London 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 3 hours ahead of London. To arrive already keeping Dubai hours, your bedtime has to move 3 hours earlier — from 10:00 pm to 7:00 pm, on your own clock at home. That is 3 nights, so the table below starts 3 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 | 3:13 pm | 3:09 am |
| Night 2 | 8:00 pm | 4:30 am | −2h | 3:12 pm | 3:09 am |
| Night 3 | 7:00 pm | 3:30 am | −3h | 3:11 pm | 3:09 am |
The gap, and why it is two numbers
In January, Dubai runs 4 hours ahead of London. In July it runs 3 hours ahead. London puts its clocks forward for part of the year and Dubai does not, so a single figure would be wrong for months at a time. The planner above works from the difference on the date in its field.
What that asks of a bedtime
Taking the shorter way round the dial, the move is 4 hours earlier in January and 3 hours earlier in July. At the planner's usual step of an hour a night, that is 4 nights of shifting in January and 3 in July, 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.
London to Dubai through the year
London to Dubai is four hours forward in the northern winter and three in the summer. The United Arab Emirates keeps one clock all year, four hours ahead of Greenwich, so the gap moves only when Britain changes its clocks, on the last Sundays of March and October.
By the sun, Dubai is about three hours and forty-two minutes ahead of London, since it lies 55 degrees further east. The two cities are about 5,470 km apart on the great circle.
Going east, the move is earlier. A 10:00 pm bedtime in London is 2:00 am in Dubai in winter and 1:00 am in summer, and at an hour a night that is four nights of shifting in winter and three in summer. Before you fly in January, the plan brings bedtime forward to 9:00 pm, 8:00 pm, 7:00 pm and finally 6:00 pm on London's clock, which is 10:00 pm in Dubai. After you land, the plan starts from 2:00 am local time, the hour a London bedtime reads there, and comes back an hour a night to 10:00 pm.
The two cities share a calendar date except from 8:00 pm to midnight in London in winter, and from 9:00 pm in summer, when Dubai has already reached the next day. Dubai's summer sunsets come no later than 7:13 pm, which is 4:13 pm in London.
Dubai sits about five degrees west of the meridian its clock is set by, so its sun runs about nineteen minutes behind the clock, before the seasonal wobble every sundial shows. Its winter sunrise comes as late as 7:06 am, in January, which is 3:06 am in London, and its earliest sunset, 5:28 pm in late November, is 1:28 pm in London. A London alarm at 6:30 am is 10:30 am in Dubai in winter and 9:30 am in summer. The Gulf clocks are not all the same: Doha and Riyadh keep three hours ahead of Greenwich, an hour behind Dubai. The planner's before and after plans finish on the same bedtime, 10:00 pm in Dubai, and differ only in which clock the table is written on. On the return the move is three or four hours later, over the same number of nights.
Going back
The return leg has its own page: Dubai to London.
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.