Continued from my last Post Dubai Frame and Museum of the Future

I always imagined a Souk to be an ancient large open air market – noisy and bustling with people selling their wares. The Souks in Dubai, however, were a modern version of traditional Souks with small shops lined on either side and even air conditioned to beat the heat of Dubai. A google map search informed me that there was a Dubai Souk in my own town of Hyderabad – Never heard of it and must explore it on my return.

The Dubai Grand Souk and the Gold Souk are located in Dera in Old Dubai, along side the Dubai Creek . Add the nearby Fahidi fort and Museum and Complete the day with a trip on an Abra ( boat ) across the Creek. The Souk was some distance away from our hotel on the Dubai Marina and an expensive taxi ride took us onto onto the the Sheikh Zayed road for the nth time in a few days. Once past the Dubai Frame we got onto Baniyas road which runs along the length of the Dubai creek past the Dubai Wharf till we reached the Grand Souk.

The Grand Souk is divided into smaller sections like the Spice Souk, Utensils souk and and so on. I had read about tourists being harassed or peddled fake goods though I must say we did not face any such harassment. Some aggressive selling but done in a very dignified way. Shopping was not on our mind and as we we walked through the Spice Souq, saffron caught Malati’s attention. After a little bit of banter with the smaller spice shops we went into a large air conditioned store – Store yes! not a traditional souk. Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world and is a luxury element in Indian cooking. Greatly adds to the color and flavour of a biryani or a traditional Indian dessert like “payasam” or a “gulab jamun”. We had a very informative discourse from the enthusiastic salesman about the finer points of Iranian, Spanish and Indian(Kashmiri) saffron. That nearly all the saffron is produced by Iran but the highest quality is of the Kashmiri Saffron which is not sold in India. We however settled for a few grams of Iranian and Spanish Saffron (strands would be a better way to quantify the measly amount ) which set me back by quite a few Dirham ! We also picked up some Afghani dried fruits as we walked on through the Utensils Souk towards the Gold Souk.

The gold souk is a large street lined with shops selling gold jewellery and precious stones .The market was very busy and crowds did not in any way reflect the fact this market sold only an expensive commodity called gold – The low prices of gold and jewellery attract large crowds of people looking for a bargain. Shops were thronged with people and enthusiastic salesman were soliciting prospective customers. I wondered whether these were tourists like myself or genuine buyers. We admired the wide range of jewellery on display and the sheer size made me wonder whether the jewellery should be classified as ornaments or body Armour ! needless to say I put on my mental calculator and realized that gold and jewellery is 15-25 percent cheaper than India but strict custom duties based on age, gender, value and dutiable limits now make it less attractive than in the years before unless you are a smuggler by profession!

Overall I was quite disappointed with the whole visit to the Souk. It was like visiting a crowded small town market back home. Nevertheless if you are interested in shopping for gold or have a great interest in jewellery and gemstones you must make a trip to the Gold Souk .It is always great pleasure to interact with jewelers and compare rates back home.

We walked out of the Gold Souk and along the creek to the Abra (country boat) boarding point for a cruise across the creek but sadly ran out of time as we had to be at the Mall of the Emirates to join my grandson watch the Penguin Show. Why on earth would any one want to bring penguins from Antarctica to the desert of Dubai ? And that is the essence of Dubai – Replicate the ” Best in class” infrastructure and recreate them to an even higher standard – whether it was the Dubai Frame, the Torus shaped Museum of the Future, The Burj Khalifa or the many theme parks and entertainment zones! And on that note we ended our trip to Dubai and headed back home.