Memories of a beautiful Arabian Dream
owns Darley Stud & Godolphin Racing, one of the world's leading thoroughbred breeding and racing operations and runs annual horse racing competition under the Emirates Horse Racing Authority (EHRA) in the supervision of his Minister of Presidential Affairs” This attracts the bests of best horses across the globe every year. The race is conducted at the Meydan Racecourse and the horses run a distance of 10 furlong or 2000 meters on all weather turf to compete for the price money of US$ 10 million. The race was first conducted in 1996 and that price was won by a horse named, “Cigar” owned by its owner from UK, Allen E Paulson” Ras Al Khor wild life sanctuary.
Our coach had already covered a long distance towards Emirates Industry and we were passing through Al Ain area and we could see the other side of the Dubai Creek touching Al Ain. On the far end near the water front, I could see lush green trees and was surprised. The creek is of saltwater and how come trees grew to such proportion, that too in salt water, I thought.
“You, see, what you are looking at is the Ras Kal Khor birds sanctuary”, said Vinod. Those trees are grown with human intervention and today it has achieved the status of a jungle. Every winter thousands of migratory birds visit Ras Al Khor wild life sanctuary.” “But in the last couple of years, one interesting thing happened, some of the cranes that came during the winter decided to stay on!”, he said with a smile. “Can you see far away…..look carefully…..those moving things you see in the shallow waters are actually cranes!” As I looked on, I saw thousands of them standing on one leg like Parvathy, Lord Shiva’s beautiful consort who was madly in love with him and stood on one leg to do penance on the icy peak of Mount Kailash to please him! I could also see watch towers around the sanctuary for those ornithologists to watch, study and do research. “What an amazing growth.” I told myself as our coach approached further to our destination for the Industry visit.
48-B, Knowledge Park III, Greater Noida: Telephone: 00-91-9810862024. E-mail: info@sriram.ac.in