Tours in Ajman

Ajman is the smallest of the seven emirates, about 260 square kilometres, and it is essentially one city on a beach with a creek running through it. That modest scale is what people come for: a corniche of low-rise hotels facing an open stretch of sand, a working dhow yard at the mouth of the creek where wooden boats are still built by eye rather than by plan, and a fish market that is the real thing rather than a display. The Ajman Museum occupies an eighteenth-century fort that served as the ruler's residence and later as the police station, and keeps its wind towers and its old weaponry. Beyond the city the emirate has two inland enclaves, Masfout in the Hajar mountains and Manama, both green and cool by local standards.

The offer here is deliberately thin and mostly points elsewhere. Evening desert safaris run at prices below the Dubai equivalent, with or without the dune driving, and sightseeing days go out to the two big emirates and return the same night, which is why many people stay in Ajman in the first place — the hotels cost a fraction of the Dubai rate and the drive is under an hour outside peak. Locally there are boat trips out into the Gulf, the beach, and the kind of unhurried evening that the bigger emirates no longer do.

Practical. Season and heat are the same as everywhere on this coast: November to March is comfortable, summer sits above 40C with coastal humidity. Alcohol is served in licensed hotels here, unlike neighbouring Sharjah, but not sold in shops. Dress modestly away from hotel beaches. The road to Dubai runs through Sharjah and inherits its traffic, so a nine o'clock pickup is not the same as a nine o'clock arrival. Taxis are metered and inexpensive and there is no metro, so a car or a hotel shuttle covers anything beyond the corniche. Cards work everywhere, and small change is worth having for the dhow yard and the fish market.