Glimpses: Travel Surprises and Oddities

I promise, this is the last set of non-quilty pictures for a bit!

You never know what you will encounter traveling.  While I was in the airport in Istanbul, a nearby gate was filled with passengers in…towels.  I was a bit surprised.  As it turns out, they were Muslims on pilgrimage to Mecca, a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual obligation for adherents of Islam worldwide.  Before arrival, male pilgrims change into this form of ritual dress, called ‘ihram’.  For women, normal islamic dress is sufficient.  From my very limited understanding, the ihram symbolizes the sacred spiritual state of pilgrimage, a state in which one puts asides thoughts of the world, focuses on God and strives to attain the highest levels of virtue.

Look who I met on the train to the airport in Israel.  I also met a lovely yoga teacher 🙂

And this:

Absolutely brilliant.  I have change and small bills from dozens of countries.  I always tell myself that one day when I get there again I’ll bring the money and use it, but usually if I do get there, I forget to bring the envelope with that country’s currency in it.  Cathay Pacific (#1 airline in the world) has another system I love, which they call “Change for Good.”  Each seat has an envelope that you can use to donate your change to UNICEF to be used to help children worldwide.

Finally, a completely random tidbit about my life.  I am rather geeky and like numbers, so I use a couple of apps to keep track of things like how much I travel (GateGuru) and how often I use various items in my wardrobe (Stylebook, also great for packing for trips).  Here’s my travel data from so far this year.  I have traveled over 46,000 miles and have spent 6446 minutes in the air already.  That’s 107 hours or 4 1/2 full days on airplanes, not including time in airports!  The percentages indicate what percentile my numbers fall in among the app users.  It’s oddly satisfying.