Alo readers!
Last month, Wingify, where I work as a culture designer, took everyone (~170 people) on our annual 3 nights, 4 day vacation to Dubai. Since I was responsible for planning the entire trip and ensuring that everyone has an amazing time, it was less of a vacation for me and more of living a partial panic attack, but we made it back! yay!
There were tons of people for whom this was the first international trip and seeing their smiles as they got their passports stamped for the first time was the warmest feeling ever!
One of the moments firmly etched in my mind is of the first day when the music stopped playing on our Dhow and we were gently floating on the marina as the evening prayers rolled in from the nearby mosque.
One could hear faint chatter but mostly the water rappling along and it was a sight to see.
Although I haven't done travel sketching before, I was eager to try this time. So I took a cute notebook and some colours along. These are some of the dispatches from the trip and some pages of my diary that I managed to work on during the trip.
We had our eyes set on Kinokuniya, a bookstore in Dubai mall and I specifically wanted a large roll of good black paper and was hoping to return back with a lot of colour sets and stationary. However, their stationary was sealed mostly and there were no pens and colours for trial. Even the sketchbooks were sealed and I couldn't touch and feel the paper.
So I was more cautious than I would've been and hauled back these ones!
There weren't a lot of pictures I clicked as I was busy sketching wherever we got some time to ourselves. But hey, no complaints! I was awake till 2-3 AM on most nights of the trip and that itself deserves a victory pat on the back :)
Till next time!