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Travelogues
Skiing in Dubai
by
Rajesh Talwar
It was while
I was having lunch at the Board Walk, an open air restaurant which
overlooks the famous Dubai Creek and from where you get a panoramic view
of the city, that I suddenly recalled that it would be a cold winter in
Kabul and I still hadn’t bought any protective footwear.
I mentioned this to Omita, my petite young host and friend from
Kalimpong who works as an Air Hostess and Trainer in one of the major
airlines, and has been based in Dubai for several years now. Omita,
Julie, her Irish Air Hostess colleague and I were having a leisurely
lunch in this section of the city, which adjoins a five star hotel and
some luxury villas. I spoke of my need to have sturdy warm shoes to pass
the winter in a regretful tone, not really hoping to find a solution,
even in this city of shopping malls.
Omita was quiet, but her five feet ten, blond friend Julie at once came
up with a solution. She had just been skiing in Dubai the previous
weekend and thought that she had spotted a couple of stores selling
footwear designed for severe winters.
Skiing in
Dubai? Yes, that’s true. My friends informed me that this was indeed
possible at Ski Dubai, which provided entertainment in the three S’s
namely skiing, snowboarding and, you guessed it, shopping. I needed to
find shoes that would protect me against minus thirty temperatures in
Afghanistan and if there was anywhere in the Emirates that I would find
them, Ski Dubai was surely the place.
In the evening Omita took me to Ski Dubai and I saw for myself first
hand the amazing ski slopes. Young children and adults wearing thick
winter jackets and headgear dotted the slopes. Snow boarding and skiing
had been made possible at Ski Dubai by means of artificially
manufactured snow spread on designer slopes in an insulated area kept at
minus degree temperatures, in order to prevent the snow from melting.
There was an entry fee that was high but not prohibitively so and
jackets, snowboards and skis were all available on loan. You could look
into this other cooler world through glass panes while remaining on the
other, shopping side of Ski Dubai. Indeed, indulgent parents could be
found glued to the glass partition watching their children jump and
frolic in the snow.
We wandered through the shopping area past food courts selling all
manner of cuisine and came across the promised shops selling footwear
designed for winter. I needed snowshoes that could work in an office
environment and had to at once rule out all the fancy multicolored
adventure footwear. Nearly giving up, we finally stumbled upon a
Timberland store where I finally found shoes with sufficient thermal
protective cover to tide me through the Afghan winter.
After dinner, Omita drove me back to my three star hotel on Computer
Street in Bur Dubai. As we sped through the sparkling, lighted city past
office skyscrapers and shopping malls, I couldn’t help recalling another
very different journey through a very different landscape years earlier
from Hargeisa in Somalia to the port city of Berbera. During that
particular journey through the hot desert at a certain juncture, when we
were nearly half way to our destination, the Land Cruiser suddenly
braked to let a herd of close to one hundred baby camels pass the road.
It was truly a wonderful sight to see all those camels in that barren
sandy landscape. Most affected amongst us was Thomas aged 10, the young
son of a Swiss colleague who immediately fell in love with the animals
and couldn’t help talking about them the rest of his stay there. He was
of course aghast later when he learnt from his mother that some of these
animals would be exported to Saudi Arabia for purposes of human
consumption.
We were all of us then amused by his fantasies about taking back two
small camels to Geneva and one of us even joked that he had better fix
up an appointment with the Minister of Livestock (incidentally one of
the most important ministries in Somaliland) for permission to export
the animals. Young Thomas was confident that he could recoup the
expenditure entailed in the transport of two baby camels all the way to
Geneva by charging his friends and others a small fee to view the
animals.
Vast sums have been spent in Dubai in the setting up of desalination
plants, which makes it possible to use the seawater for purposes of
drinking and irrigation. This water has in fact been used successfully
to introduce some greenery into the desert landscape. It must have also
cost a lot of money to create Ski Dubai in the heart of the city but the
crowds there even on a weekday suggest that the investment is being
rapidly recovered.
Back in Kabul and braced for the winter ahead I find myself re-examining
Thomas’s fantasy. If you can have skiing in the middle of the desert
then perhaps one day in the not too distant future it will be possible
to create a sealed off desert landscape even in wintry Geneva where
Swiss fathers and mothers will stand by glass partitions craning their
necks to catch a glimpse of young Thomas or Hans enjoying a camel ride.
Possible, though perhaps not commercially viable as yet.
December 3, 2006
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