Sangya, 14, loves her fish. She likes them raw: the herrings, the smelts, the cavelins and even the squids; and she has at least 5 kg of them every day! When I met her on a quiet Saturday evening, she smiled and winked at me as she wolfed down her seafood meal.

It’s not what you think: Sangya is a sea lion, who paddles around in her pool at the $1.5-billion Atlantis - The Palm luxury resort in Dubai.

A half-hour drive away, I take a stroll through wide cobbled streets, with half-timbered houses and restaurants decked up on one side, and a river (!) flowing on the other. I listen in to the harp meeting the violin, and the bagpipes strolling in. If this is not a picture straight out of Renaissance France, it certainly reminded me of the village of Villeneuve from Disney’s recent retelling of Beauty and the Beast .

Not far away, I find myself skiing down a slope, with icy-cold air threatening to tear through my padded jumpsuit. I warmed myself up with some hot chocolate at an alpine cafe, and watched as penguins skidded around.

A few decades ago, where the 828-m Burj Khalifa stands today, overlooking a canal and landscaped lawns, and waterfront restaurants that serve the choicest cuisine, a few cars would motor along with nothing but mountains of sand dunes and the sky for company. Today, Dubai is all it could never have been, but is.

The global metropolis astounds you at every step with an obsession for life, and the promise of tomorrow. There’s always something happening: its calendar celebrates food and shopping, art, cinema and culture. And be it the Palm Jumeirah, the world’s largest man-made islands housing luxury resorts, or the Burj Khalifa, the $4-billion tower that is the world’s tallest, or even the Ski Dubai, a 22,500-sq-km indoor ski resort, the world’s biggest, Dubai celebrates superlatives.

Also at the Atlantis - The Palm, where I met Sangya, thousands of fish school around in another facility at the resort. The Lost Chambers Aquarium and the Ambassador Lagoon wow you with their size, their marine diversity, and their attention to detail. The Lost Chambers and the Ambassador Lagoon are home to about 250 species of fish and many other marine animals, which are served 472 kg of “restaurant quality” food every day!

And what’s more, the 100-member team that caters to their every need includes chefs! The fish in The Ambassador Lagoon have their favourite dishes. The baby white tip reef sharks love milkfish; the angelfish devour Romaine Lettuce, and the bowmouth guitar sharks love the blue crabs.

And if you get lucky on your visit to Atlantis, you might just find yourself diving into the Ambassador Lagoon.

Elsewhere, Riverland, a part of the 25-million-sq-ft Dubai Parks and Resorts (DPR) complex, which opened to the public late last year, recreates the French countryside from the 1600s, along with Irish- and Indian-themed villages.

The multi-themed leisure park is also home to Legoland Dubai, with its replicas of iconic real-life structures. The many tales of your favourite characters from Madagascar — Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman — come alive at DPR’s Dreamworks park, which also has Hiccup and his friendly dragon Toothless from another hit series — my favourite — How to Train Your Dragon . I was looking forward to the Bollywood-themed park in the neighbourhood, and it was no disappointment either. Dancers appeared from nowhere, positioned themselves in front of a grand structure resembling the Taj, and gyrated to peppy numbers.

There are Shah Rukh and Salman look-alikes, replicas of the Ramgarh station from Sholay , even the palace from Mughal-e-Azam . There were virtual reality shows too: superhero Krish took me along on a crime-fighting sequence, and I also got to watch, up-close, Bhuvan’s boys play cricket with the Englishmen from Lagaan .

If virtual reality is your thing, the IMG Worlds has it in spades. At 1.5 million square feet, IMG claims to be the world’s largest temperature-controlled indoor themed entertainment destination. One of Dubai’s newest spots, the park has rides - some scary, edge-of-the-seat VR rides at its many zones.

I got to dig into some exquisite Lebanese food at IMG, much of which has come to dominate the Arab gastronomic preference. Succulent poultry, medium to well cooked on chargrill, with hummus, and baked kibbeh - they call this minced lamb serving, of the meat emulsified in cracked wheat (burghul) and spices, Lebanon’s national dish.

From the dizzying heights of the Burj Khalifa, one witnesses Dubai’s rise. In less than three years, another skyscraper will dwarf this building. The Tower, as the 1-km-long edifice is to be called, will come up in time for World Expo 2020, a six-month extravaganza that promises to showcase Dubai as the city where novelty debuts. The Expo will see the government spend $7 billion, which it hopes will create a multiplier effect on its economy, creating nearly 3 lakh jobs. Dubai’s megastructures have risen despite the US’ sub-prime crisis of 2008 threatening to flatten the world.

The city went through a period of turmoil, but West Asia’s most liberal city has opened its doors wider since then. Depleting oil revenues have forced it to turn into a financial centre, tourist paradise and shopping experience all rolled into one. And Dubai keeps attempting to surpass itself.

The writer was in Dubai recently at the invitation of Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing

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