Travel broadens the mind they say and visiting exotic places can be as much an internal journey as an external exploration. Tamara Pitelen – and her mind – wandered off on a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat in the United Arab Emirates.

So, you’ve got 10 days leave owing and a longing to sit doing nothing in some exotic, peaceful locale. Maybe you’ve been fantasising about escaping somewhere far away from the madding crowds where there’s not a computer or mobile phone in sight. What if I told you where you could get all this and on top of that promised you’d lose a few kilos in the process plus have all your vegetarian meals cooked for you? Oh, and one more thing… it’s all free. That’s right, no charge, not even for food and accommodation.

“Impossible!” you snort, “I’ve trotted the globe and no such holiday resort nirvana exists.”

My friend, you’d be wrong. Sort of. Such escapes from the rat race do exist. About 120 of them in fact, they are the Vipassana centres where 10-day residential meditation retreats are held. These centres are dotted all over the globe from India to Oceania, Asia, Europe, Africa, America and the Middle East.

I know this because I’ve just got back from one of them. The retreat I went to was held on a date farm in Ajman. Where is Ajman? Next door to Dubai and – along with that glitzy diva of a city – Ajman is one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates in the Arabian Gulf.

Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditation and it’s goal is to bring harmony and happiness to people’s lives. It was taught in India more than 2500 years ago, by people who include the Buddha, as a universal remedy for universal ills caused by negative emotions such as anger, greed, animosity and depression.

Yep, fine so far so what’s the catch? Well, you have to get up at 4am every morning to sit cross-legged on a cushion for about 12 hours a day, you’re not allowed to speak, read, write, mix with the opposite sex, or even do any exercise beyond short periods of walking on specially marked, segregated walking paths.

No, I’m not going to sugar-coat it. The ultimate goal may be purity of the mind, happiness, love and compassion and an end to suffering and for all beings but the 10-day retreats involve battling through some lengthy stretches of tough emotions including spitting rage, irritation, sadness, abject misery as well as moments of gouge-your-own-eyes-out boredom. Why put yourself through it? You do it for spiritual development and in the hope you will be happier after weeding out some of the decades-old (even past lifetimes old) negative thought patterns and miseries rooted in the deepest soil of your subconscious mind.

So I sat and I sat and I sat. I sat cross-legged on a cushion till my back throbbed with aches and pains and my legs got pins and needles – which didn’t take very long, I had to ask for a chair in the end.

Every morning for the 10 days, me and 23 other students – 13 men and 11 women – were woken at 4am by the banging of a gong. By 4.30am we had to be in the Dhamma hall for two hours of meditation and by the end of each day we’d spent about 10 hours meditating. Or trying to meditate.

It is also an awful lot of time to think because, try as you might to stay focused on your breath or physical sensations, your mind journeys in some bizarre directions. I found I couldn’t stop thinking about the British TV soap Coronation Street for the first three days and when that obsession died down it was replaced by an igniting of my libido. Sat for hours in a room of silent people, I was suddenly consumed with thoughts of sex and couldn’t press the stop button on the erotic fantasies and pornographic scenes playing out in my head.

I wonder though if this is the kind of mental trash that your brain vomits up as a smokescreen; an avoidance tactic to dodge inspection of the really deep painful stuff lodged in the depths of your subconscious? Or am I a pervert. You could argue either way. I also had imaginary arguments with people I knew, rehashed relationship failures ad nauseum and hauled long forgotten fragments of life from my memory vaults.

By the end of the 10 days though, something had shifted. I can’t put my finger on it but you feel better, lighter. And it wasn’t just me. When we all started talking again on the final day, everyone said the same. Yes, it had been tough at times and there had been tears shed, especially in the first three days but some baggage had been dropped along the way and it felt good to let it go.

A FEW FAQS

Q. What is the Vipassana meditation technique?
A. Vipassana is just one way to approach meditation and this technique involves simply observing your own breath as well as scanning the body for physical sensations and, when found, detachedly observing them in the knowledge that they are impermanent, they will rise and pass, rise and pass.

Impermanence is at the heart of Vipassana. The Pali word for this is ‘annicha’ – a word we heard over again via the recorded teachings of S. N. Goenka, the world’s principal leader of Vipassana meditation. Born in Burma, Goenka relocated to India in 1969 to teach Vipassana. Forty years later, he’s largely responsible for its worldwide revival.

Q. Where can you study Vipassana?
A. If seeking spiritual enlightenment is what you’d like to do on your next vacation, check out www.dhamma.org for a list of all centres and a worldwide courses schedule.

Q. Is it really free?
A. There are no charges for the courses – not even for food and accommodation. All expenses are met by donations from previous students who wanted others to do the course. So, you can make a donation if you want to and have the means but there is no pressure.

Get Tamara Pitelen’s new book called Spokes, Blokes and Blarney, all about the time she spent three months cycling around Ireland in search of twinkly-eyed Irish men for husband material (think ‘Bill Bryson meets Bridget Jones’). It’s on Amazon at http://amzn.com/1463569750  or as an ebook at http://amzn.com/B00560Q17U

Or, get a free copy on PDF! Just send an email to spokesblokesandblarney@gmail.com with the subject heading ‘Free copy of Spokes please‘ and you’ll get an automated reply with a link to a free download. Just make sure you have Free copy of Spokes please in the subject head.

Dubai’s luxury afternoon tea scene has a new contender for crown of Best Posh Scones. Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, is offering sky high tea elegance on it 122^nd storey… but is it good enough to knock the Burj Al Arab off its sumptuous perch? Tamara Pitelen investigates.

The taking of afternoon tea is a wonderfully indulgent and girly affair. Everything’s all dainty and elegant and petite. Little silver teaspoons are used to stir cubes of sugar into tea served in the kind of delicate bone china cups that grandmas keep in glass cabinets; your waiter wears white gloves and may even bow at the waist.

An afternoon tea outing is one of those times when matching your shoes with your handbag is a good thing. This is twinset and pearls land, the world of eensy weensy sandwich fingers, teeny cakes, and melt-in-your-mouth scones – served warm along with thick clotted cream and strawberry jam that’s got lumps of real strawberries.

Afternoon tea is a time to linger for hours gossiping and gorging oneself a bit… because the only thing about this liquid affair that isn’t ‘dainty’ is the capacity of the women gathered when it comes to consumption of the darling little scones piled with cream and jam.

In Dubai, the notion of afternoon tea is taken very seriously in certain circles. The main contender until recently was the Burj Al Arab, the iconic sail-shaped hotel with the erroneous reputation for being the world’s only seven star hotel (it’s not, there’s no such thing). The Burj Al Arab does a mighty afternoon tea. It’s a languorous affair of endless tea, scones, sandwiches and cakes in surroundings of shameless opulence and luxury.

But now there’s a new kid in town and they have a hook that’s hard to beat; the highest high tea in the world.

Sitting up in the clouds on the 122^nd floor of the famous Burj Khalifa, officially the world’s tallest building, is a new contender for the crown of best afternoon tea.  This new venue, called The Lounge at At.mosphere, opened in January 2011 giving ordinary folk the chance to eat posh scones in the sky. Does it though, give long-time favourite Burj Al Arab a run for its money?

Figuring there’s only one way to find out and always looking for an excuse to spend hours drinking tea and gossiping, myself and a friend put on our frocks and headed to Burj Khalifa for some unofficial scone reviewing.

First, there’s the process of getting up to the 122^nd storey of the world’s tallest building. Happily, they’ve also got the world’s fastest elevators but the journey still takes a few minutes because, well, it’s a long way.

Once up there, the Lounge is all ambient gorgeousness and understated elegance. Gracious waitstaff glide across the floors to show you to your table, which is hopefully right up against the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the gobsmacking view of Dubai and beyond.

So, what’s on the menu? First up comes a serving tray filled with scones, clotted cream and lemon curd (the lemon curd was amazing).

Next course is the sandwiches which include cucumber with cream cheese and caviar; organic salmon gravalax with horseradish mousse, and egg mayonnaise with truffle and caviar.

After that is the ‘warm’ course, you choose from either poached quail eggs Florentine or chicken and mushroom quiche. The serving sizes are smaller than the palm of your hand.

Then come the teensy little desserts, mouth-sized bites of deliciousness such as apricot and sweet almond pudding; salted caramel éclair, and chocolate and lavender Mille Feuille.

So how does the highest High Tea in the world compare with the world’s only so-called seven-star High Tea?

The Burj Al Arab had better service and pulls off the whole ‘air of elegance and luxury’ with shedloads more aplomb than the Burj Khalifa. Also, the Burj Al Arab’s waitstaff were much more polished and experienced and perfectly attentive. Most importantly of all though, the Burj Al Arab will keep the scones, cakes and so on, coming for as long as you can find stomach room for them!

 Au contraire at Burj Khalifa where myself and my friend were left rather aghast at being politely but firmly told, ‘I’m sorry but no’ when we asked for more sandwiches, having scoffed the initial five finger-sized portions like gannets.  “It’s just one serving per table Madam.” [gasp!]

 In addition, the Burj Khalifa didn’t have any soy milk. So, all up the Burj Al Arab is still King of the High tea in our book, having said that the one thing Burj Khalifa has that can’t be beat is its lofty location.

And considering At.mosphere is just two storeys below the At The Top observation deck, which is the highest point people can travel up the world’s tallest tower, it’s probably better value for money to pay AED 290 and get afternoon tea thrown in with your panoramic view as opposed to paying AED 150 (if you book in advance) for the view alone on the observation deck.

THE ‘NEED TO KNOW’ DETAILS
What: High Tea at The Lounge At.mosphere
Where: Burj Khalifa, Downtown Dubai
Price: AED 290 without alcohol or AED 360 with a glass of Bollinger Brut Cuvee Special
Contacts: www.atmosphereburjkhalifa.com or email reservations@atmosphereburjkhalifa.com

Get Tamara Pitelen’s new book called Spokes, Blokes and Blarney, all about the time she spent three months cycling around Ireland in search of twinkly-eyed Irish men for husband material (think ‘Bill Bryson meets Bridget Jone’). It’s on Amazon at http://amzn.com/1463569750 . Or, get a free copy on PDF! Just send an email to spokesblokesandblarney@gmail.com with the subject heading ‘Free copy of Spokes please’ and you’ll get an automated reply with a link to a free download. Just make sure you have Free copy of Spokes please in the subject head.

The plan was, there was no plan. My friend Gordon and I had 72 hours off work, we had Gordon’s new Nissan Murano and 1865 tunes on the iPod. All the ingredients for a whistle-stop road trip Omani style. By Tamara Pitelen. Photos by Gordon Finlayson.

I didn’t know anything about Oman before heading there for a lost weekend of shisha, shopping, sea and souvenir hunting. All I knew was that driving to the Omani capital of Muscat from Dubai would take about five hours and that the country was ruled by a sultan. This trip was an unplanned, unknown quantity. Some would call this ‘disorganised’, we preferred ‘spontaneous’.

The very nature of a road trip means the journey is part of the destination and Oman is particularly good for road tripping thanks to the many kilometres of brand, spanking, shiny new bitumen. In the 1970s there were just a few hundred kilometres of road throughout the whole of Oman. Now there’s about 10,000 km of ‘driver’s dream’ newly laid asphalt, wide smooth and largely empty dual carriage highways set against the dramatic scenery of the Hajar Mountains, although keep an eye out for the camels and goats that sometimes wander onto the road.

Fuelled by the obligatory bags of car sweets picked up at the petrol station, Gordon and I covered the miles between Dubai and Muscat as fast as was possible because we were staying in the Grand Hyatt Muscat that night and were impatient to throw ourselves into its warm and luxurious embrace.

Once ensconced, we kicked off the evening with cocktails by the pool followed by a browse around the alley ways of Muscat’s Muttrah Souq, a big market with a certain Arabian Nights feel to it.

Located at Muscat’s corniche, Muttrah Souq is the oldest market place in the area and is a maze of pathways full of poky, dusty shops stuffed to the rafters with things like 19th Century maritime artifacts; Aladdin-style lamps; frankincense rocks; spices and dates; the framed corpses of insects like scorpions and scarab beatles; silver ornaments; piles and piles of silver and stone jewellery, and thousands of khanjars, which are short curved swords for hanging off a belt. Everyone needs one of those.

Omani men performing the traditional sword dance, Nizwa. (Photo: Gordon Finlayson)

If you wander far enough, you’ll end up in the Gold Souq tucked away in the corner. Here you can mix and match gold, pearls, precious and semi-precious stones to create your own jewellery or pick up some ready-made memorabilia.

With our shopping budget demolished, Gordon and I headed back to the Hyatt where several beachcomber-style shisha cafes are located on the beach overlooking the Gulf of Oman. We installed ourselves at Le Mermaid Café and spent several hours sucking on a shisha pipe, drinking tiny cups of sweet, thick Turkish coffee and listening to the waves crash on the shore metres away.

The next day it was back into the Murano and on our way inland to who-knows-where… which turned out to be a backwater nowheresville called Ibri. We got to town about 9pm and checked in at the grandest place in town, the Ibri Hotel. Our footsteps echoed through the entrance corridor and we never saw a single other guest, it was a ghost town, where was everybody? We soon found out where the town’s locals were; in a bar attached to the hotel. We had no idea what we were in for when we dropped in for a quiet nightcap and found a huge room teeming with local men in traditional dress, drinking and listening to music.

We were the only westerners and I was the only female in the place apart from the ‘entertainment’ on stage, namely four, plump, extremely bored and heavily made up young women, in eye-poppingly tight and bright dresses, who were shuffling about in front of a man playing Arabic tunes on a Yamaha organ. I think they were dancing.
We found out later the women were hired from Syria on six-month contracts to spend every evening in the hotel bar swinging beads in tight satin dresses. Gordon and I exchanged looks of the ‘have we fallen through a black hole and into another dimension’ variety. But things got better.

Prowling up and down in front of the stage was a swarthy bouncer type carrying an hundreds of long bead necklaces on his arm, it soon became apparent that members of the audience could buy a string of beads for one ryal (US$2.50) to give to their favourite dancer.

Apparently, in Oman when a man really wants to cut loose, he heads to a bar full of men, gets tipsy and pays to put necklaces around the necks of dancing women on stage.
As the alcohol took hold, the men in the bar got livelier – a phenomenon we’re familiar with in the West as well. Some of the men got out of their seats and started dancing with each other in front of the stage.

Since I stood out like a neon Las Vegas stripper sign in a church, a few men tried to give me necklaces and invited me to join the ladies on stage. I demurred politely on the grounds that the organ player didn’t know the Chicken Dance.

Get Tamara Pitelen’s new book called Spokes, Blokes and Blarney, all about the time she spent three months cycling around Ireland in search of twinkly-eyed Irish men for husband material (think ‘Bill Bryson meets Bridget Jones’). It’s on Amazon in print at http://amzn.com/1463569750  and on Kindle at  http://amzn.com/B00560Q17U. Or, get a free copy on PDF! Just send an email to spokesblokesandblarney@gmail.com with the subject heading ‘ Free copy of Spokes please ‘ and you’ll get an automated reply with a link to a free download. Just make sure you have Free copy of Spokes please in the subject head.

Tom Cruise scaled it. But one of our most fearless Holiday Goddess editors, Tamara Pitelen, took the elevator without him. Find out what it feels like to ride up the world’s tallest tower, Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

I have healthy, new respect for Tom Cruise. He was teetering in my estimation there for a while, what with all that sofa-jumping-Scientology-don’t-make-any-noise-when-you’re-giving-birth-or-take-medication-if-you’re-depressed stuff that’s come out about him.  However, then I saw a photo of him sitting at the very tippy- top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, on the bit that’s so high it’s out of bounds for normal mortals, I had vertigo in sympathy.

Say what you will about him but he’s a brave little Hollywood megastar. It would take man’s bits of steel to perch up there.

Reaching 828 metres (2716 feet in old money) into the sky – we’re talking looking down on clouds here – the Burj Khalifa stands in the centre of Dubai like an upended hypodermic needle. Tom basically sat on the pricky end of the needle, somewhere almost no one has gone before. Word is he was shooting a scene for Mission Impossible IV, reprising his role as superspy Ethan Hunt.

Since it opened to tourists earlier this year, the Burj Khalifa’s Observation Deck, called ‘At the Top’, has been a big attraction for local residents and a must-do for visitors to the emirate.

The tower (‘burj’ is Arabic for ‘tower’) stretches more than 160 floors into the skies, not forgetting the ‘needle’ bit stuck on the top of which Tom got himself to the pointy end.

To give it some perspective, New York’s tallest building is currently the 102-story Empire State Building. So if you stuck the Empire State building on top of the Empire State building, you’re not far off the Burj Khalifa. But I digress.

I recently journeyed up to the Observation Deck of the Burj Khalifa, weeks after its opening for the second time. Yes, the second time. The Observation Deck first opened in January 2010 but was then promptly shut down again after one of the elevators trapped 14 visitors for about an hour who were en route to the Observation Deck. Some say that there had been so much pressure to open the tower on time that it was opened a little sooner than perhaps it should have been.

The powers-that-be in Dubai would indignantly deny even the merest hint of ‘rush job’ however. Whatever the reason, the Observation Deck was closed for a few months to sort any glitches out by which time enough people had done the trip for me to think it was safe to go up along with my on-holiday-in-Dubai friend Oona and her two children, aged four and six.

Of the four of us, it was Oona who, on coming out of the elevator and seeing Dubai stretching out for miles through the thick plastic window of the viewingdeck, panicked. Vertigo kicked in like an angry donkey and Oona fell to the floor, borderline hysterical, crying: “Oh God, someone save my children!”

The children, meanwhile, were pressing their little hands and mouths up against the window and soaking up the view as their mum was placated by one of the very lovely Burj staff members who spoke to her in the same soothing tones you’d use on someone standing on a bridge and threatening to jump.

I have to be honest though, for me getting to the top was a bit of an anti-climax – mainly because the Observation Deck is ‘only’ 124 floors above the ground, which means there’s another 40 or so floors above it. Why didn’t they put it any higher? I’m sure there are very sound and sensible reasons involving health and safety but still.

The foreplay is good though, they do a lovely job of getting you excited and the elevator ride is fun. The world’s fastest elevator ride, the interior is black with lights like stars and it flies upwards at a speed of 64 km/h or 18 metres per second. (Tom wouldn’t be seen dead in an elevator; apparently he was abseiling down the side of the world’s largest erection.)

To get to the top, it pays to buy your tickets at least 24 hours in advance. If you rock up and want to buy a ticket and go up then and there, it’s AED 400 per adult ($110). If you buy days in advance and book a time, it’s AED 100 per adult ($28). The problem with buying ahead is that you’re not guaranteed a clear view.

Dubai doesn’t suffer much from inclement weather – unless you consider humidity and relentless heat ‘inclement’ – but it does have sand storms and pollution which can make for a hazy day.

All the same, if you want to get as high as you possibly can without an aeroplane and take home a coffee mug from the world’s highest souvenir shop to prove it, this is the trip.

Unless you’re Tom Cruise. Or possibly his stuntman. The photos weren’t that clear.

Fast Facts

The entrance is in the lower ground level of Dubai Mall, near the Cafe Court next to P3 parking, being in Dubai Mall is very convenient for popping to the indoor skating rink or taking in the world’s largest aquarium afterwards.

Opening hours: Sun-Wed, 10am to 10pm; Thu-Sat, 10am to midnight.

Last tickets to enter sold 45 mins before closing.

To buy tickets in advance, go to www.burjkhalifa.ae. Adults (13 years +) AED 100, children aged 4 to 12, AED 75. Children under 4, free entry.

Immediate entry prices:  Adults and children aged four and over, AED 400. Children under four, free entry.

Tamara Pitelen is the Editor of Wealth magazine in Dubai.

Photo: cc Flickr: JohnConnell http://www.flickr.com/photos/soutra/4254956494/

Tamara Pitelen heads to a Dubai restaurant where the house speciality is camel with everything – and realises the ships of the desert are now served with chips.

“I’ll start with the camel soup please followed by the camel burger… that comes with fries, right?”

It’s not often you get to say a sentence like that. In fact, I can claim with conviction that those words in that order had never passed my lips until a few hours ago when I visited Local House Restaurant in Dubai’s historic Bastikiya area.

Photo Credit: Local House Restaurant, Dubai

A few hours ago I was a camel-eating virgin. That innocence is lost. I have since feasted upon the flesh of some hapless dromedary (a one humped camel to you) and as a result, the kangaroo steak sandwich I had in Australia a few years ago has been stripped of its prize for ‘oddest thing I’ve eaten’.

In the heart of old Dubai, not far from the misleadingly-named Dubai Creek (it’s a sizeable river) Local House is a beautiful space for casual dining and specializes in offering a traditional Emirati experience. Built in traditional Arabian-style and dating back to 1890, there’s no roof, making it outdoor dining indoors, ideal for temperatures in the desert.

However, the fabulous ambience and historic décor of Local House are not the extent of its marvels. Since January 2010, the management took the relatively unique position of offering an array of dishes featuring camel meat or milk so this is the place to get your camel soup or salad, camel burgers or biriyani. There’s also camel kebabs, camel steak and camel milkshakes. In other words, the ships of the desert now come with chips.

For the occasion of my deflowering and camel knowledge, Dubai put on one of the balmiest and best evenings that it can offer. Myself and my best friend Rach spent the warm night relaxing on the long cushioned bench seats staring up at the black, starry sky complete with a shining, full moon while taking our first tentative bites from the flesh of hump-backed beast.

And guess what? It was absolutely delicious. Kind of like beef but a bit sweeter.
I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so delicious, I thought the whole camel thing was a gimmick but no, desert dwellers have apparently been eating their water-carrying companions for centuries and, according to Ramesh, the manager of Local House restaurant, camel meat is far superior to lamb, beef or any of your other common or garden sources of meat. He says it has 10 times the protein of beef as well as less fat, fewer calories and less cholesterol. Plus it’s succulent and tasty – although there is a secret to ensuring this that he tells me he absolutely cannot reveal.

About 30 seconds later he reveals it. The secret is to take the meat is from the creature’s shoulder. That’s the best bit, akin to the sirloin from some poor cow. “Other parts of camel’s body can have tough meat,” he says.

The restaurant gets through about 40kg of camel meat a day and the most popular dish is camel soup for 18 dirham (thumbs up from me, it’s superbly flavoursome consomme, full of scallion). Next are the camel burgers for 35 dirham, about 100 are sold each day, as well as camel biriyani. Although for local Emiratis, a dish of camel harees is the favourite, a cracked wheat speciality from the UAE that’s normally made with lamb or beef and is most commonly eaten during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting.

The camels that end up in these mouth-watering dishes are bred at a farm in Al Ain, a town about 90 mins up the road from Dubai. But the milk that’s used to make the camel milkshakes and chocolate is from the camels owned by Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Royal camel’s milk no less but it doesn’t come cheap. If you’re still hungry after your burger, you can take home a 700gm gold-foil wrapped solid chocolate camel for 195 dirham.
Not for me though, I finished off with a cup of coffee with cream and sugar. Just one lump.

Intrigued? Check out the website at www.localhousedubai.com or email info@localhousedubai.com. If you’re in town and want to call, the number is 971 (0)4 354 0705. The address is Local House Restaurant, Bastikiya, House 65, near Al Fahihid Roundabout.

If someone gave you a map of the world and asked you to stick a pin in Dibba, I wouldn’t really blame you if your expression took on that of a slapped trout.

Unless you’ve had a good nose around in every nook and cranny of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over on the Arabian Peninsula, just a bit to the left from Saudi Arabia, chances are you’ll have never heard of Dibba. You’ve probably heard of its flashy neighbour though, Dubai, a place that makes Las Vegas look subtle and constrained.

Just a couple of hours drive from Dubai, Dibba is one of the main towns in the emirate of Fujairah and, like Dubai, Fujairah is one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE. That’s about all they have in common. If Dubai is Paris Hilton, Fujairah is the shy girl next door. But one thing that Dibba does better than Dubai is diving – in a nutshell there’s much more to see and the water’s clearer, which is why I was there recently.

Having recently received my PADI Open Water Diver certification, the oceans were a calling and when it comes to donning a scuba tank and getting below sea level,

Dibba is a crystal clear diver’s treasure chest of marine life. The waters are so warm you don’t need a wetsuit and swimming happily within them is everything from turtles to Moray eels, barracuda, trumpet fish, angel fish, crayfish, stingrays, puffer fish, clown fish (the Nemo ones), black tip reef sharks (harmless, apparently, but wouldn’t poke them with a stick or anything) as well as huge schools of small tropical fish.

Dubai used to have reasonable diving but the unabated construction frenzy that’s going on just off the coast has disrupted the marine environment and left the sea full of silt which means there’s not much left to see and what there is you can’t see for all the murk. The price you pay for having fancy palm and world-shaped developments.

So there I was, on my first certified dive. This means it was the first time that no instructor was hovered over my shoulder to make sure I’d assembled my equipment properly and turned my oxygen on before doing a back roll off the boat – crucial, if you’re planning to breathe underwater. But happily for the new and nervous diver, you don’t have to go very far or very deep in Dibba to access the best diving and snorkeling site in the UAE, namely, Dibba Rock.

Just a five minute boat ride from the beach, Dibba Rock is part of a marine reserve so fishing is prohibited, that’s what makes it so rich with marine life. On that first unsupervised dive I floated over huge beds of raspberry coloured coral as well as got in the face of countless marine creatures.

The highlights were the four black tip reef sharks that slowly circled the area, the huge clouds of thousands of multi-coloured tropical fish and the turtles. The diving fraternity has very firm rules about mingling with marine life, basically you can look but keep your hands to yourself. However, when you’re so close to a turtle that you just have to put your hand out to run a finger down its shell, it’s a woman of strong convictions who can resist. I’m not that girl. The turtle didn’t seem to mind though, I’m not even sure it noticed. I’ll never forget it.

The Facts

Fujairah extends 70km on the Gulf of Oman, its total area covers 1450sq km of mountains, hills, plains and desert. The population is about 100,000.

The climate in Fujairah is semi tropical meaning it’s hot most of the time and rain is rare.

Useful Websites

Fujairah Tourism Bureau

www.fujairah-tourism.ae/

Freestyle Divers

www.freestyledivers.com

Email: freestyle@eim.ae

Located in the grounds of the Royal Beach Hotel, Dibba, boats for divers and snorkellers leave for Dibba Rock three times a day, at 9.30am, 12.30pm and 3.30pm. Freestyle Divers also teach PADI courses. Other dive trips are also offered.

Pavilion Dive Centre

If you want to learn to dive in Dubai then visit Dibba, one option is the Pavilion Dive Centre located in the Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

www.jumeirahbeachhotel.com/dive_centre/dive_centre/