Dubai – In Transit

As the aircraft starts its final descent to Dubai and the sun has gone down for the day, the first thing that you see outside the window is a massive yellow line snaking around the terrain below. As the aircraft tilts a bit to maneuver a turn you can see more such ‘snakes’. At this point of time, without the aid of google maps, I am assuming that these must be the lights along the highway which stretches out of Dubai in different directions. From the top it looks beautiful. And ‘street light’ on the highway. Well.. rich country!

The second ‘aha’ moment on this brief transit stop at Dubai came on entering the lift (elevator if you like to call it) at the airport. These were perhaps the largest lifts I have seen.  I think it could easily pack in 50 people. May be more if you pack it like we do in India. The descent is also beautiful – along the water falling along a wall – at approximately the same speed as the lift.

The third amazing thing for me was to see a person in the proper ‘Arab dress’ for the first time. By the Arab dress I mean the flowing white robe with a black round band/ring on the head. When we were children, there used to be a certain fascination with this headgear. I remember we used to have a round ring like thing which used to hold a part of a cloth stretched so that some embroidery could be done on it and we used to imitate the Arab dress using that.

The final thing worth mentioning was the length of the corridor of the hotel – The Millennium Airport hotel where the few hours of night were spent. I haven’t seen such a long corridor in any hotel till now. If you are in a habit of talking a walk after your dinner, you just need to take the room at the end of the corridor (incidentally ours was at the end of it!!)