Dubai beyond the skyline

Dubai is easy to summarise and very easy to get wrong. The towers photograph well and take about a day to exhaust; everything that makes the city worth a second visit sits at ground level, or an hour inland, or on a wooden boat crossing a creek for one dirham. Here is the version of Dubai we actually recommend.

Start where the city started: the Creek

Before the skyline there was the water. Take an abra — the low wooden ferries that have crossed Dubai Creek for a century — from Bur Dubai to Deira, and spend a morning in the spice and gold souks on the far bank. Then walk Al Fahidi, the restored coral-and-gypsum quarter of wind towers and shaded lanes, and have Emirati food at a courtyard house rather than a hotel buffet.

It takes three hours and reframes everything you see afterwards.

The desert, properly

The Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve covers about five per cent of the emirate and is the reason to stay a night inland. Go for the wildlife rather than the dune-bashing: Arabian oryx reintroduced from near-extinction, sand gazelle at dawn, and a silence that is genuinely startling after the city.

• Falconry at sunrise — the one activity worth setting an alarm for.
• Camel trekking at first light, when the dunes are still cold and lilac.
• Dinner under the stars, well away from any generator.

Give Dubai three days and it is a skyline. Give it five and it is a coastline, a desert, a creek and a very old trading town.

Our Gulf editor

Alserkal Avenue and the art city

In a converted marble factory complex in Al Quoz, Alserkal Avenue has become the most serious contemporary art district on the Arabian Peninsula: two dozen galleries, an independent cinema, a concert space and the kind of coffee that would pass in Melbourne. Go on a Saturday, allow three hours, and eat in the neighbourhood.

The water, which is the real luxury

Dubai’s beaches are absurdly good and chronically underrated by visitors who spend their days in malls. The public stretches at Kite Beach and La Mer are excellent; the hotel beaches of Jumeirah and the Palm are calmer. Between November and April the sea sits around 24°C and the afternoons are perfect.

One boat trip worth taking

A dhow out past the Palm at dusk gives you the skyline from the only angle that flatters it — low, distant and backlit. Two hours, no music, ideally a Thursday.

Eating, away from the towers

The best meals in Dubai are not in the tallest rooms. Jumeirah’s Lebanese institutions, the Keralan canteens of Karama, the Iranian bakeries of Satwa and the Emirati kitchens of Al Fahidi will tell you more about the city than any tasting menu. Book the tasting menu too — but on the second night.

A rule that has never failed us here: if the menu is in three languages and the room is full of families at ten at night, sit down.

A day inland: Hatta

Ninety minutes east, where the emirate reaches into the Hajar mountains, Hatta is the antidote to everything Dubai is accused of being. There is a turquoise reservoir you can kayak, a restored heritage village of stone and palm, hiking trails marked by colour, and air several degrees cooler than the coast. Go on a weekday, leave at seven, and be back for dinner.

If you would rather have culture than mountains, Abu Dhabi is the same distance in the other direction: the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque fill a day comfortably, and the drive along the coast road is genuinely beautiful in winter light.

Souks, not malls

Dubai’s malls are efficient, air-conditioned and interchangeable with malls anywhere. The souks are not. The gold souk in Deira still trades by weight and daily spot price; the spice lanes behind it sell saffron, dried limes and frankincense by the scoop; and the textile souk on the Bur Dubai side is where tailors buy. Haggling is expected, cheerful and quick — start at about sixty per cent and settle in three moves.

Practical notes

• When to go: November to March. April and October are warm but manageable; June to September is 45°C and best spent elsewhere.
• Getting around: the metro is fast, spotless and covers the spine of the city; taxis are inexpensive. A hire car only makes sense for the desert reserve.
• Fridays: the weekend is Saturday–Sunday, but Friday midday prayers still slow the city. Plan a long lunch.
• Dress: relaxed at the beach and in hotels, modest in the souks and older neighbourhoods. Shoulders and knees covered is the simple rule.

Where to stay

Split the trip. Two nights on the water, one night in the desert, and — if the budget allows it — a final night somewhere the city can be admired rather than navigated. The three addresses below cover all three moods; check availability early for the desert lodge, which has very few rooms.