Travel: There's more to Dubai than skyscrapers and shopping

Dubai has its adventurous side, with extreme activities and white knuckle experiences a-plenty. Indeed, you could cram in day after day of everything from dune-bashing in the desert to sky-diving and skiing, and camel polo and kayaking in the heart of the city.

A destination like Dubai is not normally my cup of tea: I naturally veer towards characterful, crumbling old cities, ramshackle rural villages and endless acres of lush, green countryside. However, I’ve learnt that you can gain so much in travel by experiencing worlds outside your default settings and comfort zones.

Dubai is certainly that, with its gobsmacking array of towers and gleaming mammoth shopping malls, its outstandingly swish and luxurious hotels, restaurants and bars, and culture fascinatingly so far removed from our own.

An excellent and exhilarating introduction to Dubai was provided for me in the form of a 20-minute seaplane tour. The little 10-seater Cessna gathered speed along the Persian Gulf waters before lifting up, transforming from boat to plane and gliding past many of the principal sights, such as the Buj Khalifa, the world’s highest building, the Burj Al Arab ‘7 star’ hotel and artificial island archipelagos The World and The Palm Jumeirah. An aerial tour like this instantly gives you a handle of what constitutes Dubai, which is in essence a surprisingly small group of glistening towers surrounded by seemingly endless desert. We passed row after row of neat little box-like houses and their bright blue little swimming pools: it looked supremely, and surprisingly, suburban.

Slightly more relaxing was a spot of kayaking at JA Jebel Ali Golf Resort, about a 15-minute drive from Dubai Marina: paddling amongst the deep blue waters under an even bluer sky surrounded by skyscrapers is certainly a change from the usual kayaking destinations in Europe.

Dubai offers plenty of adventures in dining too, whether you want an electric al fresco Asian fusion experience with spectacular views over the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Fountain at Zeta Restaurant at The Address Downtown; or perhaps try Le Rivage French-style brasserie featuring live cooking stations. Another good option is the fabulous Italian diner along The Walk at JBR at Sapori di Bice.

For the ultimate luxury try new kid on the block The Rib Room at Jumeirah Zabeel Saray. It’s a stunning, dusky dark restaurant. However, bankruptcy is almost certainly to follow by coming here unless you’re a high net worth banker or somesuch. For example, there’s a 300 gramme steak on the menu coming in at an eye-watering 795 dirhams (£138.36), yet to be fair the above steak is described as a Master Kobe Wagyu Pure Breed 99% Pure Blood Line AA9+ 500 days grain-fed Certificate of Privilege piece of meat, and certainly tasted a cut above the usual beef I get at Tesco.

With virtually every luxury hotel brand installed in Dubai now, and even self-styled 7-star hotels for those people for whom 5-star is not enough, accommodation doesn’t come particularly cheap here. The JA Oasis Beach Tower is a good choice, however, as for the price of a room in many pricier hotels in other cities (around £200) you get a whole apartment for two people to yourself, with stunning views from the wall-to-ceiling windows.

A glimpse of the Dubai of old was provided on a walking tour of Old Dubai, organised by local tour operator Arabian Adventures. On the tour, the gleaming modern city was swiftly replaced by a vibrant neighbourhood of spice souks, abras and dhows, and the Bastakiya area, home to the Dubai Museum, which is located inside the city’s oldest building, Al Fahidi Fort, built in 1787. At the heart of Old Dubai is the Creek, the source from which the whole city originally developed, and mentioned in the first known writings about the city, in 1587.

I had to keep pinching myself that I wasn’t in England when I visited the Dubai Polo and Equestrian Club. With its refined clubhouse, stately cream marquees, trim players in starched jodhpurs and immaculately manicured pitches, it certainly seemed rather more home counties than Middle East.

I tried my hand at the most peculiar sport of camel polo here, and it was a pretty odd sensation careering around the pitch on one of these huge humped beasts. Fortunately, having zero experience, I was provided with a rider who sat up front navigating, while I guided the ball into the goal. It was quite a job simply hanging on as the animals raced at top speeds and shook me around more than the best rollercoaster ride at M&D’s.

The highlight of this trip for me was a trip to the desert, an awesome natural wonder and such a huge contrast to the city. Staying in a camp decorated in a traditional Beduin style with more rugs on offer than a branch of Allied carpets, we enjoyed traditional dances and a feast that included camel stew. I met a Beduin trader and although he spoke of a nomadic childhood of living in tents and traversing the sands on a camel, his current look, a snazzy suit, sunglasses and a top-of-the-range 4x4 somewhat dispelled the wonder a bit. However, it was completely magical to later be sitting by a bonfire watching shooting stars in the vast Arabian sky.

The sleepy start to the next day was abruptly halted when I took the drivers’ seat of a dune buggy, a basic two-seater jeep capable of haring up and down huge banks of sand. Charging up and down the huge dunes and tearing along the endless trails was fantastic fun, but there was no chance to relax with wide thoroughfares swiftly morphing into the top of a perillously thin dune with worrying regularity.

If you’d asked me to provide a wishlist of my top 100 trips around the world, an adventure weekend in Dubai would never be on it. But do you know, it really was fantastic fun, and I’d do it again like a shot.

Factbox

Dubai Tourism: www.dubaitourism.ae; return economy flights from Heathrow with Emirates (www.emirates.com) start from £361; Seawings Dubai (www.seawings.ae) offers 40-minute seaplane flights around Dubai from £265; Heritage overnight desert safari through Platinum Heritage (www.platinumhertiage.com), £160; camel polo available through Gulf Ventures (www.gulfventures.com), £120; JA Jebel Ali Golf Resort (www.jaresortshotels.com); Zeta Restaurant at The Address Downtown (www.theaddress.com); La Rivage (http://www.jaresortshotels.com); Sapori di Bice (www.saporidibice.com); The Rib Room at Jumeirah Zabeel Saray (www.jumeirah.com); Arabian Adventures (www.arabian-adventures.com); JA Oasis Beach Tower (www.jaresortshotels.com)