and jumping into the water made it more exciting. The beach had mostly Europeans either tanning themselves (and believe me, some were browner than me!) or in the water, para sailing, with sails like colourful pennants, dotting the blue water. Jumeira has beautiful Italian style homes, but they are all alike, as though cast from the same mould. Besides, most buildings in Dubai (as in Muscat and Sharjah) are white in colour. Perhaps it is a way to deflect the glare of the desert sun, to make the interiors cooler.
My next trip was to the desert on a safari. Our air-conditioned cruiser felt like a rocky boat at sea. The dunes were deep and curvy and we rode their crest as though they were waves and got sprayed by the dust. At one point, it seemed as though the car would keel over... so dangerously did it teeter to the left! My cousin Ayushman screamed, annoying our Pakistani driver, who ticked us off for distracting him.
At our destination, which was a touristy version of a Bedouin camp, we were treated to a sumptuous meal of Arabian kebabs, bread (which is like a roti) and pulaos, cooked over a barbeque spit, after which we settled down to a magic show. The original programme featured a belly dancer, but being Ramzaan, it was disallowed. The magician, however, had a whacky sense of humour and was loaded with jewellery which he declared was eight and a half kilos of solid gold! After the show, we rode some rather bad tempered camels which snorted at us. During the trip back home, we all fell asleep in the car.
Exciting water ride
The water park was another trip we thoroughly enjoyed. It was in a town east of Dubai. The most exciting was a ride that involved a slide which dropped down 30 feet, where I fell into a toilet like structure, making me feel that I was being flushed down, ending up in a 20 foot deep pool.
We also visited a number of malls in Dubai. They were all plush, as in the West. Some were designer malls; one of them was painted to look like Venice. In fact, Dubai designers seem to have a penchant for Italy, because the ambience of the Madinat Jumeirah Al Qasr hotel, one of the more expensive ones in Dubai, also resembles that of Venice, with a network of waterways and boats that transport guests from their rooms to the restaurants.
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