DXB

Africa, for us, starts at Dubai International Airport. Because DXB, as it appears on airport destination screens, has fashioned itself as the eye of the storm that is modern east-west travel. DXB is the God Hub that all other international airports bow down to. Hardly anyone actual intends to go to Dubai but hundreds of thousands, millions, pass through each year as they connect one flight with another to cross the globe. 

I almost laughed out loud as the passengers from our Londin flight travelling East, crossed a lift lobby with passengers from Australia travelling west. It was as if the whole world was on the move and everyone going somewhere else. With every individual traveller's story being threaded through the eye of the needle that is DXB. 

Invisible from the airport terminal, but astonishing when viewed from the air, is Dubai itself. By making a place where first ships and now planes have to stop, Dubai has found a reason to found a city. A place full of skyscrapers and malls and hotels and theme parks and homes and parks and beaches. But as you look down, at the edges of the city, it is simply desert and sand and nature's chaos. And beyond the relative international normality of Dubai, lies a Middle East that is political sand and man made chaos. 

But our path, like millions of others, touches only briefly on Dubai - 90 minutes - before we reach for our real destination - Africa.