I had never thought of incarceration as something to be coveted before and was puzzled by their exaltation.

But heat is to the Emirates what cold is to Norway. Back home, I could dress up and go out on cold days. In the Emirates, where there are weeks when the temperature does not dip below 40℃ at night, neither the penal code nor the public opinion favours nudity. Thus, only ‘the great indoors’ remains if one wishes to escape the heat.

And the Emiratis treasure their ‘indoors’.

There exists no interior designer alive—male, female or otherwise—who in their wildest, wettest dreams could conjure up designs to match those of the Emiratis. There is no such thing as too much gold; function is optional—form is mandatory.

And money, well, money is no object. And, by the way, could we fit some more diamonds somewhere?

During one of my early years in the Emirates, a public auction was held for vehicle registration numbers. The auction sold license plate number ‘1’ to a local businessman in exchange for a modest 14.3 million USD.

An interview with the new owner stated that he thought the price to be fair because: “… who wouldn’t want to be number one …”. Also, he didn’t intend to put the license plate on a car. Instead, he said, he would frame it and mount it on the wall in his office.

You can’t buy publicity like that, the article stated. But, I think that is not factually correct. You can—and the buyer of license plate number 1 did.

But, even golden toilets need plumbing, and where there are seven-star hotels, there must by necessity be seven-star building demolition services.

And in the Emirates there are!

That behaviour stands in sharp contrast to my own life since I became a smartphone owner nearly twenty years ago. Desert-dwellers do not hear a beep, read a message, follow a link and fall into a rabbit hole, only to wake up on YouTube hours later—unable to recall why.

I do, but I try to improve.

I am no longer one of those people who put off things until the last minute. These days, without pause, delay or hesitation, I instead procrastinate.

Now, THAT is what I call progress.

It is quite possible to be ‘best’ at something without actually being good at it. The key is to find a field that is so narrow as to eliminate competition.

That is why Norwegians have brought the world such accomplishments as the world’s largest sushi mosaic or the world’s fastest backwards skier. These and other achievements of a similar magnitude help us collectively maintain our disproportionate self-esteem as a nation.

In contrast, the Emiratis mean what they say, keep their eyes on the target, and put their considerable amounts of money where their mouths are.

They have results to show for, too. Among them, Burj Khalifa—with its 828 meters, the world’s tallest building.

Norwegians nod in recognition at this. We are much alike, the Emiratis and us. After all, it was Norwegians that gave the world its longest gingerbread train.

At that time, no photo of Dubai existed that did not include Burj al Arab—the tower of the Arabs. That building is a testament to what can only be achieved by vision, leadership, determination, hard work—and cash; lots and lots and lots of cash.

Burj al Arab and many of Dubai’s other developments looked more like advertisements for design software than places where people lived and worked. I got a distinctive feeling of walking around in a 3D-model, but it should be said that it was a nice 3D-model.

The self-righteous and culturally enlightened tourist, a species that in no shape, way or form is endangered, heaps many allegations at Dubai. Chief among these is its lack of ‘authenticity’.

But those who accuse Dubai of being ‘fake’ should take a long hard look in the mirror—and that done, read up on the history of the region.

Authenticity in Dubai would have been mudbrick houses at the high-end, and very simple huts made from palm-fronds at the other.

One would get to experience the authentic joy of having no electricity and historically accurate experience of no air-conditioning. When nigh-time temperatures in summer remain above 40℃, one could wrap one’s authentic self in an authentic blanket dipped in authentic seawater and see how that would taste for authenticity.

Dubai had come a long way in a short time.

I first came there on the eve of the global recession in 2008. The financial optimism that characterized EVERYTHING in Dubai cannot be better summarized than through the advertisements that could be seen everywhere.

Buying a property automatically entered you into a raffle where you could win a private jet—or a private island. It was not clear which was the first and which was the second prize. A Bentley (for the rich) and a BMW (for the poor) came as standard with the garage.

But, come to think of it, I’m not too keen on that bullfighting, regardless of who ends up bleeding. I quite like the Spaniards, on the whole.

But, the type of bullfighting where the bull dies is not the only one. There is another type that leaves the animals intact, except—perhaps—for bruised egos.

One such sport is bull-wrestling, and in Arabia, it is practised in the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Two bulls of roughly equal stature are positioned head to head, horns locked. Thus standing, they try to push each other backwards to assert who is the stronger.

If the pushing becomes too vigorous handlers stand by to pull them apart. If, on the other hand, the bulls take too little interest in each other, the handlers are there to urge them on.

While for the most part a bloodless event, temperaments occasionally run high in this sport, too. A wrestling-bull may weigh upwards of a metric tonne, much of which is muscle. An Emirati bull-handler would be downwards of 70 kg, most of which is skin and bone.

Should the bull desire to go in one direction and the handler in another, the handler would serve as little more than a decorative trail to the former.

A panel of dignitaries adjudicates the competition. They sit cross-legged on the ground along one side of the square where the wrestling occurs. They appear to be aged anywhere between 30 and 210.

However, when the bulls occasionally decide to go ‘off script’, the judges, to the last man, leap to their feet with surprising agility and speed.

Those wishing to see a matador receive his well-earned comeuppance or such as who might take pleasure from ‘traditional’ bullfighting, will not find this spectacle to be for them.

But for those wishing to see a bull push another bull backwards for a while—before losing interest and attacking a nearby Toyota Landcruiser—bull-wrestling might be just what the doctor ordered.

It ended on Thursday—which was good. But then it started on Sunday—which was less so.

Until then, I cannot in good conscience say that I knew what a Sunday morning looked like, nor indeed if such a thing as a Sunday morning even existed. If I had ever experienced one, it must have been that I hadn’t gotten to bed yet.

So, Friday became the new Sunday. But that turned out to be impossible to explain to colleagues and clients back in Norway; for them, Friday was the day for meetings. Particularly in the latter part of the day.

Time-wise, Europe is two or three hours behind the Emirates, depending on the accursed impact of daylight saving time. Around midday, my phone would start behaving in a most un-Sunday-like manner; something that would persist until about seven in the evening.

But Arabia had more tricks up its sleeve to mess up my work week. After a few years, I became involved in a project in the neighbouring country of Oman. Here the working week at that time started on Saturday and ran through Wednesday.

And, just like that, weekend as I knew it was abolished. I’d work in the Emirates from Sunday to Thursday, have meetings with Europe on Fridays and then fly to Oman to work Saturdays.

But there was still Thursday nights. Due to the time difference, I could sleep in for a couple of hours on Friday mornings.

And how better to spend Thursday night than to gather up some camping gear, go to the desert, light a bonfire and watch the sunset. A new scene every time in an ever-shifting landscape of sand.

The Arabian camel is a single-humped dromedary with a sharp, bony spine that it is exceptionally unpleasant to sit on. That accounts for my position on camels.

As for why camels do not like me, I can only speculate. It might have to do with how the camels perceive the discrepancy between their own load-bearing capacity and how I look to them. Smart animals.

Since the arrival of the hard-top road, the lorry, and the 4WD, the camel is no longer part of the Emirates’ transportation system. Still, the Emiratis, much to their credit, do not willingly abandon their heritage. Some 300 000 camels are kept, mostly for racing, a sport the Gulf Arabs revel in.

As with horses, camel racing is all about retaining control without burdening the animal with too much weight. For this reason, the camel jockey of yesteryear was a good deal younger than one might care to remember.

Luckily, the last twenty years have seen significant modernization to the sport. Since 2002, the age limit for camel jockeys in the Emirates was raised to 15 years. Nowadays, however, camels are increasingly jockeyed by robots.

It is an odd meeting between high-tech and low-tech to see camel races with a robot jockey at the reins, remote-controlled by an overjoyed Emirati racing alongside the camel from the comfort of a car.

For a time, I had a colleague in Abu Dhabi, who was a self-professed outdoors’ man. I considered myself one, too, but had to concede that I played in the little leagues compared to this gentleman.

My colleague, who for the purpose of this narrative shall be known as DK, was a man of keen intellect and great ability. However, DKs approach to nature consisted, in equal parts, of misery and suffering.

In as much as that a certain amount of pain was a requisite qualification of nature experiences, we agreed. But, while I saw it as a means, for DK, it was an end.

DK measured experiences in kilometres, more being better than fewer. The same applied to elevation scaled, summits reached, and the number of consecutive days sleeping on rocky surfaces.

The only indicator where lower was better was the weight of his backpack. To that end, DK had taken, among others, the unprecedented step of shortening the handle of his toothbrush.

Having combed the Emirates for promising hikes, we found one named the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in the northern Emirate of Ras al Khaimah. This walk was both long, steep and strenuous, and thus instantly ticked off three of DK’s requirements.

Peculiarly, this walk started in the UAE but ended in Oman. That made it necessary to return by the same route to avoid an uncomfortable run-in with the Royal Omani Police.

As luck had it, though, the walk proved a good deal more complicated than we had anticipated, and the judiciary never became involved.

Boulders the size of houses lay piled where our guide book assured us was a ‘good path’. Our regard for the Emirati goatherd of yesteryear skyrocketed as we slowly scrambled upwards.

After three hours, we had not yet reached an exceptionally steep scree-slope that was described as the ‘real’ start of the walk. The only end within sight was that of our water rations.

DK, for his part, held thirst to be an added bonus to any experience and was unmoved. But, reflecting on the bureaucracy that would follow from my demise on the mountain, he reluctantly agreed to strike a return.

It had been a good day in the mountains.

I knew because I had seen one in a Donald Duck comic when I was little. And, back then, I didn’t yet suspect the Disney corporation of wilfully distorting children’s minds.

An oasis was a small pond of pure, immaculate water in the desert, surrounded by a small number of palm trees. In short, it should be like Huacachina in Peru.

I was told by Emiratis and with pride, that Al-Ain was an oasis – and that Liwa was another.

Upon my first visit to these places, I found the Disney-oasis conspicuous by its absence. But, there was something about the Arabic version of the oasis that was attractive nonetheless.

In a worldview that transgresses the perimeter established by Disney, an oasis is an area where the groundwater table is high enough for plant roots to reach it—a place where cultivation is possible.

The chief production of the oasis is the date. When I grew up in Norway, a date was a dark-brown lump of sticky matter that appeared in the house around Christmas. Nobody ate it, nor knew what precisely to do about it. It was the only sweetmeat to survive into January—and some times until next Christmas.

To traditional life around the Arabian Gulf, the date was the very life-blood. Hence, the same way Norwegians grow more than 40 types of potatoes, the Arabs cultivate more than 200 varieties of dates.

In the central oasis of Al-Ain, it is possible to see how dates grow. The palm is held in high regard here, and great care is taken to allow the trees to grow unhindered.

The water here is distributed from a few small springs via a network of tiny channels called ‘aflaj’. Using the ‘aflaj’ water can be directed to any of a multitude of small, intensively farmed agricultural parcels.

Al-Ain is also the only place where I have seen that tourists and farmers are given preferential treatment over others.

At the oasis’s main entrance gate, a sign reads: ‘No entry except for farm owners and tourists’.

One.

That ‘one’, is Jebel Hafeet—the ’empty’ mountain—located on the border between Oman and the United Arab Emirates near Al Ain.

Jebel Hafeet, with its 1 249 m.a.s.l, towers majestically above the surrounding desert plain. It is unmistakably, undeniably and unanimously ‘a mountain’.

In former days, an important hunting ground, the mountain has long had a vital role in the Emiratis’ hearts and minds. Today, Jebel Hafeet is more well-known for its recreational rather than its nutritional significance.

And in this respect, Jebel Hafeet has issues; at least seen through Norwegian eyes.

In Norway, the word ‘recreation’ has nothing to do with rest and restoration. Instead, it means an exorbitant outlay of physical effort with no other objective than reaching a viewpoint.

This is so ingrained in our culture that we even have a ‘mountain code’ consisting of nine rules that states what would be blatantly obvious to anyone but Norwegians.

The first seven rules focus on how to prepare for mountain walks.

The eight’ rule states you shouldn’t be ‘… ashamed to turn around’, which you inherently ought to, having just failed to observe the first seven.

The ninth’ and last rule advise you to ‘… conserve your energy and seek shelter’. That rule is widely regarded as encouragement to find a place to hide your shame while concocting means by which to blame your failure on a third party.

Unwritten, and absolutely essential to Norwegians, is that a mountain must only be accessible at the cost of hard physical labour with no short-cuts or ‘illegal’ aids.

It is in this last capacity that Jebel Hafeet fails to meet the requirements.

There is a two-lane road, built to highway standards, leading all the way to the top. The upper slopes have a palace and a tourist hotel—and the summit is a vast parking lot with a snack bar.

Still, smoking sheesha here at night, looking out over the lights of the oasis town of Al Ain is a decidedly good thing in life.