Travelling is another name for adventure. And for a vegetarian, that tryst with the unknown begins soon after stepping out of the comfort of home. From being served underwhelming rajma in a Punjabi fine dine in Mumbai to finding a pure veg restaurant dishing out delightful local fare in a Polish town—it's a bouquet of surprises, really. So, when the opportunity to attend the 2019 edition of the Dubai Food Festival (DFF) came along, the initial reservation about what a vegetarian would do in a meat lover's paradise quickly gave way to the curiosity to find out just that.

An annual, fortnight-long event held in February-March, it is a part of the serious bid to give tourists one more reason to visit the Emirate known for its skyscrapers, malls and desert safaris. This glass-and-steel character of Dubai, however, is unlike anything that the place was, until as recently as the late 1960s—a fishing village where pearl diving and sea-trading were some of the other key occupations. Then, they struck (liquid) gold, and never looked back.