I was in Dubai in November of 2012, beginning a Zegrahm Expeditions trip called ‘The Sands of Time’. Some of my favorite people were on that trip. We took a boat ride out to Palm Island, one of the man-made island resorts. I took this picture back to the shore completely filled with towering high rises that seemed not to have an inch between them, as if you could live on the 50th floor and visit a friend on the same floor of the next building by jumping. For me, this was the story of Dubai.