The Half Time Show: Dubai - The Desert Safari

The Street outside my hotel in Dubai

I arrived at my hotel in Dubai at 3:30am, after flight delays, border processing and the long chauffeured drive to the hotel. Breaks fast stopped being served at 10am, so I had a limited window for sleep.

Mall of the Emirates

After breakfast the next morning, I wandered over to the Mall of the Emirates, which was next door. From the outside, the Mall is very uninspiring. Indeed, it's hard to find the pedestrian entry (in the carpark, as it happens). Once you are in the mall though, it's a shopping wonderland. The Mall of the Emirates is like a high-end Westfield and largely built on the same lines, only really big!
I was looking for a mobile phone operator particularly and after asking for directions wandered down to find this place, which turns out to be next door to the world's only air-conditioned ski slope! I'd heard about this place, of course, but seeing it is still gob-smacking. I am so conflicted about the existence of such a place. It's a tribute to humanity's engineering capabilities that we can build such a structure and manipulate an enclosed environment so cleverly, but it's also a colossal use of resources and drain on the environment driven only for the reason: "because we can".

The ski slope from the outside

After acquiring a SIM card for my phone, I had a coffee and a walk around while waiting for it to activate. After a while I discovered that it wasn't working as expected, and went back to get the problem resolved. Then I wandered around again! I did some reconnoitering of prices. In short, some things are cheap compared to Australia (food and books, for example), but most brand name items (jeans and shoes, for example) are only cheaper because one pays no tax here (i.e. about 10% cheaper than Aus). I bought a book (second in the Song of Fire and Ice series, as I am consuming the first one very quickly) but couldn't see any other bargains to have. I had to do more research on electronics (cameras, in particular) as I didn't have a ready idea of their prices.

Preparing for soft sand driving

After a short snooze in the afternoon, I was collected from my hotel in a 4x4 with five other people. There was a Japanese couple (seated in the back two seats), a Spanish family, daughter, mother, and I think granddad, in the middle-back seats and me and the Pakistani driver in the front. We drove on freeways, and then a highway for about 90mins to get to a desert conservation area where the night's activities would take place along with probably 20 other similarly loaded 4x4s. There was a brief stop while the drivers let the air out of the tires for the forthcoming soft-sand driving, and we all headed off to the first stop.
The first stop was a falconry demonstration where a very handsome German man showed us his beautiful falcon in action. It is always extraordinary to see these birds of prey at work. They are quite beautiful close-up too.

The star pre-show

Demonstration

The Safari in train
(note rain on windscreen)

As we were leaving the falconry demonstration, it started to rain lightly. This rain, which was to last for the next 90mins or so but never amount to much, was the second rain in a week. The first rain storm had been the first rain in Dubai for two years! The next bit of the evening was the 'safari', a long line of 4x4s driving up and down over sand dunes, usually deliberately trying to make a roller coaster event of it. There were several heart-stopping moments cresting steep sand dunes to plunge down the other side. Especially heart-stopping when I didn't think that the driver had left enough distance to the car in front if t failed to make the dune. Of course, it was all quite safe and much less scary because there you could periodically see the snake of cars around you. I saw one truck pull over with a flat tire (torn off the rim because not enough inflation, I think), and two cars stop at different times to let passengers get out to throw up! I was definitely feeling for our Japanese couple at this time.
We stopped after a while for the main photo opportunity--sundown. It was still raining lightly at this time and there was some concern that the second half of our safari might be cancelled as the camp at which the dinner was served wouldn't cope with rain. I took a huge number of photos of the sun going down, trying not to miss the moment because of clouds, and then trying to get the best light effect across the clouds. Here is a small sample of the photos I took.

Sunset in the Dubai Desert

After sunset, we were driven in safari and more dune-hopping to a camp made up like a Bedouin camp that served us dinner from a series of buffets and offered camel rides, photo opportunities in Arabic dress and a belly-dancing display. I passed the time talking with an Irish couple who were honeymooning. The bulk of their honeymoon was to be on the Maldives, but Dubai was a jolly on the way through.