Friday, January 2, 2009

Dune bashing & belly dancing







Around Dubai in three days with family was fun, but lemme not exaggerate by calling it ultimate fun.
The first experience was the Desert Safari.
We were supposed to have been picked up at 3pm (Sharp, mind the word), but as a Tunisian family arrived late, the Land Cruiser left Sharjah City Centre only at 4pm. The charge was Dhs150 ($1 equals Dhs3.67).
The vehicle was wonderful and the Indian driver (Incidentally from Mumbai, the city I love) was smart. Hence the bumpy, bouncy dune bashing experience turned out to be enjoyable. Up and down went the cruiser while sand splashed all around the vehicle. Well, it went on for nearly 20 minutes.
We were told there was a free camel ride. Believe me, the animal was forced to sit and rise every 5 minutes and cover a distance of hardly a few feet. The creature glanced at me as if warning “Do you want to try, you villain?” Naturally, I opted out.
There were traditional costumes with which we could take photographs. Again I managed to resist the temptation to try it out because it looked overused by people.
We stopped to watch the beautiful sunset before reaching our camp site. The hot tea proved to be a cup that cheers and my daughters did manage to try out a henna design on hand.
I sheepishly waited for a stunning belly dancer to arrive. And arrive she did. Unfortunately, she did not turn out to have the looks of Pamela Anderson or Madonna or Aishwarya Rai. The poor old lady tried to cheer up the crowd, and in the ten minutes she performed her show, she made more people dance to her tune than dance herself.
Even before I could say hi to her, she had disappeared among the crowds.
In less then six hours, we were back in Sharjah where we had started.
Oh well, I had forgotten to mention that we did enjoy a wonderful dinner, part of the package.
Over to another experience tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment