Around Middle East: Part One

In which I got readied for the Arab land

When I clicked this photo on 18th May, 2019 from the Etihad flight on the way back to Mumbai from my Europe vacation, I knew that I would come back to this Arab land some day. Either I would choose it as an extended holiday from another Europe vacation or as a Christmas holiday. Little did I knew that I would book it for an extended weekend! Read along for my shortest trip outside India. The E-visa process was easy, only the scanned copy of passport was to be submitted with a passport size scanned photo. And I got the E-visa mail just a week before the tour. Other things like hotel reservations, flight bookings, etc was taken care of by Veena World. I purchased the AED (Arab Emirates Dirhams), foreign currency is a must. 

And I had to get the stamped bank statement of last six months. It must have atleast 70k balance. We got a WhatsApp message from our Tour Manager Sahil Patil. It elaborated on the reporting time on 11th Dec, airlines and baggage details, weather, dress code for the mosque, etc. One duffel trolley bag and one handbag was my luggage. I always pack as much as I can pick up on my own. Well the packing style varies from person to person. The most important thing to be packed was the PASSPORT. For the first time in forever, I had literally done the packing on the day of my flight. I had taken WFH on the very same day. I gave one set of passport and VISA copies, flight details, hotel details and itinerary to Mummy. So in this way I got ready for the next 4 days to make new friends, get to know more about the places I would visit, capture memories in my camera and my eyes and have loads of fun.

Departure from CSMIA (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai): 11.12.2024

My passport was checked and I entered the Gate 2. Here I met my first friend on tour, Neha Raut. We queued up for the boarding pass of Akasa Airways. Our visa, return ticket and bank statement were checked and a document verified sticker was pasted on our passports. I collected the boarding pass and checked in my luggage. Post that I met Sahil after four years. He was our tour manager for the Imagica Women's Day on 7th March 2020. Since then I had been bugging him on WhatsApp for information of other countries which were on my plans. We got name tags and passport pouch from him. Here I met Ratan Salvi and Sheetal Nikam. We proceeded for the Security Check and then the Immigration Counter. To my surprise, there was no queue at all at the Immigration counters! The whole process from check in luggage to passing the immigration took only 30 minutes. We walked further to see the whole group dressed in yellow. 

Neha and I went to McDonald's for having snacks. I ordered fries as usual and muffin. She ordered fries and burger. We were so engrossed in talking that I forgot to click the food photo. Neha is an advertising manager and Asian Paints happen to be one of her clients. We left McD and walked to the Gate 67 traversing through multiple arrow directions. Since I had taken WFH today, I got busy working from airport on my mobile. Priti Yamdagni was conducting tour member name exercise, of which I remembered only MJ(Manisha Joshi) and MS(Manisha Sonar). Boarding started at 5:30pm. My seat was 13C, aisle seat which I hate. My neighbour was Shobha Shetty, doctor by profession. She has joined this tour with her friend, Priya. The QP 584 Akasa Air flight took off after 6pm. I assumed to see the million lights view of Aamchi Mumbai and bid goodbye to India. While Neha and Shobha were talking, I dozed off for most of the journey. We were served food box having a cold burger, french beans and cold potato wedges! I didn't eat it at all. I had hot chocolate, much needed in the flight. We were flying to Abu Dhabi, the capital of United Arab Emirates. The travel time was three hours and the time difference is one and half hours behind IST. We landed on Zayed International airport, Abu Dhabi at around 8pm UAE time. Now onwards the time I mention will be local UAE time. We assembled at a point and Sahil gave further instructions. 

We walked to the immigration counter, traversing through escalators and reached there at 8:30pm. We queued up at the immigration counter and got our passports stamped. We proceeded towards the luggage belt, picked our belongings, had a washroom break and walked towards the arrival gate for boarding our bus. We were welcomed by Chandrabhushan from the Royal Arabian Destination Management. 

We drove towards our dinner location, India Palace restaurant, Deerfield Mall and reached there at 10pm. 

I had dinner with Neha, MJ and Swati Shah. The hariyali tikki was so tasty. MJ was sharing stories from her teaching career. Done with the dinner and talks till 10:30pm, we drove to our Hotel Hampton by Hilton near Dubai Airport. It was a two hour journey from one Emirates airport to another. On the way, Chandu Sir provided instructions in Hinglish. Sahil announced the room sharing list, the most surprising element on a women's special tour, unless ofcourse you have booked single occupancy. My roommate was Kshipra Bidye. We reached the hotel at 12:30am and I had a flashback of the south east women's tour of 2022, post which I skipped women's tour till date. The list of roommates allocation is age wise. But now ladies meet on the airport and decide on the room sharing. This very thing made me share room with a 70 year arrogant old woman. I had been very considerate that time, turned out to be my mistake for not speaking it out. Should it repeat today, I would not want to end up sharing room with someone I am not comfortable. All this was pondering my mind while I took my luggage from the bus and reached the reception of hotel with fingers crossed. It turned out to be that Kshipra had paired up with Swati. So then I had to pair up with Swati's roommate. It was really nice to have Samidha Darvotcar (she is an HR, from Goa) as my roommate. So relieved! Our room number was 310. 

There was a Holy Quran (English version) kept on the table. We freshened up, unpacked, tried our luck on the universal adaptor and then charged mobiles with the USBs and dozed off.