Travels in the Riel World

Can the ancient Indian philosophy of Vedanta be of help to high-powered modern businesspeople? Many seem to think so, at least according to this Time magazine article about Swami Parthasarathy, an 80-year-old spiritual teacher from India who has been making a living and a name for himself as a business consultant.

An excerpt from the story:

The private dining room in Manhattan’s timelessly tony 21 Club is packed with more than 60 CEOs, corporate presidents and managing partners. They represent a cross section of mostly midsize New York City-area businesses. There’s a biotech exec from Manhattan, an aerospace guy from Long Island, the head of a jewelry firm in New Jersey, a manufacturer of architectural lighting–all of them members of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), an international fraternity of business leaders who have won their corner offices by age 45.

This group of BlackBerry-wielding overachievers has filled every seat to hear from a man who will let them know that, despite the title on their business cards, they are functioning at less than full throttle, distracted by needless anxiety and basically missing the boat on their voyage through life. He’s a man who adds new meaning to the phrase business guru: 80-year-old Swami Parthasarathy.

Parthasarathy … has been traveling the globe for 35 years, speaking to business people–including at such bastions of commerce as Wharton, Kellogg and Harvard business schools–luring them with assertions about learning to improve concentration and productivity, eliminate stress and develop their intellectual discipline and overall well-being. His message derives from his lifelong study of the ancient system of philosophy called Vedanta, the focus of a nonprofit academy he established 19 years ago outside Mumbai…

Swamiji’s message, delivered in part via that transcendental software, PowerPoint, and some well-placed jokes, is that stress is not a function of external demands–the number of employees and dollars to manage, e-mails to answer, strategic plans to complete or loved ones to placate. Stress is internal, he insists. Make a rational assessment of your situation with all its requirements and flaws–consider, for instance, the past behavior of your customers, your colleagues, your spouse–adjust your expectations accordingly, and the stress will vanish…

Such equanimity might appear to be incompatible with soaring professional ambition, but he disagrees. Parthasarathy, who studied international law at University College, London, tells the room that he starts his day at 4 a.m. and ends it at 9:30 p.m., never needing a break or vacation, though with plenty of time to maintain his health with yoga and cricket.

“You believe work tires you? Work can never tire you!” he scolds. “What tires you are your worries about the past and anxiety for the future.” The undisciplined mind, he says, too easily slips into the past and future, veering toward likes and dislikes that prevent you from staying focused on your present objectives.

That’s what was suggested in this recent NY Times travel article, in which Jeff Koyen wrote about the charms of this small country, and in particular the city of Granada. Koyen beleves Nicaragua is on its way to becoming another popular Central American travel destination - and one that is, for the moment at least, more inexpensive than neighboring Costa Rica.

Nicaragua’s tourism industry is bullish for good reason. The country’s beaches are among the finest in the Americas, and among the least developed. Dozens of volcanic peaks offer treks through rain forests teeming with a rich biodiversity. And large tracts of nature reserves offer an eco-tourist wonderland.

But when it comes to Nicaraguan culture, new and old, nothing compares to Granada.

Founded in 1524 by the conquistador Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, Granada is one of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas. It was also one of the most frequently sacked, thanks to its location on Lake Nicaragua, which reaches the Caribbean by way of the San Juan River. But despite frequent sieges by pirates and would-be imperialists, a good portion of the city’s colonial architecture remains miraculously intact. Add the narrow, cobblestone streets and courtyard cafes, and it’s one of Central America’s loveliest spots.

The Red Sox won the World Series!

That’s big news in our house and we watched all of the Series games. But what is a sports fan to do when a long-planned trip abroad happens to conflict with your favorite team’s playoff run? Alexandra Pecci just wrote an article for the Boston Globe that describes the experience she and her husband had in bonding with other Red Sox fans this past week during their time in Rome.

Red Sox fans were everywhere. They were at the Trevi Fountain tossing pennies over their shoulders, waiting in line for gelato, climbing the Spanish Steps. When we checked online Monday morning to discover that the Sox were headed to the World Series, it was as much for the fans we knew we would run into that day as it was for ourselves. Brian had become a Red Sox Nation ambassador, an envoy spreading the good word in a foreign land. He was duty bound to know the score.

There were even fans at the Vatican. Outside, a group of people hooted and pumped their arms in the air shouting, “Yeah, Red Sox,” as they passed. In Saint Peter’s Basilica, in front of Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” two older fans hooted a quiet cheer. And for the duration of the Vatican tour, our guide called us simply “Red Sox.”

At first we were surprised at the number of people in Rome who cared about the team. But if Rome is the Eternal City, then maybe the Sox are the Eternal Team. They inspire love and loyalty - and loathing - that runs so deep, fans carry it with them wherever they go.

Although the United States has long been regarded as a land of opportunity for immigrants from around the world who wanted a different life for themselves and their families, it seems there is increasing competition for that title. And the competition isn’t just coming from the likes of Canada or Australia, but from China. That’s the message in an interesting article that ran this week in the Washington Post.

For more than three years, Khaled Rasheed and his family spent the nights huddled in fear as bombs exploded near their home in Baghdad. Like generations of would-be emigrants before him, he dreamed of a better life elsewhere. But where?

Finding a place that was safe was Rasheed’s top priority, but openness to Islam and bright business prospects were also important.

It wasn’t long before he settled on a place that had everything he was looking for: China.

For a growing number of the world’s emigrants, China — not the United States — is the land where opportunities are endless, individual enterprise is rewarded and tolerance is universal.

“In China, life is good for us. For the first time in a long time, my whole family is very happy,” said Rasheed, 50, who in February moved with his wife and five children to Yiwu, a trading city about four hours south of Shanghai.

Fall in New England means a landscape awash in colorful foliage. In New Mexico, it means that it’s time to roast that season’s chile crop. Bonny Wolf had an interesting piece recently on NPR’s Kitchen Window about chiles in New Mexico, including recipes for green chile stew and breakfast quesadillas with red chile sauce.

The second I stepped out the door of my friend’s house in New Mexico, I noticed a sweet-smoky-earthy smell. No matter how far I walked, the aroma was inescapable.

When I got back, I asked her what it was. “Chiles roasting,” she said. “That means it’s fall.”

During the next 10 days, I learned that whether you’re driving on a dirt road in the barren mountains or standing in the parking lot of an Albuquerque supermarket, the deliciously pungent aroma of the roasting of the year’s chile crop permeates the New Mexico air from late August through September.

New Mexico is the largest producer of chiles in the United States. But in New Mexico, chiles are more than a crop. They’re a culture, a way of life…New Mexico cuisine has been influenced by several cultures: Pueblo Indians, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo. They’ve been blended together with the chile at center stage.

Tourists are not exactly abundant in Afghanistan these days. But that didn’t stop Cassie Biggs from organizing a trip there as a single Western woman. And not only did she go to Afghanistan, but she also had an amazing travel experience there, which she recounted in this Associated Press article.

I’m at least 40 minutes into my flight — glass of white wine in one hand, book in the other — when it suddenly dawns on me that this is no ordinary vacation: I’m going to Afghanistan.

Like many people, my image of Afghanistan has been shaped by what I read and see in the media. Women in blue burqas, fields of opium poppies, fierce-looking turbaned men, and tanks churning through dust.

That may well be true, but what I found on a weeklong trip was a surprisingly green country with incredibly welcoming people. Often peeping from beneath those enveloping burqas I saw strappy high-heeled sandals and crimson-colored toenails.

I climbed the ruins of 12th century citadels, sacked by Genghis Khan, sat in sunlight beneath a canopy of apricot and apple trees in the Panjshir Valley drinking cardamom tea, and explored the empty niches of 5th century Buddhas famously blown up by the Taliban in Bamiyan.

It’s rare in the developing world for tourists to find local guides who are female. In fact, when Lisa and I were in Cambodia a few years ago, we had a rare female guide for one of the days that we spent exploring the temple ruins of Angkor. She recounted to us how she’d been the only woman in her class at tourism school and how, by working to the ripe old age of 25, she may have already irreversibly damaged her chances of ever getting married, since local men simply did not want to marry an older woman or a working woman.

So, I was intrigued to discover this article in a recent issue of the Christian Science Monitor about a Nepalese woman who leads hiking treks in the Himalayas and shatters cultural traditions and stereotypes along the way.

Kamala Biswakarma wears the pants in her family. Literally. Saris or kurtas are usually standard wear for Nepali women, but Ms. Biswakarma, at 30, wears pants, a T-shirt, and hiking boots to work. She could almost be mistaken for a foreigner in this tourist hub because no other Nepali women of her age dress as she does.

It would be incredibly difficult to trek in the Himalayas wearing a long polyester sari and Biswakarma is a trekking guide for Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN), a nongovernmental organization that trains and employs women to lead treks in the Himalayas.

A quiet rebel, Biswakarma has not only shed her colorful robes and donned a more comfortable outfit, she also brings home a paycheck. She earns more than her husband and even more than many Nepali men. To work in a male-dominated industry, with a salary equal to “high government officials,” is almost unheard of for women in most parts of Nepal…

She is far from the life her mother raised her to lead. “My mother taught me to work in the field and the kitchen,” she laughs, as if she’s telling a joke. “She told me, ‘Women have to get married. [They] have to work, clean, get up early, and be a good housewife. And if you don’t know how to do your housewife duties, then your husband’s family will complain about you to me.’ “

Only in Japan would a dress resembling a vending machine be able to double as anti-crime camouflage. The Japanese have a proliferation of vending machines on street corners, as well as a penchant for funky and innovative inventions. Hence, a dress that unfolds into a full-length sheet and enables the wearer to hide behind a replica of a vending machine — and, presumably, to elude a would-be robber. The International Herald Tribune has the story:

On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hoped would ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

With a deft motion, Tsukioka, a 29-year-old fashion designer, lifted a flap on the front of her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet fully open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers - by disguising herself as a vending machine.

The wearer hides behind the sheet, which is printed with a life-size photo of a vending machine. Tsukioka’s clothing is still in the developmental stage, but she has already created several versions, including one that unfolds from a kimono, and a deluxe model with four sides for more complete camouflaging.

Observers acknowledge that street crime is still a rare occurrence in Japan, but the fear of crime is growing nevertheless because of media coverage of those incidents that do occur. Even more interestingly, the article notes that these designs are a uniquely Japanese approach to battling crime and is influenced by the country’s culture.

…Japanese ideas about crime prevention are the product of deeper cultural differences. While Americans want to protect themselves from criminals, or even strike back, the creators say many Japanese favor camouflage and deception, reflecting a culture that abhors self-assertion, even in self-defense.

“It is just easier for Japanese to hide,” Tsukioka said. “Making a scene would be too embarrassing.” She said her idea of the vending machine disguise was inspired by a trick used by Japan’s ancient ninja, who cloaked themselves at night under black blankets.

It’s a lofty goal, but Rwanda has begun taking steps that it hopes will lead the country to become a high tech hub for Africa — the “Singapore of Africa,” as some have suggested. The Christian Science Monitor has the story.

Sometime in the next two years, nearly every school in Rwanda from distant mountain villages to swelling urban areas will be hooked up to the Internet. And it won’t be some crummy dial-up service. It will be high-speed broadband, carried by fiber-optic cables.

The fact that Rwanda is closing in on this goal without having the massive oil wealth of Angola or Sudan, the diamonds of Congo or South Africa, or even the copper of nearby Zambia is a testimony to the power of imagination. And Rwanda imagines that one day, it will be the information technology center of Africa.

“In 2000, we decided to transform the country from agricultural subsistence to a knowledge-based economy,” says Albert Butare, Rwanda’s minister of state for energy and communications. With two fiber-optic rings around Kigali, and cable being laid across the country, Rwanda is well on its way to being wired. “Once we’ve reached the towns of each sector, it’s like you’ve covered the whole country. In another two years, we should be there.”

Rwanda’ goals have attracted both support and criticism.

Government officials and business leaders see high-tech as the best way to lift one of the world’s least-developed countries into a better position to compete globally. Local human rights activists fret that Rwanda’s money could be better spent on things like drinking water and electricity.

Countries like Rwanda, which rank among the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), don’t easily become high-tech hubs. Sixty percent of Rwandans live below the poverty line, defined by the UN as an income of less than a dollar a day. According to a 2005 study by the Australian National University, LDCs make up 10 percent of the world’s population and represent only 0.13 percent of the world’s Internet users.

Yet, there are hopeful signs. Nearly 70 percent of Rwanda’s adults can read and write. This fact, combined with Rwanda’s dense population, almost all of whom speak the same language, Kinyarwanda, make the country a much better place for establishing an Internet hub than Rwanda’s resource-rich, ethnically diverse, and less-educated neighbors.

When asked about her engagement party this summer, little Sunam glanced blankly at her family, then fiddled with her gold-sequined engagement outfit, a speechless response not out of shyness, but because she does not yet talk much. Sunam is 3.

The toddler was engaged to her 7-year-old cousin Nieem in June, in a match made by their parents.

So begins a recent story by the Associated Press. The marriage or engagement of young children may not be widespread around the world but it’s a common practice in some cultures, particularly tribal ones. The AP article discusses this issue as it applies to rural Afghanistan.

Despite the efforts of the government and rights groups, the engagement and marriage of children still persists in this country, especially among poor, uneducated families or in the countryside.

About 16 percent of Afghan children are married under the age of 15, according to recent data from UNICEF. And there is evidence that the poverty of recent years is pushing down the marriage age further in some areas…

The minimum legal age of marriage in Afghanistan is 16 for girls and 18 for boys. Yet child marriages account for 43 percent of all marriages, according to the United Nations. The reasons are often economic: The girl’s family gets a “bride price” of double the per capita income for a year or more, according to the World Bank…

The families of Sunam and Nieem are convinced that if the two grow up together knowing they will be married, they will be happy to wed in the future. The plan is for them to marry when Sunam is 14 or 15. Nieem’s mother, Fahima, said if the children grow up to dislike each other, the families will break off the arrangement. “It’s their whole lives. If they don’t like each other they will have problems their whole lives,” she said.

But according to the children’s aunt, Najiba, the match is unbreakable. “We are Pashtun people. If we engage them, there is no way to separate them. They will marry,” Najiba said. “In our tribe, it is like this. When they get engaged, they cannot divorce.”

Some of the better travel writing on the internet can be found in the Dispatches section of World Hum. The site’s most recent story has Catherine Watson writing about a period of time that she spent on Easter Island. An excerpt:

By the time I got to the South Pacific, I was in my early 30s, and I’d been looking for home all my life, for the place I really belonged, the place where I should have been born. I felt I’d found it on Easter Island the instant I stepped off the plane. It was as if the island had been waiting for me, all that time, the way I’d been waiting for the island…

I began to exist in the present tense, as if I had no past regrets and no future fears. It was something I’d never done before. That, and the incredible distances surrounding us, lent me an exhilarating freedom. I likened it to hiding in a childhood tree fort with the rope pulled up. No one knows where I am, I kept thinking. No one can find me.

My days quickly fell into their own gentle rhythm: Go out walking after breakfast. Explore a cave, a volcano, a vista. Take pictures. Talk to people. Go home for lunch. Nap or write or poke around Hanga Roa. And in the late afternoon, walk over to Tahai, the row of giant statues, called moai, that stood closest to town, and watch the sunset paint the sky in the direction of Tahiti…

From the beginning, Yolanda had been urging me to stay longer. I’d only planned on a week, but as plane day got closer and she kept talking, I weakened. Yolanda was right, I decided. There was really no reason to leave so soon. The only thing waiting for me was a small internship on a newspaper in Buenos Aires, and the start date was more than a month away. Besides, there was no penalty for changing my reservation. What harm could it do to wait?

I missed one plane. And then another. And another.

And while I waited, my newly simple life grew complicated. I was enmeshed in a love affair, all right, but it wasn’t exactly with the man I’d met. It was with Easter Island itself. My island.

Slowly but surely, women in the ultra-conservative nation of Saudi Arabia are beginning to gain some of the rights and freedoms that females in most other countries have long taken for granted, including the right to divorce, travel abroad without a male, and own a business. The ability to legally drive a car still eludes Saudi women but the topic is being broached more often these days, even on a popular television show, as this story reports.

In a recent episode of Saudi Arabia’s most popular television show, broadcast during Ramadan this month, a Saudi man of the future is seen sitting in his house as his daughter pulls into the driveway, her children piled into the back of the car.

”Where have you been?” the father asks.

”The kids were bored, so I took them to the movies,” she replies, matter-of-factly, as she gets out of the driver’s seat.

The scene may appear mundane, but in Saudi Arabia, where women are forbidden to drive — and, by the way, where there are no movie theaters, either — the skit portends something of a revolution. From a taboo about which there could be no open discussion, a woman’s right to drive is becoming a topic of growing and lively debate in Saudi Arabia…

”We are telling everyone this is coming, whether today or tomorrow,” said Abdallah al-Sadhan, producer, writer and host of ”Tash Ma Tash” (”No Big Deal”), a variety comedy show that is broadcast during Ramadan and tackles controversial social issues in Saudi Arabia. Other episodes have also shown women driving in what Mr. Sadhan says is a deliberate message. ”There will be a time we will accept it, so now is the time to get prepared for that.”

The debate over women drivers is centered, not surprisingly for Saudi Arabia, on religious and moral issues.

Some Saudi officials and religious men agree with the women that Islam does not forbid women to drive. In the past, Saudi women were able to move freely on camel and horseback, and Bedouin women in the desert openly drive pickup trucks far from the public eye.

Clerics and religious conservatives maintain that allowing women to drive would open Saudi society to untold corruption. Women alone in a car, they say, would be more open to abuse, to going wayward, and to getting into trouble if they had an accident or were stopped by the police. The net result would be an erosion of social mores, they say.

Rajasthan has a reputation as one of the stars of the Indian travel circuit. There are vibrant colors, stunning desert landscapes, camel treks and lively bazaars. Amanda Jones recently embarked on a visit to Rajasthan, but with a twist - she made the journey with her nine-year-old daughter and then wrote about the experience for the Los Angeles Times.

Last spring, I invited my eldest child to go on a trip with me. Indigo had just turned 9, and I had panicked. One, because she was halfway through her time of living at home, and worse, she was mere years away from thinking of me as a source of tedium and embarrassment. One-on-one time with her was becoming a precious commodity. I had to seize the moment.

“Really,” I said. “Your choice of destination: Washington, D.C., for the Lincoln Memorial? Los Angeles for the Getty? New York to shop?”

She considered these and replied, “India, please.”

I winced. Her choice was clearly my fault. Not long before, I had told her the story of how a five-day camel trek in Rajasthan 20 years earlier had transformed me from a dissatisfied fashion magazine employee into a freelance adventure travel writer.

“I want to go there, Mama,” Indigo said. “I want to ride camels, shop in a bazaar, get henna and slide down sand dunes.”

And so in February, we traveled to Rajasthan, a western state, home to the Great Indian Desert and camels and sand dunes.

Mother and daughter had a variety of experiences in India, but one of the highlights of their trip was the Jaisalmer Desert Festival.

The final part of the festival was late in the evening in the desert, a 40-minute drive outside Jaisalmer. The wind-rippled dunes were beginning to glow from the sunset as camels and their hopeful village jockeys lined up for a race of about a mile. People came streaming over the dunes, on foot, on camel and in open trucks straining under the weight of their load: villagers standing in their finest dress. The dunes were ablaze with colorful saris and tinkled with the sound of ankle bracelets…

The harmonium (a hand-pumped reed instrument that sounds like a lazy accordion); the wailing women; and the female dancers in their tribal costumes with mirrored skirts, heavy, twirling and luxurious, were intoxicating. Smoke from a large bonfire soared into the night sky, silhouetting the camels and the turbaned men.

At one point during the evening, Indigo hugged me, saying: “Thank you for bringing me here, Mama.”

I knew then that she had the heart of an adventure traveler and that she would be back here someday. She may have to stay in a hovel and lug a backpack, but no matter. She has seen the riches that lie in far-flung places, and she now knows that their wealth lies in more than 400-thread-count sheets.

Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor of Malaysia just became the first Malaysian astronaut when a Soyuz rocket blasted off two days ago from Kazakhstan. For Sheikh Shukor, this journey is not only a significant accomplishment, but also a dilemma, for as a devout Muslim he must try to accommodate Islamic religious practices while in space. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story about his situation.

Imagine trying to pray five times a day in zero gravity while having to face an ever-shifting Mecca hundreds of miles below. How do you ritually wash yourself without water? And, now that it’s Ramadan, how do you fast from sunrise to sunset when you see a sunrise and a sunset every 90 minutes?

… up to now, there have been no guidelines for Muslim religious practice in space. And so the Malaysian National Space Agency (MNSA) and its Department of Islamic Development held a two-day conference in April last year. They invited 150 scholars, scientists, and astronauts to discuss “Islam and Life in Space.” The result is a recently published booklet of guidelines for the faithful Muslim astronaut.

The solutions?

Five times a day (before sunrise, at midday, in late afternoon, after sunset, and at night), earth-bound muezzins call Muslims to prayer. A spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour orbits the earth 16 times in a day. Does that mean praying 80 times in 24 hours?

The guidelines are much more reasonable: Daily prayer in space is not linked to sunrises and sunsets, but to a 24-hour cycle…Five meditations every 24 hours will suffice…

The next problem: Where is Mecca? Muslims on Earth face Mecca, in central Saudi Arabia, when they pray. The MNSA suggests that the astronaut pray toward Mecca as much as possible, or at the Earth in general. But if it becomes necessary, the astronaut may simply face any direction.

The guidelines also provide suggestions for dealing with prayer postures, ritual washing and diet in space. All issues that early Muslims certainly never imagined having to deal with.

Summer is rightly the high season for tourism to Europe. The weather is warm and it’s a popular vacation period. But autumn can be an equally nice time to visit the continent, especially since airfares tend to be cheaper and tourist sites less crowded. The NY Times travel section recently featured the fall attractions of eight prime European travel destinations. A sampling:

The Greek island of Santorini:

The view from Oia, on the wildly popular island of Santorini, illuminates the sun-and-sea bliss of Greece: At day’s end, the sun drops into the blue Aegean horizon, draping the caldera of the Santorini volcano in a shimmery twilight. But just try finding an unobstructed glimpse of this glorious scene in summer, with all that village’s camera-toting tourists.

Come October, though, the view from Oia, as well as the rest of this island of whitewashed homes perched on steep seaside cliffs, is all yours.

The Italian region of Tuscany:

Ask a Tuscan which is the best season to visit and you’ll likely hear a stomach growling. The burnt-orange vistas and rust-colored hills are certainly a feast for the eyes, but fall in Tuscany is really about one thing: eating.

Signs of the harvest are everywhere: from farmers plucking olives off the trees and vintners picking grapes off the vine, to villagers lugging bags of fresh hazelnuts. And much of it can be sampled at the various sagre, or food festivals, which take place in Tuscany throughout the season.

A new movie about travel was recently released, The Darjeeling Limited by director Wes Anderson, about three brothers and a trip through India. I haven’t seen it yet, but World Hum has some thoughts about the film.

An excerpt from their review:

Hollywood rarely produces a great travel film. It endlessly mines the road trip for material but doesn’t get at the actual experience of travel, the drama of which, for most of us, involves neither bad guys nor tragic endings, but rather logistical snafus and the occasional small epiphany.

So it was with trepidation that I approached director Wes Anderson’s new movie The Darjeeling Limited, about three bumbling brothers on a train trip through India. By the end, though, I wanted to join the protagonists as they ran, yet again, for the train. The Darjeeling Limited is a fresh and funny lesson in that most ancient piece of travel wisdom - it’s about the journey, stupid, not the destination…

Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, about a chance meeting in Vienna, and Cedric Klapisch’s L’Auberge Espagnol, about year-abroad students in Barcelona, are two of my favorite travel movies. The Darjeeling Limited, like them, is about people thrust together in strange places. Nothing much happens, but when the story is over, everything has changed.

Has anyone else seen the movie? What did you think? What are some of your other favorite movies about travel?

Islamic countries are currently in the midst of celebrating Ramadan, the month-long religious observance that is marked by daytime fasting. Interestingly, each country tends to bring its own style and traditions to the month. The Egyptians, for example, are known for having lively Ramadan celebrations, as the Christian Science Monitor reports.

If Egyptians are known for one thing in the Middle East, it’s for living life with spirit. A strong, creative energy has created a movie and music industry that dominate the Arab world. Egyptian movie, singing, and belly dancing stars and their distinctive dialect of Arabic are the most widely known in the region.

So it’s no surprise that Egyptians celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan with equal exuberance.

Muslim countries around the world bring their own style to Ramadan, which this year began in mid-September and will conclude later this week. Egypt is famous for having one of the liveliest traditions. Egyptians say it’s a product of their joie de vivre in the face of hardship and deepening religiosity…

It’s on display in the traditions surrounding sahour, the early morning meal before beginning the daily fast during Ramadan. While iftar, the meal that ends the fast at the close of the day, is a more serious matter of satiating thirst and hunger pangs, sahour is about fun and celebration.

Some Egyptians host sahour parties where friends and relatives pack into homes often decorated in brightly colored fabrics to give them the look of a traditional tent. There, they eat, drink, and celebrate from midnight until 4 a.m. Others pay top dollar to attend swanky “tents,” as these fabric-walled spaces are known, at posh restaurants or hotels.

Exciting times - my first child was born recently and I wanted to share the news! Brady Robert Riel was born Sept. 25, 2007 at 10:33 a.m., weighing 7 lbs., 12 oz. He and his mother, Lisa, are both doing well, and we are all adjusting to a new schedule and to the wonderful new sounds of life in our house.

Here is a picture of one of the world’s newest travelers: