The best time IMO is a couple of hours or so before the breaking of the fast. Not a time when I want to be on the road.
What sort of things do the people who are exempt eat? I’m guessing that they go for plain food, rather than tucking in to a yummy feast in front of others who are fasting but are there traditional things in various cultures?
They eat normal meal times or they may have a snack early on and then eat with everyone else. Its up to the person and his circumstances.
In Cameroon, people who were exempt often did a sort of mini-fast to go with the spirit of things. It allowed people to drink water and eat a sort of millet porridge fortified with peanuts.
In one of Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek stories, a Muslim shipwright working on the orbital construction of the USS Enterprise would pray towards Mecca when the Earth’s rotation carried it below him.
You would probably be expempt in such as situation.
Kind of surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet but I’ve been in Saudi twice during Ramadan and both times, at least around Riyadh, the locals actually changed their sleep schedule to where they slept during the day and lived\worked\played at night. They did this for a month at a time.
I remember being called in to the base at 0230 and driving down the highway watching kids playing soccer under spotlights.