United Arab Emirates

A federation of seven emirates on the Arabian Gulf that went from pearling and desert trade to the tallest towers on earth within a single lifetime. Read Dubai at your own pace, from the wind-tower lanes and coral houses of the old Al Fahidi quarter and the gold and spice souks of the Creek to the record-breaking spire of the Burj Khalifa; wander Abu Dhabi, the capital that began at a single fort beside a well of sweet water and now spreads its Corniche along the Gulf, home to the vast marble of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque; and walk Sharjah, the cultural capital that chose to rebuild its old town in coral and gypsum rather than sweep it away. A young country founded in nineteen seventy-one, its story written in pearl-diving and Bedouin trade, in oil and the union of its emirates, and all of it better on your own clock, without a group or a schedule.