Dubai

Burj Khalifa in person: too tall, does not look real

On the return flight from New York to Bangalore we had an 8-hour layover in Dubai. I had been told that US visa holders get free transit, but we ended up paying for the on-arrival visa. Sharang, Vibin, and I took a cab out of the airport. You have a few hours, you make a few decisions.

We saw the Burj Khalifa. In person it does not look real. It is too tall. The scale does not compute. The Dubai Frame was visible from the road on the way to Dubai Mall, rising out of the city beside the highway. We did not go in but you do not need to stand inside it to understand what it is trying to say. Dubai Mall is enormous in the way that few places in the world are enormous. Not just large but deliberately, insistently scaled beyond what seems reasonable. We walked through it, ate at a KFC because we were hungry and it was there, and left to the airport.

The short flight from Dubai to Bangalore was four hours. We landed, said our goodbyes. Sharang and Vibin headed to Coimbatore. I went home. End of the first trip.