Johannesburg to Dubai
The clock moves whether or not you are ready for it. This works out by how much, and what a bedtime walked an hour a night would look like on the way there or once you arrive.
Dubai runs 2 hours ahead of Johannesburg. To arrive already keeping Dubai hours, your bedtime has to move 2 hours earlier — from 10:00 pm to 8:00 pm, on your own clock at home. That is 2 nights, so the table below starts 2 nights before you fly.
| Night | Bed | Up | Moved | Sunset there on this clock | Sunrise there on this clock |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Night 1 | 9:00 pm | 5:30 am | −1h | 4:12 pm | 4:09 am |
| Night 2 | 8:00 pm | 4:30 am | −2h | 4:11 pm | 4:09 am |
The gap
Dubai runs 2 hours ahead of Johannesburg all year: neither end of this route changes its clocks.
What that asks of a bedtime
Taking the shorter way round the dial, the move is 2 hours earlier. At the planner's usual step of an hour a night, that is 2 nights of shifting, either before you fly or after you land.
This is clock arithmetic and nothing else. It does not know how you sleep on aeroplanes, it makes no claim about how quickly anybody adjusts, and an hour a night is a step size rather than a finding. Shorten the step in the planner if a smaller one suits you.
Going back
For the return leg, or for anywhere else, the planner takes any pair of cities.
Once you are there
With the clocks settled, the ordinary question comes back: what time to go to bed for the alarm you have set. That is the wake-time pages, which count in cycles rather than in zones.