Chapter 20: There’s More To The UAE

We spent the winter in Dubai, the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates. Towards the end of our stay (more on that later), we finally got out of the city to experience the rest of the emirate and country.

Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, is a popular day trip from Dubai. Strict inter-emirate COVID firewalls necessitated a bit of planning, but in late January we undertook the 90-minute drive to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the jewel of the emirate and one of the largest mosques in the world.

While the UAE is fast becoming sartorially Westernized – I saw many more midriff shirts and yoga pants walking around Dubai than when I visited just a few years ago – local residents are still very conservative in anything surrounding their religion. I wore long pants; Rachel, as a woman, was required to wear a hijab to cover her hair.

In 2013 the singer Rihanna, fully clothed and wearing a hijab – was kicked out of the mosque after posing for “inappropriate” pictures outside of the building.

The size and opulence of the mosque is staggering. The centerpiece of the $600 million compound is its white marble courtyard, positioned towards Mecca, with room for 30,000 kneeling worshipers. Sunglasses were a plus – it was blinding in the afternoon sun.

The 180,000 square foot courtyard is inlaid with the largest marble mosaic in the world…

…and ringed with white marble breezeways edged by reflecting pools.

Inside, the main prayer hall holds a 60,000 square foot carpet, the largest in the world, with room for 7,000 worshipers. From the ceiling high above hung seven chandeliers – one, the third-largest in the world – all decorated with millions of Swarovski crystals. (See tourists in the corner for scale.)

Our free, hour-long chaperoned tour was incredibly informative and allowed us to walk around (barefoot, natch) inside the prayer hall, unlike the poor self-guided visitors stuck peering in through a cordoned doorway.

On our way out of the city we stopped by Boomah, a cafe with nine resident owls.

Rachel and I had agreed that we wanted to see UAE’s countryside before leaving the area, so we booked a desert and falconry tour. We set out one cool February morning for Rub’ al Khali (“The Empty Quarter”), the largest area of continuous sand in the world.

While not native to the region, migrating falcons have been captured and used for hunting in the Middle East for thousands of years. As Dubai’s wealth boomed over the past few decades, these falcons – costing up to $500,000 each – have become an Emirati status symbol, like the ubiquitous Lamborghinis revving slowly through downtown. The falcon is the emblem and national bird of the UAE, and traveling falcons get their own UAE passports and first-class airplane seats.

In the shortening shadows of the quickly rising desert sun, we were fitted with the traditional Bedouin headscarf (red and white checkers for men, solid colors for women)…

…shown a hunting demonstration with falcons and owls…

…and then called on to participate.

Sitting on a knelt camel rising from the ground was a more violent movement than Rachel had anticipated.

The avian demonstration was followed by a Bedouin breakfast of tea, fruit, pancakes with date syrup and honey, and a stew of fava beans and tomatoes.

The calling card for Platinum Heritage tours is an open-air drive through the desert in 70-year-old right-hand drive Land Rovers, brought over when British envoys searched the region for oil in the 1950s. These were honestly just incredibly cool vehicles.

We stopped periodically to take pictures of the remarkable terrain.

Oryx, a type of antelope suited for desert conditions, is the national animal of nearby Qatar. They can survive without water for long periods, and have been known to kill lions with their long, straight horns. Poachers’ demand for these horns nearly led to their extinction; in recent years they’ve been successfully reintroduced to the Arabian Peninsula.

Their dazzling white coats stood in stark contrast to the surrounding desert.

One of the more surreal vistas I’ve seen is the reduction of everything within eyesight to just two colors.

This desert tour was absolutely one of the highlights of our time in the UAE. Living in the center of a bustling city for months on end isn’t our idea of a relaxing lifestyle, so we were grateful to briefly experience the mesmerizing, alien, seemingly inhospitable terrain of the Arabian Desert.

Back in Dubai, the Chinese New Year was beginning, and our time in the region was ending.