Thomas Bywater ditches the air-conditioning for instant Araby on a protracted layover in Dubai.
Dubai is probably the most insecure town in the world.
No sooner had their Saudi neighbors introduced plans for a Jeddah tower taller than Dubai’s Burj Khalif than it became visible as an affront. “Don’t worry,” said my taxi motive force, as plenty for his assurance as mine. “We’ve started constructing every other.”
True to his word, we surpassed a big web page near Dubai Creek, earmarked to develop the “new tallest building in the international” come 2020.
After that, one assumes the Burj will blend into the skyline of white elephants as just the modern, spikiest addition.
Even the police have such an aching want for validation to park sports vehicles on the pavement conspicuously.
Walking into Burj al Arab—rumored to be the “international’s only seven megastar hotel” constructed entirely out of superlatives—I bypass a Bentley, Audi, and Beamer, all in green police livery, parked out front.
“Calm down, Dubai!” It’s just a bit hard.
As the country’s biggest urban town, this is just forty-seven years old; you can appreciate where it comes from. It’s now not yet had the time to increase the guarded subtlety of other boltholes for the
ultra-rich.
Unlike the contented, beige towns lining Lichtenstein and the Swiss Alps, the Emirati playground has something to show. Dubai uses its newfound megabucks to provide the skyline, deploy air con in bus stops, and construct fashion designer islands in the Gulf. It was quickly placed on one hell of a display for tourists.
That is exactly why it has become a popular layover vacation spot for Kiwi travelers flying via.
That and the world-elegance worldwide airport — the third largest with the aid of several passengers carried.
The city offers a wow factor, temples to shopping, and guy-made spectacles to preserve gobs smacked and heads spinning for at least 12 of your 24-hour layover. But at some unspecified time in the future, one unearths one’s interest waning as a type of air-conditioned cabin fever sets in.
You start to believe what the place seemed like a century ago — not even 30 years ago. Carried over the dunes to the lilting melodies of Scheherazade, you can experience the pull of the wilderness.
There are numerous ways for vacationers to see the sands. For people with a limited window of time who want to see other aspects of the Gulf nation, Arabian Adventures runs an evening Desert Safari—a must for all people making an overnight stay at Dubai International Airport.
At 3 p.m., our motive force arrived at the hotel in a glistening four-wheel drive. Dubai is a long way, but soon, we were heading south and leaving the skyline behind.
Conservation Reserve tires had been deflated at the edge of the Dubai barren region, and we joined a convoy of different motors heading out over the sand. This power in itself justifies the journey.
Within minutes, we were cruising over the dunes. The 30 or so motors disappeared into the trenches among sandbanks, emerging and weaving over the crests.
Each time the vehicle climbed to the pinnacle, it provided a new attitude over the ocean of dunes overlaying a place on the Manukau Harbor scale.
Perhaps “sailing” paints too swish a photograph of the adventure, but it changed into a threat to living out one’s Indiana Jones fantasies.
The power was both exhilarating and uncomfortable. Eventually, we arrived at a fake Bedouin camp, a form of Disneyland for the barren region.
It is at this theme park inside the reserve that the tour fits in most of the sports. In six and a half hours, we packed in a falconry demonstration, camel rides, sandboarding, henna painting, shisha pipes, a buffet dinner, big-name staring at, and stomach dancing. How do you get through a lot in a sort of short time? With notable trouble. The Desert Safari does a lot of stuff, but now it does not have much intensity, possibly the proper quantity for a stopover.
The timetable it ran to was tighter than a proverbial camel passing through the eye of a needle.
The enterprise drives a convoy of vacationers to the desert seven days a week, and the event is a well-worn rigueur. For the guides, it has an impact. It could be any of 1001 Arabian nights.
They are diligent hosts; however, you can’t help but notice that this semi-everlasting campsite, with outfitted toilets and artfully positioned floodlights on the nearby dunes, is greater for the tourists’ gain than any cultural conservation.
The Araby of creativeness — the meals and amusement are greater an Aladdin and his Lamp panto than a National Geographic expo — but that’s first-class. Things appear to be set and regimented in order; the lighting is turned off for the five minutes allocated “stargazing” revel, after which it is domestic.
You leave the barren region, thinking, “Where are the real Bedouins?” And the answer is again within the at-ease, urban settings we left to come in this tour.
In our manual, Mohammed stated that fewer Bedouins are residing outside now than ever. On the way out of the park, we skip rows of permanent housing where the nomads of yesterday now live. The Bedouins are keen to hold traditions alive. However, the reasons and incentives to preserve the wayfaring barren region’s way of life are no longer there. They might be mild a fireplace and camp out overnight, but likely no greater than your common Kiwi does.
