First trip to India after coming to US is always exciting! And the excitement doubles when you plan to stopover in other country for a short vacation!
It was November 2011, our parents were here with whom we spent most memorable months of the year! Numerous local picnics, weekend parties, visit to Hawaii and much-much more! We decided to go to India for a month with them and scheduled a stopover in Dubai, UAE!
Weather was just fine and we were excited to explore one of the most talked cities. We landed late evening and Dubai treated us with amazing 'Indian Thali' for dinner; much needed after 16hours of flight food! Here we stayed at Holiday Inn Express, you can never go wrong with this hotel chain around the world!
Dubai is one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. It is rather like an independent city-state and is the most modern emirate in the UAE.
Day one we planned to visit the beach in the morning then drive the city in noon followed by Desert Safari in the evening.
ready to explore the city
Skyline from the beach
Jumeirah Mosque
Burj Al Arab
one of my favorite pic
Beautiful architecture of Palm Jumeirah! loved the Villas there!
gateway to Atlantis, The Palm
Undersea Tunnel Road
one of the beautiful Villas at Palms
Dubai has a rich collection of buildings with various architectural styles
Apart from Palm Jumeirah and other traditional architectures, rest all was little too modern for me. For me it was more like out of the video games!
After a day long exploring the city, we planned to spend our evening with famous Desert Safari. This is one experience you can't miss when in Dubai. We chose Evening Desert Safari. This tour departs in the late afternoon across the desert of Dubai with several photo-stops during an exciting dune drive. The first destination a camel farm, the drive continues across the desert. We stopped to watch the beautiful sunset before reaching camp. There we had fun activities like camel ride, sand boarding and applying henna. After that we enjoyed traditional Arabic BBQ dinner. Before returning we also enjoyed watching belly dancer performing around the campfire! We highly recommend this experience!
the safari begin!
photo-stop :)
the drivers took of little air from tires to ride on dunes
and the fun ride!
notice the vehicles on dunes...
they were not far, but up on the dunes
the sunset stop
at the Camel Farm
Man with Falcon
young camel
Camel Ride
The Camp
People doing Sand Boarding, we skipped that.
how can I not have Henna! love it
The belly dancer
After a fun and tiring day, next day we got ready early to explore two of the many famous Malls in Dubai; Ibn Battuta Mall and The Dubai Mall.
Ibn Battuta is the world’s largest themed shopping mall. It consists of six courts, each of whose designs are inspired by some of the countries visited by the great Moroccan Berber explorer, Ibn Battuta: Egypt, India, China, Andalusia, Persia and Tunisia.
Inside the mall, it was all beautiful. Sharing my favorites
loved this!
Burj Khalifa; tallest man-made structure in the world is situated next the world's largest mall; The Dubai Mall
large aquarium inside mall, nothing new or special but I love these :)
Liked this fountain wall. Rest of the mall was regular mall with high-end brands of the world.
This was our 2-day Dubai trip.
Share your vacations with us here.
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