And the adventure begins: Exploring Sharjah and Ajman

So to start off with a little background, UAE or the United Arab Emirates is a country that is a federation of seven emirates established in 1971. The seven emirates are: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, and Umm al-Quwain. Each emirate is governed by a sheik and all of the sheiks from these seven emirates form the Ferderal Supreme Council and one of the sheiks is elected as the President of the UAE and another serves as the Vice President. The capital of UAE is Abu Dhabi which is also the richest of the seven emirates.

Interestingly enough, of the 9.2 million individuals that live in the UAE, only 1.4 million are Emirati citizens. The other 7.8 million are expatriates.

So that's just a little background information to start you off about our adventures in the UAE. We landed in Dubai at around 7:30pm local time so we basically lost all of Saturday in our travels. The flight was pretty uneventful since I usually force myself to sleep for the entirety of the flight. Our uncle picked us up from the airport in Dubai and took us to our hotel located in Sharjah. We dropped all of our stuff off and went to grab a quick bite to eat at an Indian restaurant next to the hotel. Since our hotel is conveniently situated next to the "Mega Mall" we decided to walk around and see what they had. It was basically like walking around any given mall in the US. As soon as we walked in there was a Sephora smack dab in the middle, you look up and there's a Starbucks, and you walk around and see pretty much every store that you would see back home. After our walk around the mall we turned in for the night to adjust to the time change.

The first channa batura of the trip and a stop at Baskin Robbins for dessert! 

Day 1 of Explorations

Our uncle had booked us on a tour of Sharjah for the morning so it was just the three of us and our driver, Zulfi, who was amazing! He took us around Sharjah and Ajman and basically gave us a background on the history and culture of the UAE. Zulfi himself is an expatriate from Kerala, India but as a tour guide for the last seven years, he was very knowledgeable about the country. We basically drove around for a few hours stopping at various places along the way. 

Sharjah is the third largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, and is the only one to have land on both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Sharjah is renowned for it's commitment to art and culture, and was apparently named the Cultural Capital of the Arab World by UNESCO is 1998. It is also has the strictest rules of all seven emirates. Alcohol cannot be found anywhere in Sharjah.

One of the many mosques that we passed & the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization

In the middle of cultural square with the Sharjah library behind us and a statue of an open Koran

The statue of the open Koran was really cool!

We also visited Ajman another one of the Emirates this morning and is by far the smallest in area of the seven emirates. For all intents and purposes, the Emirate is essentially the city of Ajman, where some 95% of the emirate's population lives. The city thrives on commercial and tourist developments, with attractive beaches and historical, architectural attractions. 

We stopped and walked around the Ajman Musuem 

Found a lemon tree in the museum, the leaves smelled so nice!

Traditional medicine is a major component of the cultural patrimoney of the UAE. It covers the concepts and philosophy of the people regarding health, diseases, names of diseases and different methods of treatment. Taking into account the poverty of the local environment in the past, the people of the UAE tried hard to exploit all the consituents of the environment in treatment. Traditional medicine used many methods of treatment including: herbs, cauterization, cupping, massageing, treatment by the Holy Quran and other traditional methods.

Demonstrating how a "Thief Mark" was treated

A mock-up of how a public market would look like. Various stalls with different vendors: tailors, bakers, herb seller...

Dates are also very popular in the UAE so we saw many trees with dates hanging that are going to be ready to be picked in awhile.

The last stop on our Sharjah tour was the Central Souk where they sold tapestries, clothes, gold, gold, and more gold. 

Central Souk in Sharjah

There were just so many store selling gold, it was crazy! 

Our afternoon/evening consisted of a desert safari in Dubai. We weren't really sure what to expect but it was fun. The driver picked us up from our hotel and we picked up a few others groups along the way and drove out for about an hour. Then everyone got split up into 4x4's and we went "dune bashing" to get to our dinner location. Dune bashing was an interesting, and needless to say highly bumpy experience that I don't care to repeat again but the mini "campsite" that was set up was pretty cool. Everyone had the opportunity to ride a camel, quad biking, have henna applied, smoke hookah, etc... My sister and I took turns on the camels but they seemed so sad. Nothing like the camel rides that I did when I was in Gujarat a few years ago. These camels seemed so sad and tired and we felt really bad afterwards. We did a little exploring of the dunes and just walked around in the sand. The sand here is so smooth and felt so nice to walk in. It was definitely hot today but it started to cool down as we were walking around the site. We ended the evening by enjoying some cultural performances. 

So little! 

She was excited for her first camel ride. 

Playing around with the new camera and the sunset. 

The performer was so cool! 

A bellydancer to end the performances for the evening.

And that's it for today folks! On deck for tomorrow we've got a tour of Dubai and a ticket to go to the top of the Burj Khalifa. 

~Aish