The Dubai you don’t know
Beyond the glitz and glamour, Sue Bennett discovers another side to this Persian Gulf city.
It’s a trick question. As I tap through holiday photos on the phone, I ask, ‘‘Guess where I went?’’ The answer’s always the same: Venice. But they are wrong. The boats, waterside walkways, and timber piles beside ferry stations may be reminiscent of the European City of Canals but the truth is much more surprising: Dubai.
Traditional, historic, and vehicle-free are not terms normally associated with the glitz and glamour, the towering highrises, and gigantic shopping malls of this Middle Eastern city. But step beyond the luxe and the simply astounding, and find something much more authentic.
Al Fahidi historical district – also, rather confusingly, known by its older name of Bastikiya – sits alongside Dubai Creek, not far from its entrance into the Persian Gulf. In this sprawling city of 2.4 million, it’s as central as anywhere. Even if it’s not on the locals’ speed dial. There’s no grand entrance to swing into so, arriving from the airport, the driver kindly skips off to find my hotel in the labyrinth of narrow, pedestrian-only laneways. Like the man who picks me up for the return trip two days later, he returns muttering darkly about ‘‘not knowing this place existed’’.
For the next 48 hours, I immerse myself in old Dubai on foot and by ferry. No car required. It starts within a few steps, navigating a winding path through the sometimes wide, sometimes narrow stone alleyways between ochrecoloured buildings, until I reach XVA Art Hotel, one of two hotels in Al Fahidi.
Beyond its timber-framed entrance are three shady courtyards, each framed by a raised and covered walkway with doors to guestrooms. Of classic Arabic architecture, the design protects against the harsh climate and gives privacy.
My room, No 8, has four-metrehigh, thick white-washed walls with alcoves, polished stone floor, and a hefty padlocked door. At night, light through the ornate lattice work of the small, ceilinghigh windows throws artistic shadows across the walls.
Climbing the steep steps to the flat, first floor roof, the view is spectacular and dominated by the historic district’s wind towers, or wind catchers. Designed to trap the cooler breezes at this height, they force the chillier air downward into buildings.
XVA Hotel has three. Their timber crossbars could be draped in wet cloths to further reduce the temperature, but it’s January and I don’t even turn on the air conditioning. It’s pleasantly hot during the day but jumper weather in the evenings and a perfect time to visit Dubai.
It makes walking easy, and a good place to start is Al Fahidi Fort, home to Dubai Museum, and said to be the city’s oldest building. Over two days, I never quite get to grips with the district’s layout of multiple laneways, squares with a handful of entrances and exits (but, direction challenged, nor do I try very hard) and the creek – more of a wide estuary at this location – is an easy landmark.
Dubai’s existence and prosperity is interwoven with the creek and today it’s plied by large, wooden trading vessels and, crisscrossed by traditional motorised abras, or ferries. For 1 dirham (36c), an abra ride is Dubai’s top, step-back-in-time experience.
Strolling alongside the waterway, to the left is the Ruler’s Court, a stately building dedicated to Dubai’s legal affairs and with showy lush green lawns, but I cut away through the textile souk, or market, resisting good-natured appeals to buy ‘‘the best, cheapest pashminas’’. The heart of the market is a wide, timber-covered passageway but it’s early in the day so most shops are closed behind big wooden doors.
A passageway, just one person wide in parts, leads to the Hindu temple complex. Frantically busy, it’s perfumed and vividly coloured with floral offerings on sale at tiny