Crazy

I’m flying through the desert.

According to the in-flight map, I’m somewhere high in the sky above the Middle East.

Boy is the desert huge!

I’ve flown several times around this area before, but it never ceases to impress me. Just like when you cross the ocean from one continent to another where it’s blue for hours on end, here, the dance of the sandy dunes never seems to stop.

I remember one of my favorite National Geographic documentaries about the Sahara desert from when I was a child and I wonder if it’s like that down there. A landscape that is void of life only in appearance, hiding complex societies of various creatures that have adapted and made this hot monotony their home

The place where I’m heading towards, Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, is a bustling metropolis of about 7 million inhabitants built right in the middle of the desert. There are no rivers or lakes in the country and the nearest sea is about 500 kilometers away.

Crazy.

When I lived in Finland I thought to myself how could’ve people decided to populate and settle in such a northern country when places like Spain or Italy exist.

Winters are so incredibly cold and harsh; the lowest temperature I experienced there was -40 degrees Celsius (I just learned that -40 Celsius is also -40 Fahrenheit… crazy).

Of course, we can’t oversimplify the complexity of decisions. They were taken for a reason.

And someone decided it’s a good idea to build a city in the middle of a desert. And I’m heading there.

Crazy.

Have a nice day.

Claudio.