The living room’s bright blue concrete walls glow under the fluorescent light. The air is full of cigarette smoke and the smell of coffee beans roasting. It’s Ramadan, Islam’s holy month. The old color TV transmits hypnotic praying live from Mecca. I’m in Harar, a historic Muslim town in Ethiopia, about 130 miles from the …
Traveling solo, friends of friends often come in handy. I’ve had the best of times through such recommendations in Addis Ababa, Moscow, Istanbul, to name a few. Most recently I had friends of a friend to thank for an excellent time in Yazd, Iran. This particular friend-to-be, Mansurah, proved the famous Iranian hospitality true even …
Sweating in a tiny sauna, by the Baltic Sea in Southwestern Finland the other night, I was thinking about the meaning of home. I used to use the word to describe New York City, where I lived about as long as I ever lived in Finland, until moving to Shanghai. Traveling the world, I often …
“Chilling in Zanzibar” was a phrase I used already years ago, dreaming about the place with a friend, who lived in Uganda at the time and was planning a trip there. Looking back, I didn’t know much about the island and I’m not sure what I imagined Zanzibar would be like and why I associated …
How many capitals in the world are named after hot springs or something to do with bathing? I should know the answer, being the bathhouse traveler I am, but only one name pops immediately to mind: Tbilisi, Georgia. The ancient capital was named after and built around its sulfur baths, at least according to a …