The Dubai shopping festival was setting in and was the second day after inauguration. I had extended my stay to accommodate the luxurious experience of shopping fiesta of Dubai. It was my last outing from Sharjah as I was returning back the same weekend. The shopping festival is also a good time to find deals on almost every product on display.

It was a Friday and the weekly holiday for my father as well. He planned to stay home and take rest from the past hectic week and we started a little late in morning. We headed directly to the Dubai Festival city which is supposed to be the heart of all shopping bonanza.

During the shopping festival time, all the city outlets participate in some way or the other but this is the central place for rippling out any effect to the city. It is a permanent shopping arena with multiple brands present under one roof. The only difference at festival time is that the deals kick in and the number of people visiting increases manifold.

As any other shopping area, it was huge with multi-level floor facility and lavishly decorated. The economic slowdown seemed to have had an impact on the buying power of people. There were lot of window shopping being done but the number of serious buyers was less. The food court on the top floor was busting with families on a picnic event. A good time and place for the entire family to enjoy the experience.

The festival city has a small artificially created stream with Abra ride. Abra is a small boat used for transportation and was mostly used in Dubai creek to travel passenger from either sides. Here it was more of a tourist attraction and children to enjoy. I felt it was an extremely novel idea to have a boat ride in a mall and relate it to the history of that region.

It was my first experience at an IKEA outlet which is quite famous in west and was impressive with the things on offer. After just looking at the different sections in ikea we headed for Columbia outdoor gear shop as I am keen to see such items. I tried a temperature resistant rough shoes and were on a good deal. I purchased it to try it out on my future snow expeditions. The shoe is marked with an astonishing -32 degree Celsius resistance.

The festival city is next to Dubai creek and outside the shopping area there was a setup for live band and performances. We could see private luxurious yachts parked in the creek area. It was a beautiful view with sun setting down behind the yachts.

After taking some photos we came out of the festival city area to find an ACE outlet across the road. I had no second thoughts in going straight inside and ventured for a long time in there.

This was the end of my experience of Dubai Shopping Festival 2009 and the trip to Dubai. The weekend was right close to catch my flight back home. I am still waiting for an opportunity to inaugurate my Columbia gear.

This is my last post from the series of visiting Dubai. It were a memorable 4 weeks wherein I tried many things for the first time in my life, like snorkeling, desert safari, camel ride and many others. A must visit place and I strongly recommend that if you get an opportunity, please do visit it, If you need any extended information which I might have missed in my travelogues, fee free to contact me.

The only photo in the post is the one I am referring to outside the Dubai Festival city overlooking the parking bay for private yachts. In the city skyline you can see the world’s tallest tower, Burj Dubai, emirates tower and many others located on the Sheikh Zayad road.

An engineer by profession and an avid traveler by choice! A photographer by passion!

I have been roaming many different parts of India and UAE in life. The galleries have been posted after my visits but they seem to be deep embedded in the blogs. I have created an index for all these travel galleries which should help in easier navigation for all visitors to my blog.

From the heritage ruins of Hampi to the glittering cityscape of Dubai all have been linked to this index which can be accessed from the link below.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE GALLERY INDEX

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.

We boarded the double deck bus at Jubil bus station and got 2 seats on upper deck right above the driver for maximum view. This was a first time experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The journey took about 45 minutes for us to reach the Gold Souk. The word ’souk’ in Arabic means ‘market’. It is a very old trading place which has become a shopper’s paradise and also a heritage place. We went inside and I was just amazed to see the amount of gold which was on display in the shops. My mum had been here earlier and she was used to so much yellow metal around.

The good thing is that the souk has benches where people can sit as well. Apart from this being a market, it was also a tourist place and people were enjoying that. Photographers were indulging in street photography and I also got some good shots. My mother ended up buying some jewelry for herself as well.

Then we thought of visiting the heritage places before returning home. This was such a place where one could easily spend the entire day. The gold souk is on famous Dubai Creek and we had to cross it to reach the heritage sites. The underwater pedestrian subway is present which I think was quite innovative and we used it to cross the creek.
After exiting the tunnel and few meters away was the Diving Village. This place showed the village where diving people used to stay and how they indulged in diving for finding pearls. The part of the village has been kept intact surrounded by lavish and luxurious skyscrapers.

The other location is heritage village which showed the way a village looked like with places for community activities, their individual huts and other daily routine activities related places. Also beautiful to see was the architecture of houses and huts which ensured that even in cases of extreme heat and storms, the houses remained cool without the modern day facilities of ACs and desert coolers. The technique used to cool the house was Wind tunnels at particular angle and geometry of window opening which allowed the cold air to enter house.

After the visit to heritage village we went ahead to Sheikh Saeed’s house who was the then ruler of Dubai. It has now been converted into a museum cum exhibition structure. All these heritage sites are on the creek side and offer a good view of the city. Once we had visited all these places, we planned to return back before father arrives. We caught the bus back to Sharjah and we back home in just over an hour.

The trip to Hatta was a very traditional, unlike city environment. The photos in an earlier post of the trip easily illustrate that fact without any contention.

The city of Dubai and around is known more for the man made structures and skylines. The next day on Dec 27, 2008 we planned to explore the City Center of Sharjah. My father leaves home around 7:30 in mornings for office coming back around 6 pm. This gave my mother and me a good amount of time to explore the places near our home.

We had a heavy breakfast and I looked at google maps to find the place where I intended to go and how to reach there. Our home was near the national paints office on Emirates road. This was a very prominent junction where all taxis come by and the bus service is also quite good.

The road to City Center was dead straight about 5-6 km from our home and then a left turn about 500 meters would lead us to our destination.

We wore comfortable shoes and a heavy breakfast set the tone for an exciting day ahead with lots of fun. The stop of bus route number 14 was right behind our house and we boarded the bus. I was quite surprised to see the Vovlo luxurious low level buses plying as local transport vehicles. The fare was AED 3.5 per person.

We enquired from the driver cum conductor as to where we should get down to reach City Center. He asked us to get seated behind him on the vacant 2 seats and he will assist us to the right bus stop to disembark from the bus.

The culture is quite different in the Arab world, where women are treated his highest of respect. A lot of care and affection is showered on females. First the number of local Arab women seen on such local transport or walking on streets is a rare sight. If they happen to come our they enjoy the respect which I really liked. The advantage I also experienced was incase there is only one seat vacant for my mother to sit, the person sitting on the adjacent seat would get up and offer the seat so that I can seat beside my mom. It is a luxury enjoyed by the companion to a female member.

The bus was driving on the King Faisal Street and we got down just before a massive roundabout which was 4 lanes all throughout and the vehicles were easily driving at speeds of 70 miles an hour. We crossed the road and asked for further assistance about directions. In another 10 minutes we were on the entrance of Sharjah City Center. It is located on Al Wahda Street.

It was a kind of any other mall in town with various branded showrooms offering goods. We started venturing out in all directions to see the different brands and goods on sale. I was mostly interested in looking out for photography equipments and other electronic gadgets. The prices were not any different as being offered in India. I was under the impression that they might be cheaper as compared to the prices in India.
It was also the first time my mom was going without my father. The experience of traveling on a local transport bus with uncertain route to the destination was exciting stuff for both of us.

The last destination of the journey was to a departmental shop named Carrefour. It offers a huge variety of stuff from daily used items to all kinds of camping gear. It was a reasonably priced shop as compared to some others we had just seen where a Levis jeans was costing some $150 upwards. This shop was quite common is all the malls and offered such huge variety across all its branches.

I was looking for a high capacity SD card for my camera and I found one at a competitive price here. Apart from that I needed an Ethernet cable to log onto the internet. After exploring the shop more I got super excited on seeing complete camping gear up on sale. It was one thing I always wanted to acquire. I just resisted the temptation and thought of coming back during the last days before my departure to gauge my luggage limits.

We had been roaming for nearly 3 hours  and was about time for lunch. We figured out a food lounge where multi cuisine  food was on offer and we hogged on our staple Indian food of Dal and curry.  We sat there for quite some time to relax our paining legs and see the surrounding people who seemed like belonging to different nationalities.

It was nearly 4 hours for us and we decide to head back home. Since we had some shopping bags with us, we caught hold of a taxi and drove back which was about AED 20. The taxis like any other country are only Toyota vehicles which was a joy ride back home.

Stay tuned in for more of my adventures in Gulf over the next few weeks.

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 flow was existent. We had to walk in that region and see some really deep holes surrounded by rocks where water was still present. It seemed like river bed with rounded gravel stones and other natural items familiar around river bed.

We spent an hour admiring the beauty of the place and assimilating the fact that a river once existed in the hot desert area.

Nearby is a preserved heritage village of Hatta which we could not visit due to limited timings on Friday days. On other weekdays, the timings are long for tourists to visit them.

The last part of the tour was a lunch at Hatta heritage hotel. It was a five star luxuriously made hotel in the midst of desert. Once we entered the hotel compound, the green surroundings and the landscape maintained was very nice. I am sure it would take a lot of effort and cost huge to maintain such a property in desert climate.

We sat by the poolside for lunch had a gala time enjoying food and surroundings. It seemed like a good tourist attraction as we could see people from multiple countries enjoying themselves. It is situated right on the highway and adds to the visibility of hotel. We saw many super bikes like CBR, Harley, Hondas parked in the parking bay which seemed to belong to road trip bikers.

This was the end of our tour to Hatta and we zoomed back 100 km reaching home in no time. On our way back we could see the sun setting down and people setting up desert camps for a family outing.

Click on the above image to see them in larger perspective. This is the beauty of lightbox affect in action.

Ratings and Recommendations: People with following interests will have a good time at heritage Hatta.

• Landscape
• Terrain
• Heritage

Rating: 4/10

The Christmas of 2008 and the new year of 2009 was a memorable one as it was celebrated in the magnificent city of Dubai.

UAE is a federation of 7 emirate states and Dubai is one such and famed emirate. The complete list of 7 emirates is namely, Ras al-Khaimah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Fujairah,Ajman,Umm al-Quwain.

The capital of UAE is Abu Dhabi. The governance is defined with the king of Abu Dhabi as the President of UAE. The ruler and king of Dubai is the Vice President and Prime Minister. Beyond that I have little knowledge about the governance except the fact that it is quite strict and enforcement is very well done.

Dare not cross the law or you are done for life!

My trip materialized as my father was on a project in Dubai for about 9 months. The trip timing was also perfect from the weather perspective as the temperature was in the range of around 25-30 degree centigrade. I have heard that the temperature in months of June, July crosses 50 C making the outside weather a furnace.

The land is a dream place for many as people from all over the world come and work here. The city has grown phenomenally over the past decade. It has produced some engineering marvels like Palm Jumeirah and many more in the pipeline which has changed the map of world.

I was on a vacation to this dreamland for 3 weeks and trust me I had a great time. It is an excellent place for tourists and just have fun. My stay of 3 weeks also included witnessing 1 week of the lavish Dubai Shopping Festival.

All the places which I went while my stay in Sharjah were a day’s trip. From the visits, I did not find any necessity to stay overnight at any place. My recommendation would be to plan all the places as a day trip only. You can plan to leave early mornings and get back by night.

In the next few series of posts I will walk you through the different places I went which should help you in planning your journey.

Before I close, the currency of UAE is AED, Arab Emirate Dirham. Also popularly known as Dirham with a high side rough conversion figure of 3 AED = 1 USD.