Dubai - Part 2

Day 2, 14th May 2016

  I had booked this tour as a group departure through a travel agency. The agency will take care of our stay, pickup, sight-seeing, breakfast and dinner. They provide an itinery which will state the time of a particular program. On this day we had Dubai City tour for half day and Desert Safari in the evening. The agency will hire a mini bus (mostly 34-seater) which will pick up tourists from several different hotels. 

  The first destination was Heritage Village. This place depicted the ancient culture of UAE, how people lived in the past, their life style, how the seven emirates were united, etc. Dubai is a tax free city. The government doesn't levy tax on the people. Their economy runs on three major sources: tourism, real estate and ports. The government doesn't allow people to own their houses. You have to rent it. A decent 2 BHK apartment costs about 3 Lakh Dirhams annually. A real cheap one costs 80,000 dhs per annum. 

The next destination was Saga-world shopping mall. Dubai is well known for its craftsmen and beautiful designs. The shops here reflected the very qualities. These shops were a bit expensive. But not more expensive than the ones I encountered at Dubai Mall. I'll elaborate more on Dubai Mall later.

  Next was Jumeirah Beach. It is really beautiful beach with the view of Burj Al Arab and the Grand Hyatt Hotel.  The beach is clean and you can see lots of people enjoying the sun. It was a bliss! The water seemed to be blue and clean. Burj Al Arab is a most expensive hotel in the world. The rent is about 30,000 Dollars. It has a tennis court and a swimming pool on the terrace. “Burj” means “tower”.  “Al” is a very common prefix here. It doesn't have a meaning as such but people usually put “Al” before most names, e.g. Al Raffa, Al Saffa. “Emirates” refers to the people living in this country.

  From Jumeirah Beach, we headed towards Palm Jumeirah. Palm Jumeirah is a man made island in the shape of a palm. This island was created within 5 years. The main stem of the palm has high-rise luxurious residential apartments while the branches have villas. Shah Rukh Khan (Bollywood actor) and David Beckham(Football player) have their villas at Palm Jumeirah. Palm Jumeirah has the world's largest hotel Palm Atlantis. It has about 1539 rooms and is a really gigantic one. As the month of Ramazan approaches, this hotel gets flooded with big Sheikhs across the world. So as of this date, Dubai has the biggest hotel, Palm Atlantis, with 1539 rooms; the tallest building Burj Khalifa, with height of about 830 meters;  and biggest mall Dubai Mall with over 1200 shops.

  The city tour was of about 4 hours.

  After some rest in the afternoon, we had Desert Safari in the evening. The schedule time for Desert Safari is at 3pm in Winters and 4pm in Summers. This is a standard time followed by most agencies. They will pick you up in a SUV, for us it was Toyota Land Cruiser. It took about an hour to reach the Desert Safari Camp from our hotel. The roads are really smooth, and the average speed of our SUV on the highway was about 130-140 km/hr. Yes, you read it right 130-140 km/hr. The drivers are so trained that even at such speeds, the car remains stable. After we reached the camp, we shifted to another Toyota SUV with really huge and strong jumpers and a driver trained for desert terrains. They would drive you through really rough terrains, will climb on high sand dunes and manouver sharp turns. It is a real thrill to experience this. After this journey, I started realizing the importance of seat belts... ;)

  After the safari for about 30 minutes or so, we were taken to the Safari Camp. Here you can even ride scooters for 150 dirhams. There is also an option of riding in the Hummer but it is really costly. The camp had activities like Tattoo making and photo-shoot in Sheikh-type attire. There will be three types of programs: Belly Dance, Taruna Dance and Fire Show. I did not like a single program here. Okay, at least Taruna Dance was worth appreciating because of the efforts put up by the artist. In this dance, the performer rotates on its place for about 10 minutes and performs various arts. For me just 5 rotations are enough to make me feel dizzy. The dinner here was okay. You can get complimentary hookahs but have to pay for liquor.

Heritage Village

Heritage Village

Leaders at the time of union of the Emirates

Heritage Village

Grand Hyatt Hotel

Jumerah Mosque

Jumerah Beach

Palm Atlantis Hotel

Provided by our hotel

Desert Safari

Desert Safari

Desert Safari

Desert Safari

Desert Safari Camp

Day 3, 15th May 2016

This was almost a leisure day. We had Dhow Cruise scheduled at 7pm. So we were free till then. We explored lots of shops and supermarkets in the locality. There are shops which have all products in a particular range, e.g. from 1 to 10 dirhams, from 1 to 20 dirhams, etc. There were also electronic shops. There were a lot of attractive LCD TVs of quite reasonable range. I came across one huge LCD TV of size of about 9ft x 13ft. 

Custom Duty is levied on LCD TVs. The aircrafts connecting Dubai have a special space just for keeping LCD TVs. Each person is allowed to carry one laptop, any two electronic items, one gold coin, 50,000 cash in INR or equivalent and two liquor bottles.

In evening, we departed for Dhow Cruise. There is a creek which seperates Old Dubai and New Dubai. It is known as Dubai Creek in general. Dhow Cruise runs in Dubai Creek. One can see a contrasting view from the cruise. On one side (New Dubai) there are lots of high rise buildings while on the other side(Old Dubai) there are none. Old Dubai is known as Deira. The time of the cruise is mostly 8.45pm to 10.30pm. Just before starting the cruise they will serve refreshments and starters. Once the cruise starts, there are a couple of programs, one of them being the Taruna Dance (same as the one at Desert Safari camp). After the programs, dinner starts at around 9.30pm. 

  Most of the Dubai Tour Packages involve breakfast and dinner, but no lunch. The Breakfast and Dinner are both buffet-type and there are lots of varieties including Indian and Continental. It is advisable to carry some snacks like Puri, Thepla, Khakhra, Wafers, etc. I used to do a heavy breakfast, some snacks for the lunch and in the evening. Then even if the dinner is a bit late, it was fine with me. For me, the dinner time is about 8pm.

  

  The dinner at the cruise was good. You have to be careful if you are Jain, but otherwise the vegatarian food was good.

  We reached our hotel at about 11 pm.

Bus route

Dubai is well known for its luxuroius cars. It is said that the major car manufac-

turing companies launch their new models in Dubai 6 months before their launch

in any other country.

Such supermarkets can be seen at almost every few hundred metres.

View from a residential locality.

Carrefour is a supermarket where items are sold at a very cheap price, which also

means, that you have to adjust with the quality.

Dhow Cruise

Dhow Cruise

Dhow Cruise

Dubai - Part 1

Day 0, 12th May 2016
Direct flights are too boring. I had a flight from Ahmedabad to Pune at 9.20pm, from Pune to Abu Dhabi at 4am in the morning on next day, Etihad Bus from Abu Dhabi to Dubai at 7.30 am local time. Dubai is UTC+4.00. India is UTC+5.30. Dubai is 1 hour 30 minutes behind India. It was my first international journey and cruising at 35,000 feet above sea level was an amazing experience.

Day 1, 13th May 2016

The Abu Dhabi airport is really a gigantic one. And “Etihad” 'rules' it. “Etihad” is all over the Abu Dhabi airport. Etihad even has an innovation and research lab at the same place. The Immigration process involved the E-Visa and Passport only. The Immigration process at Pune Airport involved Passport, E-Visa, and Return Ticket as well. After the Immigration Process and Baggage Reclaim, I headed for the Dubai Bus. These buses run at an interval of 60minutes. You'd find these buses just as you exit the Arrival Terminal near the Taxi Stand. If you'd be familiar, there are inter-city buses run by state in India. Exactly the same. In UAE, such buses are run by private companies. In my case, Etihad. These are really luxurious AC buses. Actually you don't need to buy an extra ticket for it. If you book a flight to Dubai, it includes the bus ticket as well if you are travelling via Abu Dhabi. It takes about 1 hour 30 minutes from Abu Dhabi to Dubai via Sheikh Zayed Road.  

I arrived at the CityMax hotel at Bur Dubai. Bur Dubai is an area known for its night life. It is a very lively area. The check-in time at the hotel was at 2pm local. The hotels in Dubai are really huge. My hotel had 7 floors with each floor having 100 rooms. Mine was 697. And the view from my room window was amazing.

This day was a leisure day for us. After some rest, in the evening we went exploring the area. Meena Bazaar is a market about 1 km (walkable) from my hotel. On the way there were many supermarkets, electronic stores, restaurants and hotels. Meena Bazaar has several Indian restaurants. There are even Jewelery shops which have a reasonable rate for gold. Other shops included Manyavar, Kala Niketan, etc. Our dinner that night was at Rangoli Restaurant. 

Dubai has no rivers. The drinking water which Dubai gets is obtained from three sources: purifying sea water, underwater and rain water. Because of this, water is a bit costly and has to be used wisely. As UAE is an oil-rich country, with oil fields located mostly around Dubai and Abu Dhabi, petrol is really cheap. The cost of petrol when we went was for 1.60 Dirhams/litre. 

Google will show you 1 Dirham equals about 18.14 but that is bank to bank price. If you buy from an agent you will need approximately 20 rupees to buy a dirham. So the price of petrol comes to about 32 rupees / litre! Also the price of petrol and water is almost same. I bought a 1.5 liter water bottle for 2 dirhams.

  

In my case, I used to get one 200ml bottle from the hotel and one 1liter bottle at the dinner daily. I managed with that. If you want to buy water here, always buy it from a supermarket. Supermarkets are located almost every 500 meters on average. On my way from Hotel to Meena Bazaar we came across 3-4 supermarkets.

Abu Dhabi Airport

Abu Dhabi Airport

Abu Dhabi Airport

First view of Downtown Dubai

My hotel

View from my room

Pondicherry

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Tirupati Balaji

In this post, I will share my experience of the trip to Tirupati Balaji Temple and provide some suggestions if you are planning to go in future.

First and foremost, the most appropriate time of the year to go to Tirupati is from February to early April. I went with my family on 3rd April. We had to stand in queue for about two hours and this, according to the localites, is considered as "no rush".

One-day Tirupati packages are available from Chennai and according to me they are very convenient in terms of booking and travel. The best thing would be to call Just Dial (08888888888) and ask for the same. The travel companies are very reliable. They charge Rs. 1300/- per person on sharing basis and Rs. 1500/- per person if we want a separate car. This includes everything: Rs. 300/- Darshan ticket for Tirupati, Laddus, Toll, Driver allowance Breakfast and Lunch. We booked a separate AC car for us.

We departed at around 5.30 a.m. from Chennai. Tirupati is about 120 kms away. It takes about two and a half hours to reach Tirupati. The travel agencies have ties with the restaurant owners and they provide you breakfast. Includes typical South Indian dishes like Idli, Pongal, Vada.

After that, we went for Padmavati Temple. It seems you have to go to this temple before visiting Balaji Temple. You might find it weird that there will be two queues for Darshan. "Free Darshan" and "Ticket Darshan". We experienced this first time so we took the free route. I will advice you to buy the tickets and join the shorter queue which goes nearer to the idol compared to the "free" one.
One thing to take care is that they strictly don't allow electronic devices. So it's better to leave the mobile phones and footwear inside the car.

Tirupati is a city. The Balaji Temple is located on Tirumala Hills, which is about 8 kms of climbing from Tirupati. Like in Vaishno Devi, walking route is available and takes about 4-5 hours. We took the road route, takes about half hour.

Balaji temple premises have a huge space of its own. There are several entry and exit points. The driver will guide you from where to enter and exit. There are costume restrictions for entering the premises. For gents, you have to wear Dhoti or Pyjama and for Ladies half/full sleeve dress/saree. It is advisable to wear a shirt as you can atleast keep your wallet and Darshan Ticket. The Dhotis are available outside and cost Rs. 100/-.

Coming to the Darshan Ticket, the Travel agency will take care of booking the Darshan Ticket for us. We need to provide Photo Identification Proof for each member during booking. They will then provide a ticket which we need to show at temple entrance. We need to show the original copy of photo ID proof along with it. Once again, no electronic devices are allowed and they are very strict with it.

We need to walk about a kilometer from Temple premises entrance to Darshan Entrance, that too barefoot. Once in the premises, they don't allow footwear as well. So you have to leave everything the car. Drinking water facilities are available but I advice you to keep a bottle with you.

There are two types of waiting queues at the Darshan Entrance. One is "Free Darshan" and another is "Ticket Darshan". After showing the ticket you can join the queue. There are about 25 waiting rooms with capacity of about 100 in each with sitting facilities. Unfortunately, they open these rooms only during peak times of the year. When we went, we had to stand for about two hours. I advice you to take some snacks with you. When we were in the queue, it was lunch time for us. At 8.30 am we reached Tirupati. At around 9.30am we finished our breakfast. At around 11 we reached Tirumala. The procedures and all took about 45 minutes. We joined the queue at around 12.15pm in the noon.

When you book the ticket, they will allot you time slots for Darshan. Our time slot was for 12 noon. You can enter the temple at most 30 minutes before and after your time slot. That means for us, they wouldn't have allowed us after 12.30pm and before 11.30am. I am not sure if they are lenient with this or not.

So after waiting for about 2 hours, we finally entered the main temple.

If you want to good view of the idol stay on the right side of the queue. We stayed on the extreme right of the queue and this queue went straight in front of the idol with no obstructions in between.

The Idol of Lord Balaji is quite magnificent in itself and it is a glory to the eyes. It is a bit dark inside the temple so you have to observe it carefully.

When you are inside the temple, there will be those temple management people, oh my god, such ruthless people, they just push you so hard that just with 2-3 seconds you will be out of the temple.

You just have a window of about 2-3 seconds for Darshan of the idol. I was also getting pushed from behind. So by the time I was in front of the idol, I just joined my hands and momentarily closed the eyes. The next instant when I opened my eyes, I was outside the temple. Yes, you have to wait 2 hours in a queue for Darshan of about 2 seconds.

After that there is a "hundi" where people donate gold. There is a temple of Mother of Lord Balaji.
Then just before the exit there is a small rock. It is believed that whatever wish you write on that rock gets fulfilled. Actually there was such a crowd that we almost missed that. Make sure you don't. It is just before the exit so it is very easy to miss it, especially if you coming for the first time.

After this they will be a queue for "FREE Prasadam". Yes, they write "free" in bold capital letters. You will get a small laddu. There are laddu counters after that. If you have taken the 300 Rs. ticket, you have to show it to the counters and you will get two big laddus. These laddus are very tasty. They don't provide extra laddus to anyone. We have a large family, so wanted to distribute laddus to our relatives. When we enquired, they said you have to book laddus online, and extra laddus are available only in the morning. So we had to do with laddus which we got. I guess if you want extra laddus, just inform the Travel agency, they will book it for you.

Head tonsuring is available just before the Temple entrance and is not compulsory. It is upto your faith if you want to do it or not.

There was a lot of crowd. By the time we finished Darshan and were in the car, it was around 3.30 pm. Restaurants are available nearby which provide fixed Thali. They are quite sufficient and a bit overpriced. In terms of cleanliness and hygiene, you have to trust Lord Balaji.

After that we departed and reached Chennai at around 8 pm.

Overall I must say it was a great experience, a once in a lifetime experience.
With matters of faith, it is best to have patience and trust the Lord.

Chennai: Kapaleeshwar Temple and San Thome Basilica

IIT Madras

Here I come with another post of a fantastic outing.

Although I had planned the trip with temple and church in mind, I also went to two more places.

Madras High Court.
If you taking MRTS, board a train till Chennai Beach. The court is about 600 mts away from the station. On the way you will find the classic 118 old SBI building and other random shops.

Well its not a tourist place as such, but if you are in Chennai, you won't mind visiting this classic building.

Gujarati Samaj. 

This came just off my mind and thought to give it a shot. 

Happy I got to speak some Gujarati and taste some Khaman.

For the following places, you need to board MRTS for Tirumailai. 

Kapaleeshwar Temple.

Being one of the top 30 places to see in Chennai according to TripAdvisor, this is a classic temple of its own.

For me, visit to temples/religious places are always welcome. 

Especially in South India, they have a very peculiar fragrance in the temples. I guess it is of the Red Tilak they put on the foreheads. 

San Thome Basilica.
A basilica is an important church building designated by the pope because they carry special spiritual, historical, and/or architectural significance.
Enough said.