Nancy had a professional meeting and I was able to accompany her as her entourage. We were there for 5 days leaving at 1:00AM(!) Thursday morning the 9th and returning Monday the 14th.
Dubai is one of the 7 states that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the west side of the Persian Gulf next to Saudi Arabia. The emirates were originally independent kingdoms that merged together in the 70s to form the UAE.
As most of the emirates, Dubai is well endowed with oil residing on a strip of coastline along the Gulf. Twenty kilometers in off the coast the terrain is all hot dry desert. The city is very linear with the main roads running north and south. Along this strip the city has mushroomed into a long parade of amazing buildings, parks, malls and tourist sites. The old city of Dubai is near the coast and along the Dubai Creek. Dubai was originally a trading port and is dotted with souks. Souks are market areas that tend to sell the same goods. There are souks for gold, jewellery, carpets, spices and our goods. They are open-air markets were haggling for a price is common between shoppers and merchants. We spent our first afternoon in the souks in the +100 degree sun.
Cars (big, expensive cars) are one of the major ways people get around in Dubai due to its long, spread-out nature. There is a brand new elevated Metro system that has just opened during the past year or two and is still unfinished. Like almost everything is Dubai it is new, shiny, comfortable and efficient to move around town. In spite of this cars still dominate the landscape and they along with electric plants are causing a significant problem with smog and haze. Add to that 100+ degree weather and you find it’s hard to see even moderately spaced buildings in the distance due to thick smog. Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world (orders of magnitude higher than the Empire State Building in the US and the smog can be so thick that it’s sometimes hard to see the top.
Note to photographers: If you take a look at my outdoor shots you’re not going to see as much smog as I’ve described above. I used polarizing filters on my lenses which eliminates a good bit of the haze and glare off of the smog. If you’ve never been here and are planning to come a polarizer is a must.
Dubai also boasts some of the most interesting modern architecture in the world. High rise buildings of steel, stone, chrome and glass, of every imaginable shape, are everywhere. Most have been built in the last 10-15 years and many within the last 5 years. It’s as if a crop of mushrooms sprouted instantly along the landscape. And, the building has not stopped even during the economic recession the rest of the world has endured lately. There are huge sky-scraping cranes everywhere and land being be staked out for future development.
Another thing that Dubai boasts are incredibly large multi-level shopping malls built of the most exotic materials. The three most well-known malls are the Dubai Mall, the Emirates Mall and the Iban Battutu Mall among many others. The Dubai Mall was one of the original malls built about 15 years ago and sports an indoor ski slope including a chair lift. Shoppers can move from the 100+ degree heat outside to below freezing ski slope within a matter of minutes. Just outside the mall is the world’s largest choreographed fountain that puts on incredible shows of water spouts synched to music in the evening every half hour. One night we sat by the fountain and enjoyed the show while eating dinner outside at a Tai restaurant.
While neither Nancy nor I are big fans of malls (you find the same shops and stores in any mall in the US) the shear size and architecture make it worth the trip even if you don’t buy anything.
One day I went on a desert safari for a morning about an hour outside of town. It wasn’t so much a safari as a NASCAR race up and over some very large sand dunes going as fast as our driver could push our 4 wheel drive Rover. It sported an interior roll bar which once I thought we’d have to use when the car almost went over on its side. It did provide a good firm handhold as we rocked and rolled. We were told to wear our seat belts even in the back seats. If we hadn’t our heads would have banged on the roof more than once. We ended up on the tallest dune in the area and coming down you felt more like you were in a F-16 banking and turning along the dunes rather than a Land Rover. The lady next to me got (sea-) sick as we descended.
The other thing I got to do was dune bashing on a four wheel all-terrain vehicle – basically a 4 wheeled, all drive motorcycle. I have to admit it was a lot of fun. I quickly learned about a technique for navigating the dunes from our driver. As you ascend particularly steep dunes you can’t see over their crests and so you don’t know if the other side slopes down gently or drops off as a shear cliff. To avoid a catastrophe, at the instant you’re ready to go over the crest you swing your bike so that it’s running parallel with the crest. If the other side slopes down you turn 90 degrees down the hill. If the other side drops off to nothing you turn 90 degree in the other direction and motor down the slope you just came up. As I mentioned this was the way our driver attacked the dunes in our F-16.
In the US this kind of dirt biking in the western deserts tears up the terrain and vegetation and there’s an on-going argument between recreation enthusiasts and conservationists. I have to admit this was on my mind when I was asked if as I wanted to go dune bashing until I realized once you get out to this desert there isn’t any vegetation to speak of and the sand dunes are constantly being formed and reshaped by high winds. I figured out I wasn’t doing any more harm to the ecology that nature wasn’t already doing on a daily basis. So, I rationalized (and had a lot of fun) my dune experience was justified – it was.
You come away from Dubai with some words or phrases like: over-the-top, high-end, opulence, opulent opulence, ostentatious, ostentatious opulence and it dawns on you that money is no issue here. And, while I enjoyed my stay for a few days since I’m not a mall shopper, an oil tycoon or high-end businessman I probably won’t be returning any time soon although once was very interesting.
If you’re interested, I’ve put together several slideshows of images from Dubai. One features the spectacular architecture throughout the city. The easiest way to see the show is to click on this link: http://vimeo.com/42485294.
A second is a show from shots of the Dubai Mall Fountain at night. The easiest way to see this show is to click on this link: http://vimeo.com/42256112.
Since the malls are like nothing I’ve ever seen before there is a show made up of images from the Dubai and Iban Battutu Malls. The easiest way to see this show is to click on this link: http://vimeo.com/42387903.
Finally, I put together a short dune bashing show. The easiest way to see this show is to click on this link: http://vimeo.com/42404474
I’ve also posted the shows on my Web site: http://www.andrewmcdonoughphotography.com/ then click on the “RUSSIA” link. The filenames are: buildings_dubai.exe, dubai_mall_fountain.exe, dubai_malls.exe and dune_bashing.exe
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