We are a family of 3 (2 Adults and a 5-year-old kid) and we recently toured Dubai. I am sharing my dubai traveling experience here, hoping that it could benefit someone like you in the future.

## 1. Pre Planning the Itinerary
We picked the month of November to visit Dubai, because;
- It's the end of summer, hence the heat is somewhat manageable.
- It's the start of travel season, so less crowd at attractions.
- The hotels were cheaper than the peak season rates.

Once the dates are confirmed, next thing was to shortlist the attractions/places that we wanted to visit and then bookmark the places in Google Maps like below.

![Dubai map](/img/dubai-map.png)

Bookmarking places like this helped us in finding a hotel that is closer or at a good distance from all the places we wanted to see. Since ours is a family trip with a kid, we prioritized places that had less adventure. Here's a list of places that we went.

- Day 1: Warner Bros World | Abu Dhabi _(needs at least 5 hours to enjoy)_
- Day 2: Burj Khalifa / Dubai Mall / Aquarium
- Day 3: Desert Safari _(starts at 2:00 PM in the noon and finishes at 9:00 PM in the night)_
- Day 4: Lego Land
- Day 5: Emirates Mall / Miracle Garden / Global Village _(lot of walking to be done. Better to visit after 4 PM, so stay at the mall till evening)_
- Day 6: View at the Palm / Marina walk / Dubai Garden Glow
- Day 7: Dolphin show / Old Dubai

## 2. Booking flight tickets

We booked flight tickets on Emirates airlines. We bought the tickets first because it is needed to get the Dubai visitor visa. Also, make sure to book as early as possible and plan to travel on non weekend days (Tuesday for example), to get a cheaper flight tickets.

And, if you are planning to visit _Yas Island theme parks_, I'd recommend to either plan it at start of the trip / or end of the trip and directly fly to / fly out of Abu Dhabi in Etihad airlines. This way, you will save on taxi charge / travel time in traveling between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

## 3. Getting a Dubai tourist Visa

Getting the Tourist visa was an online process - no need to visit the Embassy in person. [Just apply online](https://uaevisaonline.ae/eligible-countries/dubai-visa-for-indians/), upload the required documents and your visa will be ready in a day.

The airlines that you booked your flight tickets provides a Visa service for a fee (Emirates does). But I contacted a travel agent in Dubai who helped me to get the visitor visa in one day. The visitor visa is a separate document and not printed on the Passports (unlike the US visas). So I took a print out of the Visa and carried it with me while traveling.

## 4. Booking a Hotel / Stay

When selecting a hotel, I looked for the following criteria:

- _affordable_ - places near the down town area were obviously overpriced. So, I picked a place near the airport and across the Dubai creek, in Wasl district.
- _accessible_ - I planned to use Dubai metro. So I searched for places  that are in walkable distance from a metro station.
- _available_ - I looked for places with south indian restaurants and groceries available nearby. So, I do not need to worry about my breakfast and dinner. Even though the hotel I stayed at provided the continental breakfast, my 5-year-old had his own dietary needs. So, a nearby south Indian hotel was a must for us. This gave us an option to save on the hotel cost, since I could select a room without breakfast option (breakfast was at additional price).

## 5. Flying to Dubai and Immigration

The immigration at Chennai airport was very quick - thanks to the newly opened terminal. There wasn't many questions other than the purpose of visit and duration. The officer checked the documents and then stamped the passport. The rest of the day was non-eventful. Finished security check and waited for our flight to arrive.

Thanks to my kid, we get to board the flight first. Most of the 4-hour journey went in sleeping.

We had a separate queue for passengers with kids at Dubai immigration. The officer did not ask any questions at all - just checked our Visa and passport and let us through. We had one more security check before the baggage claim area.

## 6. Getting a tourist SIM and a mobile data plan

There are two telecom providers in Dubai - Etislat and Du. All tourists are given one free Du sim/passport and a 2GB free data, valid for 24 hours, at the immigration counter. If you wish, you could just purchase a tourist plan from Du and use it.

I personally decided to go with Etislat, since the tourist unlimited data plan seemed to be fine with me. After collecting the baggage, upon exiting to the Metro station, there is an Etislat counter in the airport. I headed to it and got a new connection, that's valid for 30 days. They asked for passport, payment, and I was all set with a new mobile connection within 15 minutes.

I opted for an E-SIM for my new connection. This was because I wanted to have both the Indian SIM and Dubai SIM at the same time, so that I can use Dubai SIM for internet and phone calls, and Indian SIM to receive SMS/OTP messages that will come for the credit card usage/authentication.

Also, WhatsApp calls will not work in Dubai. So, if you plan to use WhatApp calls to talk to relatives back in India, you are out of luck. Either get an international calling plan or use an app Botim to make calls to India.

## 7. Traveling in Dubai using taxi and Metro train

I used Metro trains for most of my traveling. I did not get a Nol card. Instead, I bought tickets every time I needed to travel. Only at Burj Khalifa station, there was a long queue. But in other stations, the ticket counter was usually without queues.  But, if you plan to get a Nol card, you may save a couple of minutes.

For the places that is far from a train station, I used the Taxis and Uber. Taxis are cheaper than Uber and readily available at every metro station exit / popular tourist places. So, it won't be hard to get a Taxi. And, unlike in Chennai / India, the taxi fares are strictly meter/distance based, so you don't need to bargain. Every taxi has the fare amount displayed in a big screen, so you know how much you are going to pay. And, all Taxis accepts credit card payments. In most malls, there's a separate queue for getting the Taxi, and they get crowded in the evening time. So plan accordingly.

## 8. Paying for things in Dubai

Every business accept credit card payments. I enabled international transactions in my Indian credit card before the journey and used the card to make the payments. Since the credit card usage needs OTP authentications, I kept my Indian SIM on my mobile, so I continued to get the OTP messages. I did not need to buy any international roaming from my Indian mobile provides, as there is no charge for receiving SMS message internationally.

That concludes my experience in Dubai as a Indian tourist. Please feel free to share your experience in the comments. And, let me know if I had missed any tip that should be in the above list.

Traveling to Dubai from India as a Tourist - My experience


For a long weekend, one usually plans to visit national parks or other famous attractions. But the intelligent one knows to avoid such places, because he knew that he won't get parking. So, I knew better to avoid Yosemite park for this memorial day long weekend.

Instead, I went on a drive through [**CA 130**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_130), a state highway that runs between San Jose and Mount Hamilton.

[![CA-130 Trip](http://i.imgur.com/K9IS0eP.png)](https://veerasundar.com/route-planner/)

I started my journey from my home at Fremont and instead of 680, I drove via Sunol, Calaveras road. I started early in the morning hoping for some sunrise photos, but unfortunately I couldn't find a better spot at Calaveras road.

However I continued my drive up the Quimby road to get to CA 130. I did not expect Quimby road to be challenging, but to my surprise, the road was winding and narrow. I almost lost my control in one of the hairpin curve. From that point, I started driving very slowly even in the straighter part of the road.

After reaching CA 130, the road became little wider, but still it was only two lane. Even though the road was winding, the curves were easily drivable. I took couple of breaks here and there while taking photos.

[![Mt Hamilton Road](http://i.imgur.com/NOaCrrG.jpg)](http://i.imgur.com/NOaCrrG.jpg)

## Lick Observatory

As I started very early, when I reached the [Lick Observatory at Mount Hamilton](https://mthamilton.ucolick.org/), I was the only peron there. So I had the whole parking lot to park my car. :)

[![Lick Observatory Parking](http://i.imgur.com/l4YKY5m.jpg)](http://i.imgur.com/l4YKY5m.jpg)

The observatory was not open at 8 in the morning though. I wasn't disappointed either, as visiting the observatory wasn't my plan. But even from the outside, one could get a good a view of the Santa Clara valley and the road leading to the Mount Hamilton.

[![View from Lick Observatory](http://i.imgur.com/bu1osDX.jpg)](http://i.imgur.com/bu1osDX.jpg)

By the time I started from the observatory, there was only two other people came there, one in motor bike and the other person in a bike. So, it's good to have a early start, to enjoy the nature without the crowd.

From the observatory, I continued to drive through CA 130. I saw some signboard warnings that there are no gas station or auto services for next 40 miles. My car had around half tank of gasoline, so I didn't worry much.

## Del Puerto Canyon Road

From Mount Hamilton, CA 130 goes through a remote and lightly populated forest. I could hardy see any signs of civilization (except the road that I was driving on). From time to time, I see some ranches and cattle, but zero humans until I reached the point where CA 130 meets the Mines road. At the road junction, there was a shop. My assumption is that the shop is the only social place that the locale use.

From that junction, I turned to the **Del Puerto Canyon Road** which goes to Patterson. The canyon road is again a isolated area, with very few humans in sight. However, the scenery was beautiful and breathtaking. I managed to find a spot to pull over my car and took couple of photos. Here's the best one from the lot.

{" "}

<div class="pixels-photo">
  <p>
    <img
      src="https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/155941195/m%3D900/78573f1e993789e6fb2bed63adedcba7"
      alt="Clear sky and clear mountains by Veera Sundar on 500px.com"
    />
  </p>
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After reaching Patterson, I stopped for a coffee break at Starbucks and headed my way back to home (via I5 and 101). The whole drive tough only around 6 hours. I will be going back soon on the same route, especially to the Del Puerto Canyon, to take some of the photos that I missed.


A travelogue about the driving from Fremont to Patterson via Mount Hamilton.

Driving through CA-130


Four months back, I had installed Ubuntu on my laptop and completely forgot about that after the installation. Yesterday, when I tried to install Java and Netbeans IDE on Ubuntu, I had to do some admin works, but I dont remember what password I gave for the 'Ëœroot' user during the installation. So, I thought I forgot the root password and I would have to re-install Ubuntu.

But, when searching on the Internet, I came to know that during the installation, Ubuntu do not ask any password for the root user (but I forgot this!). So, by default the root password is set to blanks. So, now I am happy that I don't need to re-install Ubuntu. ![:)][1]

[1]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

But to change the root password in Ubuntu, which blanks by default, follow this step:

1.  Open Terminal/Command
2.  Type **sudo passwd**
3.  Ubuntu will ask you for current user password. Type in the current password and press enter.
4.  Now Ubuntu will ask you to enter the new password for the root. Type in the new password, confirm it again and you are done.PS: It is not possible to log-in as a 'Ëœroot' user. I guess this feature is de-activated in Ubuntu.


#experience (3)