Galloping through pink city will live long in the memory

Well, just when it looked like the entire future of air travel lay with ordinary folk like us travelling on Ryanair and carrying suitcases the size of a pound of butter, Emirates came along this week with their idea of flights to Dubai from Dublin that waken up whole new possibilities.

I’m not saying that the flights will be cheap. Far from it – this will not be some kind of crazy sale like €2 to Brussels.

However, it conjures up the image of Dubai, its massive development, and the dreams of faraway places which might never be reached without something such as the Dublin-Dubai connection.For too long, the image conjured up of international travel has been a bit like something out of 1984, with everyone conforming to a particular standards, getting cheap fares all right, but being herded – in my opinion – into smaller and smaller spaces by the Ryanair concept of making fares cheaper every day.

Michael O’Leary of course knows that when it comes to cheap fares, nobody can match him and, when it comes to discussion about air travel, all he has to do is publish large full page newspaper ads rubbishing the opposition, or keep his mouth shut, say nothing, and let his prices speak for themselves.

The exotic connection which was well and truly sold by three hostesses wearing the Emirates uniform and hat, will open up places such as the Middle East – a glorious base for world travellers, though it would of course be better if the area were not open to violence, especially in the form of the ‘Spring Revolution’, which has been going on now in a number of countries for months.

For instance, some years ago, I stayed in East Jerusalem in a Christian Arab quarter and we got to visit the Basilica which houses the tomb of Christ. Indeed we visited the tomb itself and lit candles there even as an international guard was changing.

However, the streets of Jerusalem have hardly been the safest place in recent years, though I would dearly love to walk again in the footsteps of Christ in Jerusalem leading to the mound where he was crucified. It is an extraordinary experience . . . hardly matched by Bethlehem at Christmas, despite the popularity of the visit to the reputed birthplace of Christ.

My most memorable holiday in the region came courtesy of Royal Jordanian who took a number of journalists on a trip of a lifetime some years ago, culminating in a business to the extraordinary city of Petra.

Much of the trip involved following in the footsteps through the desert of Lawrence of Arabia, nights spent under canvas in the desert, and examination of extraordinary ruins such as those of the City of Garish and Petra. Petra was built by the Nabataens as their capital city around 600 BC. They built dams and waterways, leading to it becoming a leading trade centre.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.