MRED Around the World student Joe Evans writes about the group’s travel from India to Dubai, and encountering the world’s tallest building, among other unusual sites:

Today was an “in-between” day for the MRED Around the World travel crew. We had no professional visits scheduled, but with an airport, a flight, and a timezone change, it was a long, hard day of world travel.

We left the hotel at 6 a.m. for one final, crazy ride through the mad traffic rush of India with the bus driver fighting rickshaws, motorcycles, cars and even a random horse. We woke up early enough to beat some traffic and still make it to our gate over 2 hours early. Better safe than sorry!

At 10 a.m., we boarded the four-hour flight to Dubai on Emirates Air. My body decided to add some excitement to the otherwise comfortable flight with a nosebleed at 30,000 feet. Great timing!

At 2 p.m., we landed in Dubai and rushed to meet Shaw, our extremely knowledgeable tour guide for Dubai. Our tour included trips to the expanded port of Dubai, the gold market, a walk around the outside of a mosque, the man-made islands of Palm Jameira, Berj da Arab, the Dubai Mall, and Berj Khalifa — the tallest building in the world.

Dubai is an amazing place where what was mostly desert 20 years ago has grown into the biggest, fastest, most expansive construction of a resort town ever witnessed. It is the tourist center and financial center of the Middle East, and home to over 200 different nationalities who live and work there. Temperatures can get close to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the month of August! But it does have fantastic weather from September through April.

Some of the superlatives our tour guide proudly declared of Dubai included:

• Berj Khalifa: The worlds tallest building
• Dubai Mall: The worlds biggest mall.
• Berg da Arab: The world’s first “7-Star” Hotel that offers the worlds “Most Expensive” Cocktail that is sprinkled with gold dust. ($7,500)
• Dubai Metro: The world’s “nicest” subway station
• Palm Jameira: The world’s first man-made beach, in the shape of a palm tree
• After the tour, we separated into smaller groups for dinners and we ate dinner at the world’s largest Cheesecake Factory that had a great view of the world’s biggest indoor ski slope