My family have now left Abu Dhabi (sniff, sniff) and so the Squifter and I hired a car for a week to tour around the United Arab Emirates to see a bit more of this land, outside of the high-rise lifestyle. Before we left the city, we dropped our passports in at the Indian embassy in order for them to process our visa applications as we’re toying with the idea of travelling a little bit of India next.

And so we set off into the country (read: desert) and drove for a couple of hours until we reached Al Ain, the hometown of the current ruler His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. After a cheeky lunch–cheeky, because the restauranteur tried to overcharge us–we drove up to the top of the nearby mountain, Jebel Hafeet, to soak in the panoromic views… which weren’t all that great because, as we’re quickly learning, one desert looks much the same as any other.

Near the top of the mountain sits a four star hotel, with elevated views to boot. “Why not?”, we thought and set about successfully negotiating a double room down from 600Dhs (£95) to 330Dhs (£52) for the night. Still very expensive by backpacker standards, but nonetheless a great result. We decided to go for it.

“Your passports please?”, asked the clerk.
“Ah no, you see, our passports are with the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi. They’re processing a visa application for us”, my repsonse.
“Ok, I’ll need your driving license then.”
And so we both produced our EU driving licenses.
“No, I need your UAE driving license.”
“But we’re not resident here. We’re tourists on holiday.”
“Then I must see your passport. It’s the law.”

A slightly circular conversation ensued, the result of which was that indeed we wouldn’t be able to check into this hotel without a passport. Nor, it seems, any hotel in the UAE. It’s the law. The clerk suggested that we go to the police to get a photocopy of our passport notorised by the police. So off we trotted to meet the local Arabic plod.

To cut a very, very long story short, we spent the rest of the evening sat drinking Arabic coffee with the Al Ain chiefs of police discussing our dilemma. Everyone at the station was really hospitable, but unfortunately rather impotent to the matter in hand and couldn’t quite bring themselves to notorise our copy (which luckily Squiffs had packed). Instead, and after an hour drinking coffee, we were escorted over the road to the town’s cheapest hotel and witnessed an amusing conversation between a Arab policeman and a Filipino receptionist in English, neither of which whose command was particularly strong. The hotel was full and so the receptionist called the owner to see if he had any other rooms in the city. He did; but only at 700Dhs (£110. No thanks!

This was never going to work. We don’t have enough money to tour this place and, even if we did, we don’t have passports or notorised copies and would likely face refusal in every town we visited. Or spend an hour a day explaining our situation to the local police only for them to escort us to a hotel which we can’t afford in any case. We decided to drive back to Abu Dhabi and await the return of our passports before going too much further.

Before we went, we thought that it’d be nice to see the souk (market) at Al Ain, so we asked our friendly policeman for directions. He promptly guided us into the nearest American-style indoor shopping mall and we frustratingly ended day one of our roadtrip eating junk food in the food court surrounded by expensive clothes and jewellery shops. Ironically, our reason for starting this roadtrip was to escape the consumerism and Westernisation of the two big cities (Dubai and Abu Dhabi). Here we were on day one, immersed in exactly the same environment that we were trying to escape!

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