Lagos

Lagos is Africa's biggest city and the loudest argument for its future: twenty-something million people on a lagoon, held together by bridges, yellow danfo buses, generators and an unkillable sense of humor — 'no wahala', no problem, is both greeting and philosophy. This is the capital of afrobeats, the sound the whole planet now dances to, recorded in studios above shops on streets that never fully sleep; Fela's shrine still runs the sermon on Sundays.

The sensible traveller starts on Lagos Island among Balogun market's commerce-as-weather; crosses to Victoria Island for the galleries — Nike Art's four floors of textile and bronze — and the new shine of Eko; rides the Third Mainland Bridge at least once for twelve kilometers of lagoon and skyline; approaches Makoko, the stilt city on the water, only with a local guide and its residents' welcome; and gives the night to the music, which is not an option in Lagos but the atmosphere itself.

The Guide's honesty: the go-slow — Lagos traffic — is the city's real clock: plan by bridges and hours, not kilometers, and use the ride apps —; keep the flash low and the phone inward in markets, as any Lagosian does; December books out months ahead and doubles prices, joyfully; and the jollof question is settled — Nigerian jollof wins. The Guide notes, for the record, that it will say the opposite in Accra, and that this is called diplomacy.