Dubai Thrills and 'Brills'

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The Thrills of Dubai


Practically all the tourists to Dubai go on a Desert Safari a.k.a. Dune-Bashing , but generally they go only once. Nobody wants to repeat the experience.


This attraction is in the same category as climbing the ‘Jhulta Minar’ in Ahmedabad, or going into the dark, narrow caverns at Mawsmai, Shillong without a guide. You do them once and thank your stars that you came out of those adventures intact. You do NOT do it a second time.


Our Desert Safari was made livelier by the presence of two school-going kids in the party. Whether it is a circus, a Desert Safari, a water-park or a roller-coaster ride, kids are an essential ingredient to having fun. Adults’ enjoyment is more in watching the kids having fun rather than having fun themselves.


The tour companies take you to the golden sand dunes about one hour away from Dubai by a 4X4.


You are wondering about what is this 4X4 and whether I meant this as a swear-word?


I was familiar with 2X2, which is simply a type of fabric, which we used for making blouses, but I had to ask about 4X4 to Avi.


The 4X4 simply means ‘four-wheel-drive’. The ‘normal’ cars that run on smooth tarmac roads have a ‘two-wheel-drive’ i.e. the engine ‘drives’ only two wheels. (Generally the rear wheels.) The 4X4 are SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicle) which are meant for tougher terrain, and so the engine ‘drives’ all the four wheels.


When we reached the dunes, the driver of the 4X4 let out some air from the tires of the vehicle, because that makes driving on the sand easier.


There were some 40-50 SUVs waiting their turn to go into the desert. The 4x4s go into the dunes in a group, never singly. That is because the chances of a 4X4 turning turtle among the dunes are quite high and in such a case, the other cars help.


The euphoria among the tourists was quite high. This became evident when a tourist couple danced an impromptu jig on the soft, golden sand. A few kids gleefully used a gentle, shallow dune as a slide, but found it difficult to climb up again.


Our turn to go into the desert came and the driver advised all of us to put on the seat-belts and hang on to the straps for dear life.


Despite these precautions, the drive was anything but smooth. The car has to traverse at 45 degrees to the vertical when climbing up a dune and the people in the car are scared that it is going to topple any moment now. They are even more scared when their visibility drops to zero because the car is churning up a regular sand-storm and the car’s window-panes become obscured by flying sand.


Add to this, the din caused by the shrieks of delight let out by the children and groans and protests by the adults and you will get a fairly good idea of the cacophony that reigned in the car.


Totally unaffected by all this, the driver of the car went about his business peacefully.


Going down a sand-dune is not any easier. Your body is going down in the car but your stomach, being the perverse organ that it is, has decided to go in the opposite direction, i.e. up. Here you come to know that your different body parts have a mind of their own and occasionally CAN rebel against the brain’s commands.


Yours truly is a brave hearted but a weak-stomached and weak-kneed creature.

When the drive was over and other people were telling each other how much they enjoyed it, I started collecting my far-flung limbs, stomach and other body-parts and putting them together. I felt like a regular ‘Terminator’ while I built myself up again.


After a rest-stop and a “photo-op” to shoot the “sunset over the dunes”, all the cars headed towards the Desert Camp.


We spent some 3-4 hours at the Camp. The camp is surrounded by tents and looks like an authentic desert camp of a bygone era, but has all the modern amenities. The traditional recreations like ‘henna’, ‘sheesha’ (This is known as ‘hukka’ in India.) camel-rides, Belly-dancing and dinner are part of the package.


I gave a miss to ‘henna’ and ‘sheesha’ but when I told Avi that I wanted to ride the camel; he cracked all kinds of PJs about ‘Untawarche Shahane’ and ‘untpetang batein’.


Undeterred by his criticism, I made a bee-line towards the camels.


After cracking all these unseemly jokes, he meekly followed.


There were two camels and each camel could seat two people. I suppose by the time our turn came to climb upon the camel, the camels were tired because the camel at the back growled.


“I am fed up of carrying all these people. I quit.” said the camel to the camel-driver. The camel-driver hit the camel gently and urged him to sit down.


I climbed in the back seat and Avi shamelessly climbed in the front seat (after cracking all those silly jokes, mind you!) of the leading camel, which appeared more docile of the two.


The camel at the back again protested vociferously He was very near my rear. I looked back in apprehension, but was relieved to find that the camel’s mouth was bound by a bag and he could not bite.


There is a lot of laughter when a camel gets up from the sitting position and when he sits down again because invariably, the people’s expressions register a mix of apprehension and fun.


The term ‘ship of the desert’ is more than apt for the camel because the undulating movement of its walk reminds you of a boat being tossed on waves.


By the time we finished our camel-ride, the dance-floor was occupied by the tourists gyrating to the tunes from Arabic, Western and Indian films.


At 8:30 PM, the dance-floor was cleared of tourists, the strobe-lights dimmed, the loud music turned into soft, lilting tones of the Arabic music and the Belly-dancer in all her finery, appeared on the stage.


Please note the term ‘finery’, because what she had on could hardly be described as ‘clothes’. Essentially, she was wearing a shiny, sequined bikini with a transparent ‘ghagra’.


For the next half an hour, she entertained us by the movements of her belly and belly is not a ‘sexy’ organ, so the belly-dance is not an ‘erotic’ dance. It does titillate, but it is not vulgar.


The dinner after the belly-dance proved to me once again that I am not only weak-stomached and weak-kneed but also weak-willed creature, because I could not resist the ‘kababs’ and the ‘firni’ - both high-calorie items.


Our best thrill was yet to come. When the driver of our vehicle started the car, it jumped in the air, and then hopped, skipped and jumped merrily for half a kilometer on the sandy road. The driver explained apologetically that he had taken the car to a service-station and filled the air in the tires to ‘normal’ pressure.



Other thrills of Dubai


My other pleasant memories of Dubai consist of watching the ‘Air-show’ as out taxi sped towards various destinations.


We were lucky to be at the right place and right time to see the display of the 7 tiny aircraft flying in formation and making colorful letters or designs in the air. They were so tiny that they looked like mosquitoes when they were seen at all but they left red, blue, green gas in their wake to form different designs.


http://www.dubaiairshow.org/airshow07/site/home/index.php


Dubai air-show is held on every two years and it is a very big event.


We did not visit the exhibition as we had no plans to buy an airplane.


We would rather buy a yacht.


That reminds me. One of the most pleasant way to see the lovely Dubai creek is to take a water-taxi to Bani Yas from Bur Dubai.


This water-taxi is large, glass-paned and air-conditioned. It looked like we had chartered the boat, because we were the only two persons in it. You can get fabulous views of the creekside buildings from it.


(The 1-dirham commuter water-taxi is open, crowded and just crosses the creek.)


As we were happy with the 4-dirham water-taxi, we did not find it necessary to go on a 150-dirham ‘creek cruise’, where they also give you dinner. However the authentic Dubai food did not appeal to me. (We ate at a South Indian hotel whenever chance offered and we could escape the Conference Dinners or Banquets.)


{Yes, yes, yes I WILL write about our Shindagha dinner Avi. You need not pester me to tell the Truth and nothing but the Truth.}


They had arranged a dinner for the Speakers of the Conference at Shindagha, which is a Heritage Village in Dubai.


We sat at the two tables at the open-air café within the Shindagha castle, enjoying the balmy air, the glittering view of night-time Dubai reflected in the waters of the creek, and easy friendship among the hosts and the guests.


The dinner was good but what made it memorable was the ‘sheesha’ (a.k.a. ‘Hukka’) that they offered to all the guests after the dinner.


Avi does not smoke. He is also not adventurous enough to try it in public. He was afraid that he might choke on the smoke.


I am rather ‘bindass’ and go on the principle that everything is worth trying at least once. Moreover, in my veins ran the blood of my ‘chain-smoker’ father.


So, when Mustapha teased us, I as ready to uphold the honor of India and smoke ‘sheesha’.


Mustapha was aghast, but quickly attributed it to my Feminist image.


“Women’s Lib?” He asked.


“Yup” I replied and took a tentative ‘sip’ of the ‘sheesha’.

I think Avi knows within his heart that he has married a crazy woman. He is past being surprised by anything that I do, but just sees to it that I come to no harm.


I found the smoke quite pleasant, provided you do not suck it deep into your throat or lungs but let it out of your mouth and nostrils. It was not pure tobacco but some other herb mixed with the tobacco, which is very pleasant but soporific. The smoke also becomes mild by passing through the water-filter.


Mustapha was watching me worriedly, but I assured him,


“Mustapha, Mustapha, don’t worry Mustapha”.


At this point, Avi hastily removed the sheesha from my hands under the guise of wanting to give it a try, smoked perfunctorily for a few seconds and gave back the sheesha.


We had seen the Creek umpteen number of times, but the color of the waters of the Gulf that I had seen as our plane descended was alluring. However, the Gulf had eluded us so far. We were able to get only a glimpse of the Gulf from Madinat mall and that had increased my desire to see it fully. (Many beaches in Dubai are private and so the Gulf is mostly inaccessible.)


Taxi-drivers all over the world are a perverse lot. We had asked our taxi-driver to drive along the Jumeirah road because I thought that will give us good views of the Gulf.


For reasons best known only to him, the taxi-driver did not want to go on the Jumeirah road and merrily sped along the Zayed Road, hoping that being tourists, we would not notice.

‘This is not Jumeirah Road’ I exclaimed.


He admitted that it was not.


“Why you did not go on Jumeirah Road?” I asked heatedly.


He gave a lengthy explanation, which did not make any sense.


That incident had whetted my desire to go on the Jumeirah road and visit the Jumeirah Beach.


So we specified to the second taxi-driver that we wanted to go along the Jumeirah Road to the Jumeirah Beach.


‘How else does one go to the Jumeirah Beach without going on Jumeirah Road?’ he grumbled.


I let it pass.


“Public Beach or the paid Beach’ he asked.


“Which is better?” we asked him.


This taxi-driver was a gentleman.


‘The public beach’ he truthfully replied.


So, we went to the public ‘Tourist’ beach and enjoyed a lovely sunset over the deep blue Gulf waters.


I added one more tint of the seas to my experience.


Do you know that the color of the water of sea differs from place to place? Mediterranean is inky blue while Arabian Sea is greenish blue and the sea at Miami and Mauritius is a lovely light aquamarine.


The Gulf is deep blue but not as dark as the Mediterranean.


We watched the changing colors of the Gulf to our heart’s content.


I was well satisfied that we did everything that we wanted to do in Dubai and saw everything that we wanted to see, and came back happily to good old Mumbai.

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The 'Brills' of Dubai

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I had just started writing this blog and cut-pasted these four lines in the Word. (From Jabbarwocky, Lewis Carroll’s famous poem. Read the poem in the original, and you would be as confused as we were.

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html )

Avi, who was sitting beside me and doing something on his laptop, looked over my shoulder.

“What on earth does this mean?” He asked, totally perplexed.

I was exasperated in trying to find ANY information about buses to various destinations in Dubai on the Net and had remembered my exasperation in trying to understand the poem ‘Jabbarwocky’ by Lewis Carroll, so I had cut-pasted those lines into the Word.

I thought I would give him a better explanation of this poem than Humpty Dumpty gave to Alice, so I started :

“Oh, the ‘slithy toves’ are sleek, air-conditioned buses of the Dubai public transport system that you see ‘gyring and gimbling’ that is, going here and there, in the wabe. ‘Wabe’ means roads. Borogoves are the tourists, who are ‘mimsy’, that is, totally flummoxed and ‘mome’ is away from home and absolutely ‘lost’. ‘Raths’ are just wroth tourists and they outgrabe means they tried to guess the workings of the Dubai Bus Transport system and could not and so are ‘griping’.

This still did not make any sense to him but he understood that I was mad at the Dubai Road Transport system.

“What is ‘brilling’?

Oh, ‘brilling’ means any creating confusing situation. ‘Brill’ means confusion.

He understood this perfectly, because he was as perplexed by the Dubai Public Transport system as I was.

There are many such ‘Brills’ of Dubai, about which you do not get any information on the Net. Mind you, we were NOT seeking confidential information but legitimate info. in the public domain.

The Dubai’s bus system is good, but you do not find the bus-routes or maps or timings or where it will stop, or ANYTHING useful on the Net.

So, you have to take a taxi everywhere.

Similarly, you do not find any info. about Dubai’s water-works. I was very curious about where does the water come from for Dubai’s populace, which does need and uses plenty of clean, clear water. Looking at swimming pools, bathtubs and fountains and gardens, it is difficult to believe that Dubai is situated in a desert.

‘Desalination’ is our guess, though I could not find any supportive or contrary evidence for it.

Avi had a student who worked in the Water-works Department and even he did not know much about it.

‘Anyway, why do you want to know the source of water? Just take your tub-bath and be happy. As a tourist, you need not know more’ was Avi’s advice.

I am the sort of person, who likes to count and measure and analyze everything, including the mango-trees before eating the mangoes. (Ped ginane se matlab in Hindi)

{Generally, by the time I count the trees, the mangoes have been eaten by other people.}

However, in this kind of situation, I found the advice worth following and so did not bother more about the Transport or the Water.

But those ‘Brill’ of Dubai would always remain a mystery to me.

The ‘Grills’ of Dubai are just that. They grill all the meats without any ‘masala’ and so it tastes bland to the Indian palate. The chillies, green or red, are conspicuous by their absence and you miss them, though all they do is to bring tears to your eyes.

I would advice all Indian tourists to take ‘red, hot chilly powder’ with them in the checked-in baggage (NOT in cabin-baggage) when they go to Dubai. Of course they need not do that if they are going to stay in ‘little India’, which has plenty of Indian restaurants.

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