RTW 2019 Dubai

As I talked about the trip with the agency from which I got the tickets, I began to realize that I wasn’t going to fly straight from South Africa to Nepal, and that I needed to stop somewhere in the Middle East. I then tried to set up the trip so that I would have a long layover in one of these places, so that I could drive around or take a sightseeing tour. When the agent ran the tickets, the best choice seemed to be Dubai. I already had a seven hour layover in Johannesburg, and then a 7 1/2 hour flight to Dubai. The layover in Dubai would be another 7 1/2 hours. I checked with several travel sites to try to find a tour, but didn’t find one. However, I read about several people that had hired a taxi or other driver to drive them around Dubai, and decided that I would do that.

Dubai is back north of the equator, at 25 degrees North, 55 degrees east, and is in a time zone 4 hours ahead of London, and ten hours ahead of Texas.

The flight from Johannesburg to Dubai was on Emirates Airlines, which often is listed as one of the top airlines in the world. The female flight attendants wear a very nice uniform, with these hats. I did not take this picture. One of the first things that I noticed as the flight went on was that they were not wearing their hats, and I wondered where they were stowed.

The flight was full, and I noticed as the gate area filled up that many of the fellow travelers were dressed in full Arab dress, or in clothes that would be indicative of Muslims. This was the first time that I had gone to the Middle East. It was already my third overnight flight, and while I slept very little, I began noticing that a lot of passengers were walking down the aisles around dawn, carrying prayer rugs. They would usually end up near the rear of the plane, just behind me, locate Mecca, and pray as we were in flight.

Most of the tags and signs on the plane were in English and Arabic, and as the sun came up, we could see the ground beneath us. The meals were probably Halal, and good.

As we got close to landing, I started talking with the flight crew about how I could get out of the airport and see the sights of Dubai, and they mentioned that I should leave my bags at Left Baggage (a new word for me) so that I wouldn’t have to carry them all around, and go to the taxi stand. From there I could get drivers to take me from one site to the other, and then catch another taxi to get to the next site. Another suggestion was that I could get on the monorail and take it as far as I could, and then catch cabs. At some time, I could use an ATM to get the correct currency, (the United Arab Emirates has dirhams, with about 3.67 dirhams to an American dollar) or I could probably use American cash.

I walked an awfully long way through the Airport, got through Immigration, and then located the Left Baggage, which was near the ground transportation areas. As I got near the taxi stands, I noticed a man standing to the other side, and he asked me if I wanted a tour of Dubai. I have to admit that I was wary, but I continued to talk with him. He basically quoted me a fee that I had heard was appropriate, and said that he would drive me around for about three hours to the sites that I wanted to see. He said he was “free lance.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but I would have been way too tired to take the tour on my own, since I had not slept during the flight. This really seems like a good idea, in retrospect, and I think that the price was appropriate, because he knew where has going.

I followed him to the parking garage, and we drove out into the City.

Dubai is a very clean city, with a low crime rate, and very expensive real estate and buildings. The area around the city is essentially a desert, situated on the Persian Gulf. Petroleum has built this city, and it is indeed very impressive.

McDonalds, Tim Horton’s and other Western businesses. There was still construction going on.

There were many mosques, but many of them were dwarfed by the big buildings.

A harbor area, with huge boats and modern architecture.

We drove on the Palm Jumeirah, or the first of the artificial islands that have been built. While you are on the island, you don’t realize exactly how it is set up, but I have included a picture from the Internet to show the orientation of the island. The Atlantis Hotel shows up in a couple of my pictures, which is at the end of the tunnel and the spine road that goes to the sea wall.

I don’t know whether this was a scenic helicopter flight, or just a mode of transportation for some of the wealthy investors/residents of Dubai.

We drove along the road from which we could see the Persian Gulf, which connects to the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz. From there you could see what I call the Sail Hotel, or the Burj Al Arab. You can also see downtown and the Burj Khalifa, unless I covered it up.

From a closer view of the Sail Hotel, we went to see the ski slope in the Mall of the Emirates.

I had heard of the indoor ski area, and in fact someone had approached the City that I worked for about putting one there, but it never got off the ground.

As you can see in the pictures, most of the people dressed in Western clothes, but there were many that observed the more conservative Muslim dress, both men and women. In the mall, I saw a woman nursing her baby, and while she was covered from head to toe in her dress and veils, she was exposed elsewhere. I didn’t get a picture of that, and did not feel that it was appropriate to take pictures of people from another culture without permission.

As you can tell, one of the primary things I wanted to see in Dubai was the Burj Khalifa, or the world’s highest building, at 828 meters. After leaving the Mall of the Emirates, we made our way over there. Below, a hop on hop off bus, like I took in Spain and in Auckland.

The Burj Khalifa was near another major mall, and during this part of my tour we tried to get the agreed to fee from an ATM. I was not successful, however, and had to pull out even more emergency cash in order to pay my driver/tour guide. This was my guide near the Apple sign, and as you can see, there were still holiday items in the mall, in the middle of January. Finally, there was an aquarium and a large water sculpture in the mall.

On the way back, the driver asked which airline I was flying, and told me that while Terminal 1 and 3 were next to each other in the Airport, Terminal 2 was at least a 20 minute drive away, across the runways from the other terminals. There was a free shuttle bus that went there, but it was some distance from the terminal. Sure enough, my flight was on an Emirates subsidiary, and I had to retrieve my bag and make that trip to Terminal 2 for my flight to Kathmandu. There was a long line for bag drop, which I didn’t end up needing to be in, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

We took off with another few views of Dubai, and all of the ships approaching the harbor. The first country on the other side of the Persian Gulf was Iran, and then we flew over Pakistan and India before arriving in Kathmandu, in Nepal.