7 days

in a seven day period we were:

-walking around in the valley of the kings in egypt,

-skiing at a 12.1 million square foot indoor mall, and shopping at the "global village" in dubai

-shopping in the real india, where it is only a matter of time before a stranger smears something colorful on your face.

the contrast between the locations was so fun to experience in such a short amount of time.

valley of the kings.

i am hooked on egypt. i felt like i was walking into a tale from 1001 arabian knights when we were at the valley of the kings. no cameras are allowed so i had to sneak this with my phone. white sand hills with tall narrow entrances going down to the tombs. i cannot imagine what discovering this place would have been like, my heart pounds just thinking about it.

dubai.

dubai is home to the biggest, best, first, largest, and most ridiculous of just anything there is.

walking around in dubai felt like lego land and disneyland, with really friendly people waiting to help you around every corner. we were slothful and gluttonous on our visit there. we indulged in american chain restaurants and brands of toiletries that we recognized. we ate an entire dozen of krispy kreme doughnuts. dubai is all about having as many choices as you possibly can. we ate at mall food courts for a few days and there were so many choices that we ended up getting something from a few different places each time because we couldn't decide. dubai does that to you, it give you so many options that you end up with one of each. capitalism at its finest. i didn't take too many pictures, and it was hazy the whole time we were there so i couldn't get any good pictures of the skyline, but it felt like toyland. we went for a drive on the palm islands and were so blown away by the scale, it is huge.

skiing more was one of our new years resolutions and we thought we would start it off dubai-style by skiing at the indoor mall. I haven't been skiing since i was ten and naively thought i could handle it. wrong. we jumped off the lift and went down the huge hill. i swear i had my feet in a v the whole time trying to stop but i took off like lighting zooming past everybody like an unstoppable screaming flailing fool until i got to the bottom. the thing about this all being in a mall is that everybody can see you. at the bottom of the hill there is a window to a restaurant. i was sure i was going to fly all the way down and smack into the glass causing the people on the other side to choke on their chili's fajitas. somehow i stopped in time. needless to say, i spent the rest of the time on the kiddie hill that i neglected to warm up on before my near death run down the steep hill. i have some work to do when i get home, i am going to enroll in a skiing class for uncoordinated beginning adults. oh, and you can scuba dive in one of the malls there too.

everything in dubai is a "city" or a "land" or a "world". there are places like "internet city" "dubai land" "global village". global village is like a fair every night. they have shopping areas set up for most of the countries east of Europe, where you can buy goods that they make or sell in that respective country. Most of the stuff was junk, but there was some fun stuff too. over all though, we felt that "global village" embodies what dubai is all about. they bring everything to you in dubai so that you don't have to go anywhere else to get anything and everything your little heart desires.

india.

we didn't initially plan on coming to india. we were in dubai, and flights from dubai to india were so cheap, we had to. we love india, and knowing that it was so in reach made it feel like a giant magnet was pulling us there. we were here four years ago at exactly this time. we decided is was a great place to go while things run their course in egypt, and then we are heading back to the middle east.