Dubai - A Golden Experience

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Niki and I flew Emirates from JFK to Dubai. The flight was smooth, the seats and service, excellent and the in flight entertainment, simply superb. We had ordered Hindu meals, so we fed on parathas with chicken curry and even chicken biryani. Sitting next to me, was an Italian gentleman who taught ballet at the NY city ballet. The gentleman had a flair for talking and gave me a fully guided tour of Europe. Though I should say, I didn’t really care for the smell that arose from his sea food meals. It was a 12 hour flight and I was totally entertained by my human travel channel, while Niki was glued to her movies, until we landed an hour earlier than scheduled, at around 7:15 am in Dubai International airport.

Upon clearing immigration with a surly, burkha-clad Arabic woman, I waited for my friend Varsha to pick me up. We waited 15 minutes and there was no sight of Varsha, who promised to be there half hour before the plane landed. So I bought a phone card and called Varsha who cooed into the phone, “Darling are you all packed to fly?” Shocked, I told her that I was already in the airport. I had sent her my itinery and for some reason she mistook the day I was landing in India to be the day I was landing in Dubai. She felt really bad and assured me that she would pick me up in 15 minutes.

Sure enough, in 15 minutes, Varsha came floating in a white summer dress looking fresh and very much like snow white. I asked her where her 2 dwarfs were, she had a son (4) and a daughter (8). She said that she had left them home alone sleeping. How different from the US, where you had to wake up your sleeping kids, dress them in decent clothes and buckle them in the car while they get cranky and whiny, else you could get into trouble with the law for endangering their lives!

On our drive, Varsha showed me all the landmarks of Dubai. Dubai was small, clean, filled with fancy buildings and skyscrapers and was another melting pot of different ethnicities like the US. We reached home and after settling down, she opened her fridge and showed me all the preparations she had made for my visit “tomorrow”. There was marinated fish and chicken, falafel, Lebanese salads, hummus and much more. She had every intention of impressing me with Arabic cuisine. I was touched at her thoughtfulness.

Niki was in jet lag, she fell asleep on Varsha’s couch the minute we got there. We decided not to wake up the kids, asked a desi neighbor to keep an eye on them and proceeded to go gold shopping. I thought we were going to gold souk, but instead, she took me to a few shops in Bur Dubai. The locales do not go to gold souk, only the tourists get suckered there. They showed me jazzy yellow gold upon gold, diamonds, polkis, kundans and whatever else precious that they had. I fell in love with one polki (uncut diamond) set and nearly swooned at the price. Finally, I was able to convince Varsha that I wasn’t interested in heavy pieces and so she took me to another shop that sold light weight jewels and I bought a couple of necklaces in white and yellow gold studded with diamonds and other precious stones, and could be worn with both Indian as well as western outfits.

We ate a light lunch at Varsha’s. She made us a snack of freshly made omelettes rolled into rotis and served with fresh lassi. The kids were refreshed and happy. Varsha called Lama Tours and booked a desert safari with them after a serious bargaining spree. Their SUV picked us up around 3:30 pm. Varsha asked the driver his name, it was Saleem; checked whether he was Hindustani ya Pakistani, he was a Paki. I don’t know if it was due to her constant chatter or the driver’s recklessness, he bumped his car into a Mercedes Benz driven by an Arabic lady dressed in a burkha, sporting a Prada bag and carrying an Iphone. Beneath the burkhas, Varsha told me that these women wore skimpy designer clothes and partied more than Americans. So much for the facade! They argued about whose fault it was in Arabic, called the cops and finally decided to show their middle fingers to the cops and went their individual ways. Poor Dubai cops!

It was about 30 minutes drive to a meeting point in Sharjah. All desert safari vehicles gather at this place, because the tradition is to travel together to the desert. There was about 15-30 minutes wait at this place until all vehicles arrive. Meanwhile Niki and I browsed through some souvenir shops and she bought a T-shirt for her daddy that said “Dubai” on it and had a picture of camels; and a magnet of Dubai as well.

Now the thrill began. The vehicle zoomed through, climbing Dune Mountains and driving across sand dunes in a 45 degree angle. It was solid fun. After about a 30 minute drive in the desert, all vehicles parked in a place to watch the sunset in the desert. It was an amazing experience that should be seen at least once in your lifetime - the red ball of fire melting down slowly into the expansive rich golden desert sand. The sad part was that there was debris all over that place, with plastic bottles and wrappers strewn around, thanks to tourists.

The desert safari continued and all vehicles reached a central camp-site in the middle of the desert. There were tents, low level tables and chairs, spread with colorful Arabic designs set up in the camp for people to sit and relax. There were camels outside that took us for a joy ride on their humps. After the ride, we proceeded into the big open-to-air tent, where there were appetizers cooking on the BBQ. There was shawarma, falafel and of course corn on the cob and we dove right in.

A bar was set up that served alcohol for money, but soda was free. I asked Varsha for a soda and she came back with a 7-up and said there was no soda and this was the closest she could find to a soda. Laughing, I told her that all aerated drinks in the US were called soda. There was a henna booth, where we girls got lovely henna tattoos. Projectors were set up, and photographs of us from the safari were shown. There was also a Sheesha hut where I wanted to try the Arab’s hubbly bubbly smoke. I was barefoot my entire time in the camp, because the soft desert sand felt like silk to my feet.

A gentleman approached me in the sheesha hut and asked me if I was an anglo-indian. I told him that I was a mere Indian. He asked me where I was from and when I told him that I was from Coimbatore,
his face lit up. He told me that he was an anglo-indian from Podanur, Coimbatore and he studied in Stanes school and was currently the manager in charge of the camp. This was one such moment for me to exclaim -small world! It felt really nice to meet a fellow Coimbatorean in the middle of the desert. After that encounter, he always looked out for me, gave me useful tips and found reasons to chit chat with me.

The tour brochure said - “beautiful young Arab girls will perform a belly dance”. A belly dance did take place in the center stage that was set up, of course, but instead of the “beautiful young girl” there was a “fair 35ish year old woman” with tires of flesh hanging from her belly and back. But I would have to admit that she had spunk and dragged most of the men from the audience to dance with her. I was glad that Rajesh wasn’t around to jiggle with her.

Soon after the belly dancer’s futile attempt to sway her hips and melt her tires away, dinner was served. It was a buffet, serving Arabic, Indian and Lebanese cuisine. We ate dinner quietly, gazing at the stars and enjoying the beauty of the dunes. I got to taste a few Lebanese salads like “fattouch” and “tabouleh”, which was really good. Once dinner was done, all vehicles started heading back. This time it wasn’t another adventure drive, because our tummy was full and the drivers didn’t want any incidents in their vehicles.

We reached home at 10 pm and after a nice, hot shower and more chit chatting, Varsha’s family drove us to the airport at midnight. My flight from Dubai to Cochin was at 3 am. Varsha gave me some Arabic dates and sweets to take home. We said goodbye to them, promising to visit again to roam around the beautiful malls of Dubai. I have loads of pictures as memories, but none of them beat the personal experience!

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