The blog post of Dubai gives a description of how to go from Sharjah to Dubai, specifically Gold souk and the surrounding heritage places.

A gallery has been uploaded with a larger set of images to get a visual feel of how the area looks like and its neighboring heritage places which have been kept intact in the midst of city with all the lavish lifestyle and skyscrapers.

This gallery is also an experiment to see how the new gallery which has been integrated looks like and has the user experience for browsing the photos.

Feedback is welcome on that.

Click on the image below to visit the gallery link.

My second week in UAE was nearing end and it was our second visit to the city of Dubai. This time it was just me and my mother exploring the local transport service.

The local transport is extremely comfortable with Mercedes branded buses. This was my first visit to Dubai in the inter emirate local transport buses accompanied by my mother. We planned of visiting the world famous Gold Souk and the heritage places around it.

The local bus route can be found out at http://www.rta.ae/wpsv5/wps/portal/bus_time_table?SwitchToLatestLocale=true . The gold souk is a very popular and major bus station from where you can reach at any destination. We started our journey with the bus station in Sharjah near Rola. The link mentioned above is also the government website which gives correct and reliable data. The buses are on time and follow a schedule which is very good and helps in finer planning of the journey.

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I had settled down in Sharjah at home and it were a few days past my arrival in the city. Friday is the weekend and people work on Saturday and Sunday. Dec 26, 2008 being a Friday, we planned to head out and explore the region called as Hatta.

Hatta is famous for the heritage village which is preserved in that region. Apart from the heritage value, the region probably once boasted of wide flowing river and its remains can be seen in the terrain. The landscape also reveals it with scales on water shaved rock.

It was a conducted tour from Arabian Desert Safari where my parents and me were driven around 130 km from our home taking about an hour to reach starting at 8 am. The Land Cruiser from Toyota is a powerful 4 wheel drive vehicle which is apt for maneuvering in such a rugged terrain.

The road is beautiful and driving is a pleasure. Once off road to the Hatta heritage region, the up and down landscape calls for a heavy duty vehicle with good shock absorbing technique. There were only 2 more co-passengers from Holland.

I had forgotten all my memory cards in India and hence had to look at the first stop market to buy some memory for my thirsty camera. Luckily there was a small local market which seemed to be meant for tourists like me and I was able to buy SD cards at quite high price.

Once we started back to stop only in the region where once river More about Hatta