While planning a trip to the USA, I came to the realization that the tickets from Dubai were significantly cheaper than flying from Mumbai. Even after taking into account the flight to Dubai and back, alongside the visa and hotel costs, the flights from Mumbai were still slightly more expensive. So, I decided that we would spend a day in Dubai on the way to the USA (and also on the way back). Our journey started on IndiGo 1511 from Mumbai at 02:35 AM, reaching Dubai at 4:00 AM.
I had booked the Lewana Hotel for the four of us from stayhopper.com for the day. We bought the Red Nol Card 1-Day Pass for each of us and then took the first metro from Terminal 1 to Union Metro Station. It was a short walk to Lewana Hotel, where we completed the check-in formalities and were able to get a few hours of shut-eye before our day exploring Dubai.
Waking up after a few hours, we got ready and headed out. We took the metro from Union Metro Station to our first stop, the Gold Souq, one of the largest gold markets in the world. We also saw the Utensil Souq and the Spice Souk nearby.
We then visited the Dubai Municipality Museum. Housed in a restored traditional building, it documents the history of Dubai’s urban development and municipal governance. There was a short film shown about the transformation of Dubai from a small trading port into a modern global metropolis.
We walked to the Al Ras Metro Station; designed in a traditional Arabic architectural style, it blends in very well with the surroundings. We took the metro from here to Sharaf DG Metro Station for our next stop, the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.
As Dubai’s best-preserved historic district, this neighbourhood is a maze of narrow lanes flanked by mud-brick buildings. Today, many of the buildings house galleries, cafés, and small museums. There are also murals across some walls, making it a popular spot for photographers.
The Wall of Old Dubai is displayed here. The excavated foundations were uncovered and restored in 2001, and a small portion is preserved in situ under a wooden canopy. The Al Fahidi Arts & Cultural Center occupies one of the nearby restored houses and hosts rotating art exhibitions.
We then took the metro to the Burj Khalifa / Dubai Mall Metro Station. The elevated Red Line offers some of Dubai’s best free views. The Dubai Frame, a 150-metre rectangular arch, appeared in the distance as the train cleared the older neighbourhoods. Then came the unmistakable Museum of the Future with its stainless steel exterior inscribed with Arabic calligraphy.
There was a covered and air-conditioned walkway from the Burj Khalifa / Dubai Mall Metro Station to the Dubai Mall. The architecture inside is lavish, with Moorish arches and massive ornamental ceramic vases covered in traditional geometric patterns. A full-size dinosaur skeleton is displayed in the central rotunda. Outside the mall, the Souk Al Bahar walkway connects to the Dubai Fountain lake through a wooden pergola gateway.
The Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, loomed overhead. From the ground, it is genuinely difficult to comprehend its scale; no photograph fully does it justice.
Our last stop for the day was the Dubai Fountain, located in the Burj Khalifa Lake, at the base of the iconic Burj Khalifa and right outside the Dubai Mall. This is the world’s largest choreographed fountain system, synchronized with an array of classical, contemporary, and traditional Arabic melodies.
We headed back to our hotel from here and caught up with a cousin of mine who stays in Dubai. He offered to drop us off at the airport; I wasn’t sure that the four of us with all our bags would fit in the car with him, but we did. United uses Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport as a result of its newfound partnership with Emirates. The terminal was huge and seemed almost empty (in stark contrast to Terminal 1, which we used to fly back to Mumbai after a few weeks). We dropped off our bags, collected our boarding passes, and waited for our flight to Newark.
Initially, the long duration of the flight seemed daunting, but all of us were quite tired from roaming around all day and from the red-eye flight the previous night, so we were able to sleep through most of our journey across Europe and the Atlantic to North America.
