United Arab Emirates: 9 Hours in Dubai

Date: 04 February 2014

At the end of January, I'd finished my time in Australia and it was time to fly back to Glasgow. The University booked my flights and since Qantas offered the cheapest airfare at the time, I was flown back to Glasgow via Dubai. Now, I'd never been to a Middle Eastern country before, though I imagined Dubai would be to the Middle East what Singapore is to Asia, that is all the uniqueness of a culturally different place with many of the capitalistic comforts of home. Oh, the fact that I'd be able to get around without knowing any Arabic was a major plus!

The towering Burj Khalifa - World's Tallest Building
at sunrise in Dubai

I'd looked up a lot of reviews of the city before I left, and spoke with a few friends who'd been before. I wanted to be sure that I didn't just pass through the UAE (like I passed through Japan on my way home from Singapore a few years back), but that I experienced something uniquely Dubai-an. My flight landed early in the morning and I had 9 hours until my departing flight back to Glasgow. I figured 9 hours would surely be enough for me to get through customs, leave the airport, find my way onto the train, and then over to the Burj Khalifa - the world's tallest building.

In fact, with such a short period of time in the city, I figured the only thing I'd comfortably have time to do that was unique to Dubai was to get to the Burj Khalifa, take a trip up to the observation deck, come back down and return to the airport with plenty of time to spare in case security at the airport took a while.

It was fairly easy getting out of the airport after having figure which signs meant "This way to the Arrival Hall" and then figuring out which customs line I should get in to took a little help from one of the attendants. But getting through proved no big feat, and with a US passport you can easily get out of the airport to see the city for the day. The public rail system in Dubai was super easy to use and navigate, once you had a map in front of you, but it was like no other train ride I'd been on before! It was still early in the morning and the foreign workers heading to offices and construction sites were packing into the train at every stop. The seats were lined up parallel to the sides of the trains with the rest of the interior saved for standing room. Across from me, however, the bench was full but at one stop a man from southern Asia boarded the train and just sat down on the laps of two men who were already sitting on the seat! The reactions of the two men were priceless: one was listening to his iPhone and kind of woke up, looked at the guy who'd parked half of his bum on the guy's lap, but went back to sleep. The other guy just nervously sat there, giving annoyed sideways glances at his unwelcome lap-sitter, but still never said anything! I tried imagining what the reaction in Chicago or New York would be. Surely not as passive!

I got off the train at the stop for the Burj Khalifa and headed down the very long walkway from the train station to the Dubai Mall, but it was only 9am and every single store was closed. Nothing really opens in Dubai until 10am but the mall was still open to walk around in, even if the escalators and lights weren't on. But I made my way down to the ground floor and out to Downtown Dubai, the main plaza and huge fountain/pool in front and at the base of the Burj Khalifa.

Dubai skyscrapers lining the Sheikh Zayed Road

The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest structure, standing at 2,722 feet (over half a mile high!) and has 163 floors, of which the public can access the Observation Deck on the 124th floor (over a quarter-mile up)! Having previously purchased a ticket, I was able to get in early enough in the morning that there was no huge line-up in front of me. In fact, I had the elevator up to the Observation Deck to myself for a 60-second quick lift up those 124 floors. I was thinking the observation deck would be like the Sears Tower (Willis be damned!), all enclosed, especially being that high up, but the majority of viewing platforms were actually outside with little gaps in the 20-foot high windows that you could stick your camera out to get a clean picture. But I tell you, I get so nervous when I see people doing that, and I surely don't trust myself to not drop my phone or camera. But the views were amazing! to the north was the Persian Gulf with its beautiful blue waters. And in all other directions was desert. Miles and miles of desert. And it doesn't take much to kick up a lot of sand into the air, and even though it was barely noon, the mixture of haze and sand made viewing anything with any semblance of clarity near impossible.

With the observation deck getting more crowded with obnoxious tourists, I headed back down to the main floor, took a few more photos outside, and then hopped on the train back to the airport. I figure that the next time I'm there, I'll try and spend more time seeing the cultural sights, but doing the Burj Khalifa was enough for me for the day and I found a small lounge chair in the airport and had a little snooze before my flights to Glasgow took off.

Scotland: Ben Lomond and Ben Vane (Munros 1 & 2)

Ben Lomond
 
Date: 15 April 2014

A few weeks back, Glasgow experienced a rare weather phenomenon: we had eight days of beautifully sunny and warm weather! The first of these days, we'd been coming out of rainy doldrums and being Scotland we weren't sure how long the sun would stay, so even though it was a Tuesday, a friend of mine from the University and I decided we'd take advantage of the weather while it was still good, made plans, and drove out to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, taking a small one-lane windy road around the north shore of the famous lake to the foot of Ben Lomond - the southernmost of the Scottish Munros.

Scotland is famous for its brilliant hillwalking everywhere, but especially in the Highlands. Here, any peak that is over 3,000 feet above sea level is classified as a Munro - anything less is classified as either a Corbett (2,500-3,000 ft above sea level) or a Graham (2,000-2,500 ft asl). There are 282 Munros, and anyone who attempts to climb them all is called a Munro Bagger. Having never done any hillwalking in Scotland before (save maybe the walk to the Old Man of Hoy in the Orkney Islands), I figured what better way to claim my first peak than to hike up to the summit of the southernmost Munro as well as being the peak with the name of the National Park it is in!

The walk took us about six hours, round-trip, and while it was not a challenging hike, per se, it was a beautiful one, nonetheless. Ben Lomond is tall (974 meters, or 3,196 feet above sea level) and since you start very near sea level, the whole elevation is yours to climb. Well...climb is a bit of an overstatement. The walk up Ben Lomond is a pretty easy ramp along a well-marked trail. About three quarters of the way up, the ramp does steepen and the going gets a bit slower, but it's still not challenging if you take your time.

Beautiful views of Loch Lomond all the way up to the summit

My friend and I kept a good pace the entire way up to the top. We had to since even though the sun was out, the wind was a bit chilly, but the views from the walk of both the summit - which would be hidden by clouds for short periods of time - and the beautiful lake beneath us were stunning! There was still snow up at the top on the steep, north-facing slopes, and though we enjoyed it at first, we quickly steered away from it, realising that the possibility that any of the snow packs could collapse and avalanche down the mountain was pretty high!

By the time we got to the summit, the weather had cleared up enough for some good photos and the views of the Arrochar Alps across the lake and the Trossachs to the north were great! We had lunch up there shortly after 1:00 pm, but didn't stay long since we still had to descend. Rather than going down the same way we came up, we headed down a smaller ridge that ran parallel to the lakeshore, bringing us right back to the parking lot. Once down from the top, the wind died down a bit more and the clouds all but vanished. We stopped for a wee snack and watched a Royal Air Force jet fly through the lake valley below us for some sort of training mission. By the time we got to the car, it was nearly 4pm so we had one last little snack on the lakeshore before heading back into Glasgow.

(there's more below the Ben Lomond slideshow!)



Ben Vane

Date: 19 April 2014

Later on in the same week - again, the weather couldn't have been better - a larger group of my friends from the office and I carpooled out to the south side of Loch Lomond to climb Ben Vane, another Munro, 915 metres (3,002 feet) above sea level. While not as high as Ben Lomond, Ben Vane offered up some extra challenges. Mainly, we had to find our own path from the access road up to the path on the trail guide, and higher up the trail got quite steep and we zig-zagged our way up between large rock outcrops, scrambled over boulders and other rocks, and slipped our way over some small snow patches, all the while dodging sheep and trying to keep our feet dry while walking over purely soggy ground!

One of the many sheep that dotted the hillslopes on the way up Ben Vane - keeping a keen
eye on us as we summit the Munro. Ben Lomond in the background.

It was great, though. We started off at the Inveruglas parking lot on the shores of Loch Lomond and had to walk up a very long access road past a hydro power station. We couldn't find the trail from the access road up to the ridge we were supposed to follow to the summit so we just marched on up a big long slope, dotted with boulders and massive rock outcrops sticking up from the water-saturated muck beneath our feet. We had perfect views over Ben Lomond and Loch Lomond and with plenty of shaggy sheep running every which way, there were plenty of pure-Scotland moments!

Once we got to the top of the ridge, we followed its gradual path up to the base of the real mountain. Here, the path took steep hairpin turns with large steps up over rocks with a big outcrop every so often that offered a good place to take a break for a moment and steal some fantastic views of the surrounding Arrochar Alps!

The walk was a long and steep one - a bit more strenuous than Ben Lomond. It was one of those mountains that every time you think you reach the summit, there's more to go! The path eventually gives way to some scrambling up and around some rocks, down some rocks, and over some snow banks, but we finally reached the top and were rewarded with stunning views of Ben Lomond, Ben Ime, A'Chrois, the Cobbler, and Beinn Narnain. The schist rock that underlies the Arrochar Alps stuck out in many places at the summit, showing off its beautifully warped and metamorphosed structure, giving the whole summit an incredibly unique geologic feel!

The thing with Munro Bagging (at least from what I've experienced in the two hikes I've done), is that you don't linger at the summits for very long. We stayed up at the top for maybe fifteen minutes before turning right back around and heading down. But the whole walk was well worth it. We had a good group of people, a fantastically nimble dog, and stunning weather! And I can't wait to tick-off the other Munros of the Arrochar Alps off my list soon!