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I'm the sandman

Our traveller has a touch of the sun in Dubai

The most tolerant and cosmopolitan emirate of the seven that make up the UAE, Dubai can be called the crossroads of the world. In fact, Sheikh Zayed, the father of modern Dubai, realized that the oil will not last forever and set in motion processes that have resulted in making Dubai's economy independent of oil. This means encouragement of trade and making expatriates feel at home.

Now, expats need cars. So you have showrooms selling Porsches, Aston Martins, Beemers, Mercs and also the usual clutch of Japanese and Korean cars. But being the concrete jungle Dubai is, your thrills are restricted from traffic light to traffic light - provided you are in the first row. But for some serious driving pleasure, head towards Al Hatta.

Al Hatta, just a stone's throw from Dubai, is 9 km short of UAE's border with Oman. Getting out of Dubai is a matter of accurately reading signboards and once you're out of the city, the concrete fades away, and as you zip down the 4-lane highway, the desert starts making an appearance.

It's hard to believe that once, Dubai was all like this - barren and sandy. Today, it is an oasis where the cultures of the world come together. Anyway I'd had about 6 days of the concrete jungle and was now on the way to Al Hatta at the wheel of a Jeep. It is but natural that when one is confined to speed limits and traffic snarls, an open highway seems like a race track. I had to keep to the slow lane most of the time because everyone else seemed to be trying to go as fast as possible. I remember seeing my speedo needle at 120 kph when a Porsche Cayman just zipped past me, leaving me for dead.

Desert safaris are big in Dubai, with companies taking tourists into the desert in huge and powerful four-by-fours, which they throw all over the large dunes, much to the thrill of the people inside. But it is much more fun at the wheel. We latched onto a convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers because they know the desert, which to a novice like I, looks the same all around. I've been dune-driving in India in the deserts of Rajasthan, but this was different.

At first, it all seemed quite tame with gentle undulating dunes but these soon disappeared and we started tackling huge mountainous ones. I realized this when the Land Cruiser ahead just disappeared from sight... and a moment later I was on the precipice of a 70-foot plunge which seemed almost vertical. Nervousness crept in, but logic kept it in check. I figured out that if the Toyota could do this, so could the Wrangler, and down we went. The art of going down a dune is to keep the wheels straight, not brake nor accelerate, but let gravity do its work. Going up a dune of course is sheer power, which the Wrangler had in ample.

If you're on a tourist desert safari, the experience ends with an Arabian dinner on the sands with some belly dancing and camel riding thrown in. But for me, since I chose to go in an open Jeep for a run about the dunes, the experience will only end when I manage to wash out the very last fine grain of sand which keeps showing up every time I have a shower!

RISHAD SAAM MEHTA

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