This picture shows the MAHE-Manipal, Dubai Campus (MMDC) building. I took it Monday when I had a break between my presentations to the Media and Communication students and the reception for the new batch (that's what they call them) of MBA students, who started class that night. As you can see, the campus is located in the desert, some distance from the population centers of Dubai. The builds are part of the Academic City that is still mostly under construction.

On Sunday night after my meetings on the MMDC, some members of the Media and Communications faculty took me into town for some sightseeing and dinner. We walked along Dubai Creek (which is really an more of an estuary where this picture was taken. I was told that the boats shown here carry freight down the east coast of Africa.

We pasted this ferry boat while walking I was struck by its simple shape and paint job. There is a small boat bus service across the Creek which we took, but by then it was too dark for pictures.

As I mentioned in the caption of the first photo in this set, I had some free time Monday afternoon. I took the opportunity to walk a few hundred yards into the surrounding desert and take some pictures. This one gives some feel for the openness of the landscape.

From a distance, I thought this was a cactus. When I got closer, I realized it was just a tight mass of stems. There must be some type of grazing animals that live in the desert. I saw droppings and cropping of the plants as shown here.

There also appears to be mice in the desert. I saw a number of these holes.

A number of plants in the desert were flowering. This is the cool, moist time of year in Dubai (cool and moist being very relative).

Here is another common plant I saw blooming.