Visiting Abu Dhabi, UAE

I’ve been home for over two months, but am finally ready to post pictures from Abu Dhabi, UAE, where I stopped for a few days, while I was in the neighborhood. The current war put a little damper on my thoughts about visiting the Persian Gulf. My experience suddenly feels a little out of sync with the things people are thinking about the region for. I never even saw anything related to oil. But the reality is two things can be true at the same time and I’m pretty sure life is going on much like what I saw daily in Abu Dhabi, with some bomb scares in between and a few less tourists.

20 years ago I visited Dubai, the bigger showier city/emirate in the United Arab Emirates, a country made up of 7 separately led emirates (“states”?), but I have always been curious about Abu Dhabi to get a broader understanding of the country. The UAE was formed in 1971, when seven emirates  decided to join together. It created one of the fastest-growing countries in the Middle East.

Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the UAE and is the real center of culture and commerce. I think it’s like, Dubai is where people like to party, Abu Dhabi is where they want to live. Fueled by oil wealth, it has grown to be a formidable city with inspiring architecture, great art and a diverse population from throughout the world, especially South Asia. 

I really liked the vibe there. I enjoyed long walks along the corniche and looking out at the Persian Gulf and through the downtown with its bustling sidewalks filled with a vibrant mix of immigrants and lined by stores that reminded me a lot of Queens and Brooklyn. The city is designed with lots of green spaces that each evening fill with families picnicking. I was awed by the soaring new architecture, and pretty impressed by all the investment in the arts. I even chose to spend a day at a falcon hospital to take a deep dive into one Persian Gulf pastime, falcon racing.

I know there is a lot of criticism focused on the immense wealth of these oil rich nations. They build big showy things that seem so over the top. But while visiting Qsar Al Watan, the new government palace, just completed in 2017, I was blown away by its detailed beauty and thought these are the royalty of today. When we go to Europe, we walk through castles, from years ago, built by the rich and powerful of their time. We rarely think deeply about the labor it took to build them and spend more time admiring them. Maybe that is what the Emiratis are creating now. Building beautiful buildings and commissioning great art to last for centuries. (Yes, I would rather live in a world that is more equal, but history shows that might always be more of a dream than reality.)

I wish I was a better writer and could find the right words for all of this. I’m just not sure my words actually say what I mean. Travel has a way for broadening perspective and cracking preconceived thoughts. 

Mostly I want to encourage people to take a leap and visit a place like Abu Dhabi, where travel is easy and some of the sites are quite extraordinary. Maybe it’s what the future looks like? Or at the very least see the new buildings that generations from now people will visit to admire and think about the past.