Abu Dhabi Nomads

Tales from the deep

Anna waves from the boat that took her out to dive in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt in this 2007 photo.

Anna Seaman

There is one passion in my life that I know will remain constant. Throughout the ups and downs of loves lost and found, I take comfort in the fact that as soon as I get underwater I will be happy.

I discovered scuba diving when I was 14 years old. Now I am 28 and that means I have spent half my life getting excited about blowing bubbles.

My first dive was in the warm turquoise waters of the Caribbean, and it was like jumping into the pages of a National Geographic magazine. The sea off the coast of Antigua was full of colourful corals, small pretty tropical fish and bigger fish like barracudas and moray eels which I found scary and fascinating at the same time.

I was at the age when I didn’t want to be enthusiastic about anything. I thought my teenage strops and adults’ responses to them were far more interesting than the prospect of scuba diving. But after the first foray I was hooked.

I came back to England and relished in the task of learning my new skill. I became interested in the science, competent at the mathematical side which involved calculating depths and bottom times to work out correct surface intervals and I actually looked forward to taking exams.

In July 1994 I got my qualification. For the next seven years I made diving an absolute must in my diary. I travelled to Cyprus, Malta and even tried a few dive sites in the freezing UK waters before finding my version of paradise — Egypt’s Red Sea coast.

When I started visiting Egypt in 1997 it looked nothing like it did today. Sharm el Sheikh was a small town with a few hotels, an old fashioned souk and not a sniff of the Hard Rock Cafe. My best memory was eating fish freshly caught that day in a restaurant with a corrugated iron roof and rickety garden furniture.

The coral reefs were also pristine. You only had to travel a few metres off the coast and there was a plethora of marine life all living comfortably and it was a pleasure to see.

Now a lot of things have changed. Sharm el Sheikh is a busy tourist resort and you have to travel much further off the coast to find unspoilt dive sites and clear water. But one thing remains the same — my love for diving.

I haven’t been to Sharm since 2000. For the last few years I have preferred to travel further south in Egypt to places like Hurghada and Marsa Alam where the diving is better and the towns are less commercialised. However in just over a week I shall be returning there. I know that I will not be going to the place I left and due to certain last minute holiday changes (caused by the collapse of XL airways) I will be forced to dive only from day boats which will mean not such good quality diving. However, I am really excited. I will complete my 100th dive while I am away and hopefully I will get one more speciality qualification under my belt.

My life has come a long way since teenage angst and the innocence of youth but every time I sink underwater and start hearing the sound of the bubbles around my ears I lose all sense of time and my stresses melt away with the currents. For that at least, I can’t wait.

Flying in private jets spoils the fun of going commercial

Mahmoud Habboush

I was about to board the plane heading to Damascus from Manama. Everything seemed lame and I knew exactly the reason — it was my first trip on a commercial flight after three consecutive trips on Royal Jet’s luxurious planes, accompanying official delegations.

I couldn’t decide throughout the trip from Abu Dhabi to Damascus — which included an unfortunate stop in Manama — whether to simply be grateful for the fact that I had the chance to fly in a private jet and not have to deal with all the lines, security checks, and luggage dragging that most passengers must deal with nowadays, or make the painful comparison between the two experiences.

Accompanying official delegations proved the most fun and relaxing travel experience. All I needed to do was drop my luggage at the airport’s entrance, hand my passport to a PR officer and then move straight to the plane after waiting for some time in an extravagant VIP lounge.

I only booked my flight to Syria three days in advance, which nearly left me no choice of airline, explaining why I was forced to take a connecting flight through Manama instead of a direct flight from Abu Dhabi.

I started to remember my carefree private jet journeys when I had to wait in Bahrain International Airport for one extra hour simply because it took a group of Pakistani pilgrims so long to board. Draped in white Haj cloths, most of the religious travelers were struggling to find their boarding cards, passports or even friends and relatives. Ten or 15 minutes before the original time of my flight some of them were running back through the boarding gate to get a relative who was stuck somewhere in the airport, or that’s what I thought what was happening at the time.

I went to ask an officer at the gate to triple check that it was actually my gate and he confirmed it. Minutes past the original departure time I heard over the PA system that they had changed the boarding gate.

I probably shouldn’t be complaining. Because delays and stuff like that happen. But I was still angry to see how the flight was delayed for a silly reason: because the passengers were not organized enough or, perhaps, didn’t know what they were doing

Nine days later, I received a text message on my mobile phone saying that my return flight was delayed by two hours.

“Goodness! Not again,”I said to myself.

I called the airline and they told me that the original plane had some technical problem and needed to be looked at by a mechanic. At least they found out about the problem before we actually took off, I thought.

The good part of the whole trip was that they upgraded my business class seat to one in first class, and once again I was given the luxurious treatment that almost equaled that of a private jet.

Chai, Chance and Chaos

Anna Seaman

India, the land of mystery, has always attracted me. When I was younger I was fascinated by tales of men called yogis who could raise themselves off the ground and walk barefoot over coals. As a fashion conscious teenager I always wanted brightly coloured clothes with tassels and bells and to drape myself with big gaudy jewellery.

Last year I read a novel which drew me into the world of the people from the slums and this year, with the wealth of Bollywood movies in the Gulf, I became convinced I had to go.

But standing on the train station in Agra I had to really remind myself of that. I had imagined a scene from The Darjeeling Limited and was met with something more like Animal Farm meets Piccadilly Circus.

The milk of human kindness

Rob McKenzie

He was friendly, as farmers often are.

In the Liwa Oasis, on the cusp of the Empty Quarter, my daughter and I were taking roadside pictures of his farm, with its camels, horses, big sheep in an open pen and smaller, floppy-eared sheep in a covered pen. The farmer saw us standing just outside his fence and motioned for us to come in, come in.

He spoke no English, other than to say “English” and shake his head from side to side. He was from Pakistan.

“Peshawar?” I asked, as that is the source of so many Pakistani cabbies in Abu Dhabi.

“Balochistan,” he corrected, placing his roots in his country’s west.

“We are from Canada,” I said slowly.

“Ca-na-da,” he said happily, with the accent on the last syllable.

Single in the homeland

Suryatapa Bhattacharya

In local Indian parlance, they call it the air around you. When you’ve been away from home for a long time, you not only look different, but they believe the air around you changes. So even if you’re trying to fit in, people can simply tell from your presence that you no longer belong.

And there I was, a case of neither here nor there. And to make matters worse, single.