My planning of a perfect visit started. I was dreaming of my trip to NY since the first time I came to know about my onsite and had accumulated lots of ideas about it. Google maps and travel sites were like my home of planning. There I came to know that NY is also called The Big Apple and I had almost visited the whole of NY virtually before landing in there. My colleagues felt that I was planning a bomb attack on NY. I prepared a list of places I must see and decided to take a hop on hop off bus tour so that I may cover as many places as possible in limited time and cost. From one of my colleagues I came to know about the Dubai dessert safari so thought of taking that too but for that I had to get my flights rescheduled to keep a sufficient stop over at Dubai in the after noon. I checked online that the tour starts at 3 pm and ends at around 9 pm which is almost a day. With this planning I was missing one important item for a perfect trip: a camera. I think my trip was destined to be perfect that I found somebody coming from US who could buy a camera for me. I bought Canon Powershot S5 IS only because of its longgg zoom and rotating screen. And I tell you it helped me sometimes to have those features on my NY trip.
Dubai stopover
I started from Chennai in the morning and reached Dubai at 12.30. I rushed towards the exit of the airport where I should be getting the desert safari trip but I missed by half an hour. They accept the booking till 12 noon and no other operator was there. Then at the government tourism counter I could get one desert safari tour for $45. They had to pick me up at 3 so I grabbed so food at the coffee shop at the airport. Dubai is such a nice place and clean too. The roads I saw were all 8 lane with nice looking cars running at 100+. I got an Indian companion for this trip: Gyani (Gyaneshwar; a hydrabadi architect working in phoenix).The name of the tour guide 
was Ali who was from Karachi and was speaking a good Hindi. He took us in Toyota Land Rover to a small superstore, 150 Km out of Dubai city. Our desert safari was to start from there. I saw a group of buggies coming from desert and stopping at the supermarket. That was a group of young boys of the age of about 15 to 20 years, looked like offspring of Oil sheikhs to me. I asked them and got a pic of mine on the buggy but missed the ride of that small monster. Then started my one and a half hour roller coaster ride called Dune bashing. The Landrover was running on the dunes in almost all the defined angles and some times there was all sand over the front windshield. It was breathtaking ride but was too long that my body could not bear it. Luckily during the whole ride I could stop my self but I puked just before stopping.
was Ali who was from Karachi and was speaking a good Hindi. He took us in Toyota Land Rover to a small superstore, 150 Km out of Dubai city. Our desert safari was to start from there. I saw a group of buggies coming from desert and stopping at the supermarket. That was a group of young boys of the age of about 15 to 20 years, looked like offspring of Oil sheikhs to me. I asked them and got a pic of mine on the buggy but missed the ride of that small monster. Then started my one and a half hour roller coaster ride called Dune bashing. The Landrover was running on the dunes in almost all the defined angles and some times there was all sand over the front windshield. It was breathtaking ride but was too long that my body could not bear it. Luckily during the whole ride I could stop my self but I puked just before stopping.
After this roller-coaster ride we stopped in the desert to see the sunset. That was the best moment in the desert. The weather, the sun, the sky everything was looking so beautiful which is out of my explanation. We then headed to a small camp where they had arranged for belly dancing and Arabic dinner.Out of the camp there a small camel ride which was the first ride of my life. Despite staying in Rajasthan I had not sit on the camel earlier. We sat there for about an hour and enjoyed belly dancing on Arabic music. The food was very good but I missed the barbeque food because they didn’t have anything in vegetarian. Then I while coming back to airport Ali took us to a souvenir shop. He dropped me at 9 pm but my flight was at 3 am. For those six hours I saw one of the best airports of the world. The airport itself is very nice and full of duty free shops. It is a heaven for any shopping lover or say freak. :-)
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