While I was away (Part II)

The second part of our 10 day trip took us to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Did you know that there are seven Emirates making up the UAE? Did you know that of the seven Emirates only three produce oil? Of the three that produce oil Abu Dhabi is the one that accounts for 94% of the total oil production in this country while Dubai produces 4% with the balance of 2% being produced in Sharjah? Well now you know!!

Abu Dhabi is the capital of UAE by virtue of contributing 94% of the total oil revenue of this country and is the seat of the UAE government. It is a relatively new city having risen from its humble beginnings as a desert town 40 short years ago thanks in part to its vast reservoirs of oil sitting under its desert environment and estimated to last another 70 years at a production rate of 3 million barrels per day.

UAE has a total population of about 9.5 Million inhabitants and comprises of 600,000 indigenous people called the Emiratis who control the economy and own all the businesses and factors of production. The workforce of 8.9 Million is provided by people from across the world and from every conceivable continent that drive the economy with the vast majority of non-skilled labor coming from Asia.

All this information was given to us by a very knowledgeable tour guide originally from Sri Lanka and who has lived in the Emirates for the last 15 years.

The contrast between Delhi and Abu Dhabi starts at the airport. Whereas we had obtained our valid e-visas for both countries in Kenya, in India it took a minimum of 10 minutes for them to process your entry into the country while in Abu Dhabi this was done within a minute. The queues at the exchange bureaus at the airport in India need no repeating and the process in Abu Dhabi look literally seconds and with a promise that your remaining dirhams would be reconverted back to the original currency at the same rate on your way out of the country so that you did not suffer exchange losses. From entering the airport terminal to boarding our bus in India it had taken well over 4 hours while in Abu Dhabi this was accomplished within 45 minutes.

While infrastructurally the two countries are almost similar with wide highways and infrastructural development projects ongoing at a frenetic pace, the roads, streets and sidewalks of Abu Dhabi are scrupulously clean and free of congestion. Perhaps the fact that we arrived on a Friday the traditional day of rest in this predominantly Muslim country may have worked in our favor but this was F1 weekend and hordes of tourists were expected into the country. This is clearly a well-planned city unlike Delhi which seems to be two different cities of New Delhi and Old Delhi one representing order and sanity the other representing chaos and anarchy.

Day 1 was an exciting day of sightseeing and included a desert safari complete with a session of dune bashing, that insane sport where you follow each other in a convoy of fast moving 4x4 wheel drive Land Cruisers across the sand dunes in an exciting session of sliding up and down those gigantic sand dunes……something not for the faint hearted! Thanks to one of the passengers in the vehicle that I was in who succumbed to motion sick we got lost in the desert for at least 15 minutes and with a driver who spoke nothing else but Arabic we had no idea what they were conversing with his colleagues on phone as we wandered about looking for the rest of the convoy whom we found at the venue of the evening dinner among the sand dunes and loud piped music to our huge relief.

A delicious dinner under the clear desert skies followed and was finished off by an exotic belly dancer from Ukraine doing her thing to thunderous applause from the large crowd of tourists present. The desert safari is a must do experience for anyone visiting the Arabian Peninsula countries for the sheer exhilaration of speeding through desert dunes followed by an authentic dinner under the stars.

But we were here for Formula 1 the last race of the F1 season and which promised to be the culmination of an epic battle between two rivals that ironically race for the same team so as to determine the winner of the 2016 season. The event was at Yas Marina Circuit on Yas Island a reclaimed island that is now a popular recreation venue hosting the F1 circuit, Ferrari World, Yas Water World, multiple upmarket hotels, the Yas Links Golf Club and Yas Mall the largest mall in Abu Dhabi amongst others. Yas Island attracted 25 Million visitors in 2015 just so that you can get some perspective on what good planning to attract visitors can do for a country and its economy.

I am not a particularly great fan of F1 but some among the group are diehard fanatics and do not miss an opportunity to catch up on the action on their TV screens while in Kenya. They had managed to convince a good number of us to experience F1 racing in the raw. In addition these events normally go on long into the night with an excellent after show concert and this night promised to be a thrilling one with a live Lionel Richie concert at the adjoining Ferrari World open air stadium which to me was the highlight of the Abu Dhabi visit.

Let me confess that my F1 experience is better in the comfort of my living room because it gives you different perspectives to the same race from the starting grid, to the pit stops, any accidents, to the tight turns and the straights all captured by a battery of cameras both on the ground, in the air and on some selected drivers helmets also.

The live experience is a bit of an anticlimax because you stay in one position as defined by your ticket and then watch the cars passing by at blurring speeds. Thankfully a well-positioned large screen TV close to where we were seated allowed us to follow the race in real time much as we would do from the comfort of our homes! However the overall experience of a live event including the atmosphere, the high pitched sounds of high performance motors, the excitement, the cheering crowds, the fireworks display, the aircraft displays, the adrenaline etc cannot detract from the fact that it was a once in a lifetime experience and definitely time well spent for the qualifying and final rounds of the last race of the 2016 F1 season.

So there you have it folks, my experiences during a recent trip to India and UAE are now permanently on paper, but before I sign off it would be unfair to forget those who planned and made the trip so memorable for the 31 of us on that trip.

To DGI and EKG (you know yourselves) your planning, frequent feedback and patience over the months that we planned the trip was a breath of fresh air and you are recognized amongst us all as having been invaluable to the overall success of the trip. To the 31 souls that made the trip (again you know yourselves) we made new friendships and alliances that cannot be taken for granted and which we need to cultivate and exploit for our future well-being and peace of mind.

Finally we need to keep encouraging each other in our resolve towards attaining better health for ourselves and our families and be ambassadors to society in regards to matters of health.

And let us also not forget that what happened in India and UAE stays there!!

While I was away:

I am back to Nanyuki after a wonderful two weeks break away from work. I have come back to find that KFC is in town as is Java House at the brand spanking new Cedar Mall with other tenants continuing their fit our work to open as soon as they are done. East or west home is always best they say.

There is also a new Gulf Energy petrol station at the junction to my house that almost made me miss my turn off that was under construction when I left but is now open for business, and they say that progress happens slowly in Africa!

My sojourn while I was on leave took me to New Delhi in India and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Both are the capital cities of their respective countries but they are as different as chalk from cheese. I studied in India but haven’t been there in almost 30 years so this was a nostalgic visit that brought memories flooding back of my student years despite New Delhi being hundreds of kilometers from Poona (or Pune) where I studied in the 1980’s.

We were a group of 31 men a majority being in their mid 40’s to late 50’s while the minority were in their 30’s and one gentleman in his late 70’s. It was a diverse group cobbled together by their love of golf and travel. Several in the group had been to India before either as students or visitors but for the majority it was their first time.

It has never been more difficult to travel to India than at present thanks to Prime Minister Modi’s unexpected decision a few weeks prior to our arrival to demonetize the INR 1,000.00 and INR 500.00 currency notes in a bid to tame black money and force those holding the cash in their mattresses to surrender it through the banking system in exchange for the new INR 2,000.00 notes. These two denominations represent almost 80% of the cash in circulation so in this country of 1.3 Billion people this was a logistical nightmare however you looked at it.

In addition no businesses were accepting these demonetized currency notes and as the ATM machines had not been programmed to accept the new notes the only place to exchange them was at the banks where unending queues of impatient Indians were the order of the day.

There was no respite for us tourists either and we were forced to endure a 3 hour queue at the few banks and exchange bureaus at the airport to convert the maximum allowed of the equivalent of $100.00 (INR 6,000.00 after taxes!!). It was at least a 7-10 minutes process per person something that would ordinarily take a minute at most in any other country thanks to the infamous Indian bureaucracy that I had forgotten about in the intervening 30 year period.

Our agony didn’t end there either as the hotels were not exchanging or accepting foreign currencies either as the priority was for the new currency notes to go through the commercial banking system to be available to the suffering local populace desperate to exchange their useless currency notes before they became worthless pieces of paper.

After one exhausted their INR 6,000.00 the only options left was to use your debit or credit card (when they worked) to settle your local transactions as well as do your shopping or in the alternative hope that someone among the group was willing to convert some USD into INR for you. Simple payments that we always take for granted to pay for your taxi fare, or a meal or a drink or make a tip now took on gargantuan proportions thanks to the cash crunch. Talk of having money in your pocket but being unable to use it?

One of our purposes of visiting New Delhi was to take advantage of the excellent medical facilities available in that country and undergo full medical check up’s and this we did at the very busy Apollo Indraprastha Hospital thankfully located quite close to our hotel. Theirs is a model of efficiency from the registration and reception right through the various stages of check up by various specialists including dentists, cardiologists, opticians, general practitioners, podiatrists, nutritionists, dieticians doctors that check your lung capacity, those that take chest XRAY’s a ECG readings to those that check your stress levels and so on.

The full spectrum of medical tests is carried out within a day efficiently managed by a squadron of pretty executives everyone carrying their personal files with their doctors reports which you submit at the end of the day for the final processing and then follow up visit a day or two later to see the various specialists who then discuss any issues with you. In and out in two days and with your sack of prescriptions in hand something that is likely to take several days here in Kenya and at a fraction of the cost to boot!!

Like any car that you take to the garage that always has an issue that needs repairing we all had medical issues that were revealed to us through the plethora of tests that we underwent and we were each given sage advise by the doctors and specialists along with strict instructions for diet change and exercise for those that were considered overweight by the dietician and nutritionist.

The highlight of the visit to India however was a visit to the Taj Mahal located in Agra the journey taken aboard the Gatiman Express train that takes 1 hour 50 minutes to cover the 225 kilometers distance. The story of the Taj Mahal is a story well documented so I will not dwell on the details but it covers an area of 94 acres and for a building well over 350 years it is in remarkably good condition and a labor of love as we found out. The postcard pictures don’t quite capture the architectural beauty of this wonder of the world and is a must visit for anyone touring India if for nothing else to marvel at the intricate craftsmanship and beautiful lawns of the well landscaped gardens.

(To be continued)