The real Dubai and desert overnight

The real Dubai

After a simple of breakfast of items from the supermarket we took the hotel shuttle to Deira for the Gold Souk. The traffic was a shocker, just like yesterday evening.

It was already hot when we wandered around, despite in largely sheltered alleys. The gold necklaces and adornments of various types were just amazing. All the items are rich in reddish-yellow golden colour that Asians like, not the paler less-pure gold that westerners go for.  To me, this was the real Dubai rather than the fancy glitzy modern malls and high-rises.

Since we were only window-shopping as far was gold was concerned, we continued to explore other areas for other items. Kim was considering a watch and a cellphone.

Despite snacking on some samosas, we needed some lunch. It was somewhat precautionary to eat as we didn’t know when we could eat on our late afternoon tour that will take us into the evening.

We enjoyed two pieces of Indian-style fried chicken on biryani with yoghurt, salad, rasam and dhall. It was really did hit the spot for us.

Overnight in the desert

We took the shuttle back to our hotel in time for our 1500 check-out and relaxed in the lobby till 1630 when collected by Bobby our tour driver. He is a Bengali from Calcutta and had been working in Dubai for 25 years already. We had booked an overnight safari called “1001 Arabian Stars”.

We drove out of the city and stopped at a petrol station to deflate our tyres in preparation for driving in the sand dunes. We met up with seven other Land Cruisers from our tour company, Orient Tours.

Bobby took us up and down the dunes, some of which seemed pretty deep. We also took time out to look at other vehicles negotiating the same dunes. That’s when I realised they look worse than they actually are. One vehicle did get stuck and the other drivers’ expertise was evident in the way they handled the “rescue”.

Bobby swears by the Land Cruiser. Nothing comes close to its ability to handle the local terrain here except the Nissan Patrol. He designs rally and safari routes and does test drives for Toyota. He is also a driver for travel and documentary programs.

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We stopped at a camel farm before continuing to our overnight camp. At the camp, there were opportunities for us to try camel riding and sand skiing. We were also treated to shisha (water pipe), Arabic coffee and dates.

This was followed by a BBQ dinner with salads. A belly dancer provided us with entertainment afterwards with a somewhat distant bonfire on a nearby dune. I suppose they wanted to create ambience without heat.

After dinner, the staff set us up for our night under the stars. Those who had booked as a daytrip were taken home while a few others were taken to sleeping spots nearby. The pillows that were given were hard and extremely heavy. In fact, they are rather difficult to move by one hand. We learnt that the weight means that they are not easily shifted by the wind, eg. in the lead-up to a sandstorm.

As we lay looking up at the night sky, it looked brighter than we had expected. This was due to the small particles of sand in the air that reflect a little light. Being such an air hub, there were many planes zooming around. And we could hear the light roar of traffic from the motorway that links Dubai to Sharjah.