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.
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