Malaysian-style Chicken & Pineapple Curry

There are two things I absolutely must do whenever I go travelling to a new place. Number one is to take cooking lessons from the locals. All the better if this takes place in gorgeous open-air surroundings by a Vietnamese river amidst gardens of fresh lemongrass and Thai basil and a swimming pool for when the exertion of cooking all gets too much, as I was once lucky enough to experience in Hoi An, but any form of cooking lesson is hugely exciting for me, even if it’s just a street food seller taking the time to demonstrate to me how they make their delicious wares. If they let me eat said wares along the way, even better.

Number two is to visit the markets. I have an obsession with local markets; they’re probably one of my favourite things about travelling. You can keep your art galleries and museums; I think the best way to experience culture, anywhere, is to take an hour to wander around the markets and to watch, taste, touch, smell, listen and talk. And, if you’re anything like me, to come back laden with obscure products bearing strange labels that will end up at the back of your cupboards (candied nutmeg, anyone?)



This is a recipe that relates to both of those activities. This summer I spent a week and a half travelling in Malaysia. Aside from waking to the sound of macaque monkeys splashing around in the swamp metres from my bed in the deep, dark heart of the Borneo jungle, the absolute highlight of my Malaysian experience was Penang. This was in no way a surprise. I’d been told by many people that I would love Penang, undisputedly one of the street food capitals of the world, famous for its hawker centres serving up hot, moreish, ridiculously tasty food for less than you’d pay for a cup of tea back in England.

As part of my stay, I took part in a cooking course that began with a trip to the local market to introduce us to some of the ingredients we’d be using later. Actually, I lie – it didn’t begin with this, it began with one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had in my life, which is roti canai: buttery, flaky Indian-style flatbreads cooked on a hot griddle and stuffed with various fillings. Mine was oozing with egg and onion, and I sat there with a cup of hot tea, tearing off gooey, buttery pieces of this ridiculously moreish creation and dipping them in a bowl of vibrant turmeric-rich dahl. It’s Penang’s answer to a croissant, only perhaps even better.

I learned a lot from my market visit that day. One thing I love about south east Asian markets is there’s always some new weird and wonderful ingredient to discover. Introduced to my culinary repertoire on this occasion were ginger flowers – which look like firm, very pale pink tulips and have a peppery taste – and candle nuts. I’d never heard of candle nuts before, but they’re a common ingredient in Malaysian curry pastes, where they add a delicious nutty richness to the mix along with their their fragrant oils. They look rather like large macadamia nuts, with a similar creamy texture.

Later during my cooking class we learned how to make laksa, which is without a doubt the best noodle soup you will ever eat, but unfortunately takes a small army to prepare (there were about twelve of us on the cooking course, and it required all hands on deck to get it ready for lunch time). The resulting sweet-sour-spicy broth, rich in fish and tamarind and herbs, bathing a nest of slippery noodles, is worth it a hundred times over, though. We didn’t use the candle nuts, but I bought a small bag to bring home and experiment with.


This chicken curry recipe is from the lovely Nazlina, who ran our cooking course in Penang. The first time I made it back home, I had a bit of a eureka moment when I licked the spoon to check the seasoning. It was spot on, exactly everything that I want a south east Asian curry to be: rich and creamy with brown sugar and coconut, mouth-tinglingly spicy from fiery chillies, deeply zesty from lemongrass and lime leaves. I’ve made a lot of such Asian curries in the past, but this was by far the best. I think the secret is to marinate the chicken in turmeric and shrimp paste before cooking – it lends an incredible addictive salty/savoury flavour to the finished curry. Combine this with fresh, zesty galangal, ginger, lime leaves, creamy coconut and candle nuts, and you have everything that is wonderful about Malaysian food.

I’ve tweaked it a little from the original recipe: I use chicken thighs (with the bone in – much more flavour and more tender meat that way) rather than a whole jointed chicken, as it’s much easier to eat with fewer fiddly bones to crunch on by accident. I use macadamia nuts now that my candle nut stash has run out (although if anyone knows where I can get them in the UK, get in touch). I also add chopped pineapple to the curry at the last minute. This is definitely unconventional, but I think it really takes the dish to another level. It’s so rich, with the dark chicken meat and the heady combination of spices and aromatics, that you really need something fresh and zingy to brighten everything up. Pineapple is just perfect, softening and soaking up that delicious sauce, adding zingy little bursts of fruitiness that partner perfectly with the tender meat and vibrant sauce.

Serve with lots of fresh lime to squeeze over, chopped coriander, and mountains of steamed rice to soak up the fabulous sauce. This is a very easy dish to prepare, once you get your hands on the ingredients (try an Asian grocer or supermarket, or even a large branch of Morrisons, who do excellent Asian produce), but it’s incredibly rewarding, a real riot of wonderful addictive flavours that blend beautifully. If you’ve never tried Malaysian food before, this is a wonderful introduction.





Malaysian-style chicken curry with pineapple (serves 4):



8 skinless chicken thighs, bone in

2 heaped tsp shrimp paste

2 inches fresh turmeric, peeled, or 2 tsp powdered turmeric

2 hot red chillies

1 inch piece fresh galangal, peeled

3 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled

6 cloves garlic, peeled

6 macadamia nuts

3 tbsp rapeseed or groundnut oil

2 lemongrass stalks

2 tbsp tamarind puree

200ml coconut milk

100ml water

6 fresh/frozen kaffir lime leaves

4 shallots, finely sliced

2 tsp dark muscovado sugar

Half a large pineapple, finely diced

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

Juice of 1 lime

Finely chopped coriander, to serve



In a mini chopper or blender, blitz together the shrimp paste and fresh turmeric (if using powdered turmeric just mix the two together in a small bowl). Put the chicken in a large dish and add the shrimp paste and turmeric. Mix together well with your hands then leave to marinate for an hour or so in the fridge.

Meanwhile, make the curry paste. In a mini chopper, blitz together the chillies, galangal, ginger, garlic and nuts until finely chopped. Bruise the lemongrass stalks by bashing them with a rolling pin or squashing with the flat of a knife. In a large lidded pan, heat the oil and sauté the curry paste and lemongrass stalks over a medium heat for a few minutes until fragrant. Add the tamarind, coconut milk and water and bring to the boil. Add the chicken, cover with a lid and cook for about 30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

When the chicken is cooked, finely shred the lime leaves and add to the pan with the sugar and shallots. Remove the lid and simmer for around 15 minutes to thicken the sauce. Taste and check the seasoning – it will probably be salty enough from the shrimp paste. Add the lime juice, black pepper and pineapple and cook for another couple of minutes, then serve with steamed or sticky rice and fresh coriander.

Get the ingredients for the recipe from www.justingredients.co.uk .

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New Zealand

A Double-Edged Sword

Lindis Valley

Paper bags are skittering across the painted partitions of a derelict car park. Strewn around the place are red, yellow and black signs of warning; “Do Not Enter”, “No Access”, and simplest of all, “Danger”. There was a building here once, but now all that stands is a graffitied sign reading, “Gap Filler”. Fittingly, the weather is grim and cold. The grey of concrete blends into the grey of the clouds; a monotony broken only by a gently fluttering red and white tape that cleaves the land from the sky. It is known by locals as “the cordon”, and it marks where Christchurch city centre used to be.

Three weeks earlier, I left Christchurch on a bus with my bicycle heading south to Queenstown, and on the way I read about the cordon. Between 2010 and 2012, several large earthquakes brought Christchurch to its knees, destroying the skyline, homes and lives. Fear was widespread, and many residents lived constantly on edge. To tell the truth, I found it a little difficult to understand why anybody would stay in a place that was so volatile.

My thoughts were interrupted by the chatter of foreign voices. I picked out French, American and Japanese, as well as a few others I couldn’t discern. Eavesdropping on the American tourists as inconspicuously as I could, I heard them talk about hiking, mountain-biking and even skydiving in Queenstown. New Zealand’s tourism industry has done very well out of its topography.  Queenstown is known for being the “adventure capital of the world”, and I had heard New Zealand somewhat glamorously alluded to as “God’s playground”.  Two gorgeous valleys zipped passed the window as if to emphasise the point. Catchy taglines or not, it was hard not to get excited by what this country had to offer.

Aoraki/ Mount Cook

Two days after my arrival in Queenstown, I had begun the long cycle to the Northern tip of the South Island, roughly tracing the Southern Alps. During my failed search for hobbits, I noticed was the incredible amount of livestock that roamed the grassy slopes, and the never-ending stream of dairy trucks lumbering along the larger roads. This highlighted the fact that the landscapes aren’t just important for tourists. Industries like Agriculture, horticulture, fishing, and forestry are essential for the economic health of New Zealand, and mean that the fate of many the country’s inhabitants is inextricably linked to the earth on which they live.

Cycling onwards, and extravagant panoramas came at every turn; angular shapes forced skyward by the crumpling effect of tectonic movement. Every lake and river I passed was an impossible shade of turquoise, more like paint than water. Sandy, rocky colours diffused up the countless mountains, and climbing to their cloud bound passes revealed that these same peaks were capped with soft greys; greys that I came to associate with the warm buzz of lactic acid, and that roughly marked the snow-line of winters past. The sense of space was exhilarating too. Each mountain was so large that I sometimes spent hours winding between them in sweeping glacial valleys, taking time to get to know each colossus as though they were long lost friends. In a way, the Māori feel the same.

Christchurch - Near "the Cordon"

I camped one chilly evening in a bay of the majestic, glassy, blue-green Lake Pukaki. Miles away, at the other end of the lake, sat the great, snow-capped Aoraki, or Mount Cook; the tallest mountain in all of New Zealand, jutting nearly four kilometres into the sky. In Māori folklore, four brothers embarked on a journey around the world in a canoe. Running aground on a reef, the canoe is said to have flipped over, leaving the brothers no choice but to clamber atop the doomed boat. As they stood there, a bitter southerly wind froze them solid, and the brothers turned to stone. It is Māori legend that their frozen figures form the Southern Alps, and Aoraki, the tallest brother, became the peak that is now known as Mount Cook. It is a tale that bridges the realms of the natural and the supernatural, and captures the spiritual ambiance of the place.

Yesterday, I arrived back in Christchurch. The longer I stand in the car park next to the cordon, the more I understand Christchurch’s strength and acceptance in the face of natural disaster. While devastating, these events constitute part of the Jekyll and Hyde personality of New Zealand. As a nation that is an active part of the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, natural New Zealand can be furious, but this also means that it is an area of unparalleled natural beauty. Its people have been tied to the land and its magic for centuries, forging a sense of tight-knit community and respect for the earth. Like all good relationships, there are hiccups.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

Places of Natural Beauty

The Passage of the St. Lawrence River

“Where the river narrows!”, the old man shouted after me, in a thick Quebecoise accent. “That’s what it means!”. I beamed back at him. It was poetic, as Algonquin names so often are. Only a handful of kilometres later, I exchanged New Brunswick for Quebec, a small roadside sign marking the transition. I trained my eyes on the letters spelling out “Quebec”. “Where the river narrows”, I repeated slowly and inaudibly under my breath, almost trying to feel the shape of the words in my mouth. I smiled again.

Before long, I free-wheeled towards the end of a corridor of buildings in Rivière-du-Loup, my spinning front tyre spitting cold flecks of muddy rainwater onto my cheeks. A majestic sight unfolded in front of me as I rolled towards the edge of the St. Lawrence River. I stopped at the shore and dismounted, needing a moment to take it all in. Water emerged from the haze of drizzle in the south west and flowed miles to the north east, before disappearing into the mist. The river was so vast that as I stood on the slick, grassy bank, it produced the sensation that I was standing on the water itself. The lines defining each choppy wave blurred and dissolved as I traced them into the distance, the splosh of clapping water fading with the increasingly distant waves. The river looked like an ocean, limited only by the translucent suggestion of a far-away ridge on the opposite bank. In a strange sort of way, a sense of timelessness accompanied the sense of eternal space.

My trance was broken. “AAAAARGH…..JAMIE, NOOOO!!!!”, screamed a fretted mother. Toddler Jamie didn’t care. Watched by a pair of walkers and wearing a toothy grin, he continued his enthusiastic and ill-advised pursuit of an irritated swan. Hisses were drowned out by giggles, and sucked in by his sheer delight, I actually found myself cheering Jamie on.

As the hours and kilometres went by, the weather cleared, and the far bank of the river advanced towards me. Picnickers and families took to its shores, accommodated by the birds and the butterflies. But this wasn’t anything new. The St. Lawrence River has enticed people for millennia.

Soon, an archipelago became visible, and my journey back through the river’s social history began. I passed an island off the shore of Montmagny named “Grosse Île” and marked with a large, standing cross. I discovered that during the Great Famine in mid 1800s, the St. Lawrence attracted thousands of Irish migrants who had fled from the horrors at home. Grosse Île was used to quarantine the travellers, many of whom had contracted Typhus during their long voyages. Tragically, over 3000 died on the island and, as I was solemnly told by Paul, a local waiter, “I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest graveyard [for the great famine refugees] that’s not in Ireland”.

Onwards, and the far bank drew in again; the shapes of mountains and valleys on the other side of the river became definite. Signs for French-sounding towns came thick and fast. Berthier-sur-Mer, then Saint-Vallier, then Saint-Michel. The waterway had brought colonialists too; I knew from a book I had read that I was tracing the astounding voyage taken by Jacques Cartier nearly 5 centuries earlier in 1535. The ambition of Frenchman Cartier had taken him in search of a Northwest Passage from Europe to the profitable markets of Asia, before he was thwarted by the Lachine Rapids outside Montreal. Managing to brush off this failure, Cartier settled for claiming Canada for the French.

As I approached Levis, the river pinched again. I could see settlements on the other side of the river, with flashes of sunshine glinting from the roofs of houses and cars. These were settlements that 1000 years ago were inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, an indigenous people that lived on the fertile land around the river. I had a vivid image of Stadacona, a Iroquoian village that used to reside near present day Quebec City, fixed in my mind. Whether this image was factually accurate, I have no idea, but I pictured wooden structures and mothers washing clothes in the river. I even pictured a laughing Iroquoian boy chasing a swan.

The river seemed to flow as surely as the passage of time, and I, like the Iroquoians, Cartier, the Irish migrants and Jamie, had become a part of the river’s rich historical narrative. The St. Lawrence river has a habit of drawing people together, both geographically and temporally. Though prehistoric, the name Quebec still resonated with me.  My journey through Quebec had been defined by the St. Lawrence River, as had the journeys of those before me. It was a comforting thought.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

A Caspian Negotiation

The Oil Industry and Crossing the Caspian Sea

The wait was intolerable. Waves of mania sent me and my travel partner, Nathan, from delirious peak to grim through and back again. Our boat rocked with swell as if to emphasise the point, and it made me feel queasy. Despite arriving to the Kazakh coastline after only 20 hours of our voyage, we were stationary, and had been for three days and four nights. We had watched the indolent sun journey its arc through the sky, and watched the moon gradually change shape, night on night, sliver by sliver. I breathed in the salty air, and stared at the nigh time sparkles marking Aqtau, and with it Kazakhstan, through the dark. It felt close enough to touch and taunted me. “Maybe I should do it” I thought. Was I actually thinking of diving into the largest enclosed inland body of water on earth, and swimming for it?

Baku, Azerbaijan, was the glamorous point of our departure a few days earlier. I sometimes found it hard not to feel like an ancient prince in Baku. In 1941 Baku was responsible for supplying over 70% of all the oil extracted in the whole of the Soviet Union, earning it the nickname “Black Gold Capital”. Evidence of the wealth this brought was everywhere. On a walk, Nathan had squealed in disbelief, “There’s marble columns in the underpasses?!”. But there was a dark side. As I was to find out, our journey from Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea represented a microcosm of one of the biggest environmental issues of our time.

As we boarded our battered ferry, the motors shook the boat into life. Stuffed with intercontinental trucks and a large contingent of Turkish drivers, the ship started to make its way out of Baku’s famous port. Looking back towards the mainland, views of onshore oil fields were obstructed by the silhouettes of offshore oil fields. Mechanical clicks and squeaks faded, and Baku contracted behind us into a solitary pixel on my camera as we chugged out into nothing but blue space. 

The hours passed and there was not a single sighting of land. Up on deck, we spent an age jBlack Gold. Extraction of this most valuable commodity presents all kinds of risks to water quality, and many islands in the Caspian have suffered reduced populations of marine birds because of resulting ecological damage. Worryingly, recent proposals to build pipelines crossing the sea have multiplied the potential threats. 

ust looking out over the featureless seascape, being buffered by the bitter winds, and staying warm by chasing each other around like schoolchildren after lunch. Despite the seemingly desolate environment, the Caspian Sea supports a diverse and unique ecosystem.

Luckily, Nathan and I, were treated to a little comedy to take our mind off it. Our boat was captained by a real-life caricature. He was a short, stocky Azeri fellow who had plated all of his teeth in gold, and seemed to be forever smoking a cigarette that never burned away. Glass of Vodka in hand and wearing only a vest and trousers, the captain periodically made his way down to the dining room to enjoy the banter of the Turkish truck drivers as they whittled the hours away laughing and playing backgammon. Embedded in an impromptu Russian lesson he tried to give Nathan and I, was a piece of geography. “Rooshia”, he barked, pointing North-West, and glaring at Nathan to make sure he understood. Spinning clockwise with his arm outstretched like a human compass, our captain reeled off the remaining littoral states. “Kaazakheestan, Tourkmeneestan, Eeeran!!”. “Aaaaaand”, he drawled before pausing for dramatic effect, “AZERBAIJAN!!!!”. His golden grin was wider than our vessel.

Gaining collaboration between these nations with respect to the Caspian is difficult. How the resources are divided is an issue yet to be fully resolved by the five nations, and how the region is to be protected even less so. The sea represents a place of compromise: compromise between the need for oil and the need to protect the environment, and compromise between the conflicting interests of its encompassing nations. I had no idea that this would be a journey across such a politically and environmentally contested arena.

I turned in for the night, and slept badly on my steel bunk. The following morning was particularly clear, and I peered out across the still water. It looked like hammered pewter.  It was lucky that I decided against a chilly attempt for the shore, because as far as the eye could see are oil tankers from every corner of the Caspian, sat silently, as deadly giant barricades, waiting for their turn to unload their precious cargo.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

New Ways to See Places

Part 2 Cycling: An Interactive Way to see Australian Wildlife

Danger is exciting, and few places represent danger like the Australian wilderness. As Bill Bryson put it, “this is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip”.

Many people have entertained the dream of one day travelling to Australia to discover postcard-worthy beaches, a hassle-free lifestyle and yes, the barbeques on which the clichéd shrimp can be thrown. But one other major draw is the plethora of wildlife that fills every corner of the land down under.  Nature reserves and tours offer safety along with the experience,  but  I discovered a different way, and in doing so emphatically confirmed the adage that Aussie animals are “out to get you”.

It began in Cairns, the heat of the day weighing down on my sweat-soaked shoulders. With some final mechanical alterations, I clipped my shoes into the pedals, and rolled out with a friend, Alan, onto the scorching tarmac of the Bruce Highway. A colony of ants marched, dutifully single-file, across the hard shoulder. We pointed our tyre treads south. My very own Australian safari was about to begin.

Relatively speaking, our first run-in with the local fauna was just around the corner, a few kilometres south of Babinda. We were faced with allegedly the most aggressive bird on the planet. Armed with a fearsome reputation and a horn, the dinosaur-like cassowary has huge talons that extend from muscular, sinewy legs that stretch ground-ward from a large, dark torso. If Alan and I were under any illusions about the bird’s menace, we had Leo, a local child, to squeal reminders at us that if we got too close to our avian friend, “his claws would be the laaast thing we’d seeeeeeee!!!!!!”. Pedalling away, the danger had been averted. For now.

The further south we rode, the more the tropical greenery was being replaced with browns and yellows. Echidnas, dead and alive, made fleeting appearances. Our river baths came with fear, the threat of crocodile attack always an outside possibility. A sleepless night spent in the mud with an ocean of croaking cane toads was followed by two mornings where we peered out of the tent to find herds of calmly grazing wallabies through the pale light. It was all terribly exciting.

But real scares started to come thick and fast. Alan nearly suffered the wrath of an angry, hissing snake bathing in the warm sun, while I, much more embarrassingly, actually yelped when a green tree frog presented itself inches from my face. Sometime later, and I was cycling into the night, tracing my path only by the few feet of visible white line. The uneasy silence was broken by an ominous rustling in a roadside bush off to the left. In a split second, a black form emerged and, thumped, louder and louder, towards me. Terror gripped me as the monster closed to within 5 meters, then 4, then 3. My heart pounded, legs screaming as I turned the pedals over as fast as I could. Veering left, my headlight illuminated the face of my predator; a wild, disorientated Kangaroo. Terrified by the light, the kangaroo skidded to a halt before retracing its tracks into the undergrowth, and I forced a relived chuckle through my panting.

I didn’t know it yet, but I had run out of luck.

Alan and I found a strikingly pretty spot in the wilderness near Yalboroo. Fighting through the tornado of mosquitoes, we pitched our tent. There was an edgy, almost sinister air about the place. I couldn’t put my finger on the exact scent, but the air smelled damp. The lapping ripples of peacefully swimming turtles and the wandering eyes of bearded dragons added to the eerie ambience, before fireflies lit up the river banks in their hypnotic attempt to inform us that we were not alone.

Fast forwarding and I found myself in an unfamiliar bed, now with a noticeable absence of wildlife. Consciousness forced itself upon me, along with sterile smells, muffled sounds and blurred, fragmented vision. Coming to, I craned to look down at my bandaged foot, and saw blood seeping to the surface. This was the result of two surgeries and a week on intravenous antibiotics. I was lucky nature had only nibbled back as I found myself in Logan hospital on grounds of a “suspected spider bite”. Bill Bryson was spot on.

The road to recovery stretched into the distance, but wasn’t as endless as it first seemed. I did begin to cycle again, and before too long, the finish line in Sydney had rolled into the crosshairs. I couldn’t imagine a richer way than cycling to experience Australian nature, but the utmost care must be taken. Australia is exciting and naturally vibrant, but also, importantly, a dangerous place.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

Agritourism in Mantova, Italy

 A Slumber Party with Sleeping Beauty

I arrived, filthy and sun-beaten, at my destination, though I wasn’t altogether sure that I was in the right place. I appeared to be on a ranch. The gate was open, and the silt path led only to a large, empty-looking barn conversion that backed onto a jigsaw of mismatched fields. A faint smell of manure hung in the air. Only a few steps away was the start of an eerie agricultural graveyard. Chickens wandered through the minefield of motionless, rusting tractors and ploughs, clucking uncertainly. The temperature was beginning to drop as the day slipped away. Suddenly, a rustling behind me cut through the ambient noise like a knife. I turned slowly. Two soulless, black eyes bored into me.

Reception at an agricultural campground in Mantova, Italy

My mind was playing tricks on me; my gaze met only by the apathetic stare of a goat. As I re-composed myself, a wiry man with leathery skin and a contagious smile, emerged from the trees and beckoned me towards his best piece of turf. Me and my tent would be happy here. Gratefully, I shook Stephano’s hand, noticing his firm grip and calloused palms. This was my first acquaintance with Italian Agritourism (Agriturismo), and would be nothing like I had expected.

Lying in the shadows of the giants of the Italian tourist board, Mantova is hemmed in by Milan to the West, Lake Garda to the North and Venice to the East. Although the town is famed for being the site of Romeo’s exile in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and for being the old home of the Gonzaga family, locals affectionately refer to the town as La Bella Addormentata (“the sleeping beauty”). Nestled among three slumbering lakes and resting comfortably on the green bed of the Po plain, it is easy to see how Mantova earned its nick name. But truth be told, La Bella Addormentata is not disturbed nearly as often as she ought to be.

An hour later, I was invited inside, out of the cold. The wife of the Stephano, Laura, was a rotund lady, and full of cheer. Her two children raced around, attempting to catch each other amidst fits of laughter around the large, heavy wooden table residing in the centre of the spacious dining hall. The scent of roast pork fluctuated as Stephano and four bearded men entered the building. The four men, like princes with their noble steeds, had ridden horses all the way from Lake Garda. Removing their wide-brimmed hats, and hanging them from the corners of their chairs, the cowboys began to tell me about their journey.

The eastern road into Mantova, Italy

Acquaintances behind us, Stephano uncased his guitar and began an impromptu sing-song with his daughters, before moving onto classics like 'Yesterday' for my benefit. In an effort to absorb as much of the experience as I could, I agreed to hear a song about a beautiful woman from the South of Italy. Stephano would sing one line of the song, before translating it into broken English for me, much to the amusement of the Italian cowboys. The song proceeded like this:

“I went to a pub after a sunny day”
“And spotted a pretty girl called Pepper across the room”
“So I asked her for dance with me”
“But she smelled very badly and I asked her why”
“She told me she had been sick”
“And I said I couldn't bear it”
“I sat down and left her sad” (the melody began to fade out ominously here)
“And wished on her a thousand cancers”

I slowly scraped my jaw off the floor. “A thousand cancers?”, I inquired, sure that a deeper message had been lost in translation. “Of course!”, he confirmed, a cheeky glint in his eye as he slid me a coffee with a shot of homemade alcohol. “Made from apples!”, he chirped happily. That did not stop the drink being so alcoholic that any spillage might have seriously challenged the integrity of the wooden table.
I waved my goodbyes yelling “Gratzie” as I wheeled out of the farm the following morning. My experiences of both Mantova, and Italian Agriturismo had proven wonderfully unexpected. Agritourism is a cheap, ecologically responsible and creative way to see many places of real natural beauty and is becoming increasingly popular. On this evidence, you certainly do not get what you pay for; you get much, much more. If travelling to North Italy, be prepared to exchange the hotel for a farm, and swing by to give La Bella Addormentata a prod. You might just be surprised when she wakes up.

Trains, Planes & Rice on Wheels

The use of Transport in Flores, Indonesia

Not without a hint of apprehension, I stepped onto the rickety, well-loved bus to undertake the long and sickeningly winding journey from Labuanbajo to Bajawa. I was about to see Flores in all its glory, from the dramatic, lush landscapes to the charm of local commuters. Seven or eight hours of travel lay ahead of me, though I had learned to take such estimates with a veritable handful of salt.

The bus smelled a little dank, musty with the scent of livestock, but the atmosphere was welcoming, and smiles ubiquitous. A twig-thin girl wearing a sequined jilbab could not hide her curiosity in me, a bule, and periodically swivelled on her mother’s lap to steal glances at me from between the seats. I was confident I was on the right bus, but was nonetheless concerned when the bus boarded a ferry. Concern was quickly replaced with a combination of relief and amusement as sun-beaten, shirtless men heaved sack upon sack of nuts and rice into the bowels of the vehicle, before piling the sacks onto the roof like the blocks of the Egyptian pyramids thousands of miles away. Once every nook had been occupied, every cranny stuffed full, the driver guided the reluctant bus around the town in search of further passengers to fill the spaceless places in a vehicle that was starting to resemble a stuffed sack itself.

Eventually we set off, the bounce of the road exaggerated by the hard rice-bag on which I was sitting. The flood of green flowing past the window was mesmeric, and I had soon tuned out the claustrophobia of it all. With nothing to do, I employed my time as an instrument of reflection, marvelling at the pragmatism of transport in this beautiful country. There is never a wasted journey in Indonesia.

A blur of serrated, knife-edge peaks bit into the sky outside like an oscillating, emerald carving knife and they drew me in for what felt like hours. I was absorbed by thoughts of previous similar experiences; the Uzbek trucks loaded with tree trunks and local men, Serbian horses pulling carts of goods and squabbling chickens, and Ladas in Kazakhstan harbouring piles of plants, people and electronics.

Cramped Uzbek man in a shared taxi in Denov

My daydreams were interrupted as we ground to a halt in Ruteng with the dusty engine’s lyric splutter. I was sitting next to an open window and could smell the scent of hot nasi goreng emanating from nearby food carts. A passing young man cheekily tugged on my leg hair through the window, smiling in my direction in order to share the joke. I laughed and pretended to threaten him out of the window. Yet more people piled into the bus at the stop, and began using the laps of existing passengers as extra seats.

Our journey resumed, along with my daydream. I cast my mind’s eye back over one almost very ugly, illustration of resourceful transport. In Java, near Bojonegoro, a driver, a female student and I made our way along a good quality road that bobbed and weaved its way through mountains and banana trees.  We were travelling in a people-carrier, and were greeted by a small intersection where all four corners were peppered with colourful bamboo market stalls selling fruit, fish and beautiful textiles. Taking the stop sign as an unhelpful suggestion rather than an instruction, our driver accelerated into the junction. A four-way pile-up very nearly ensued , and would have included three jilbab-clad women wearing Air Max equivalents riding a motorbike, a becak (a three-wheeled bicycle rickshaw) carrying an entire 4-person family plus luggage, and a horse pulling a hay-loaded cart guided by a weathered Javanese farmer nonchalantly chewing grass. Extreme road and vehicle use is not uncommon in many places around the world, but the more I had thought about this surreal episode, the less sure I had become that stretching every available resource in a transportation infrastructure was entirely a good thing.

Another sack of rice was passed through the rear window and dumped on my lap, crushing the air out of me, and just like that, I was certain it was not always a good thing.

Funnily enough, weeks later and I would be rolling down the glossy tarmac of an Australian carpool lane, allowing a smile to creep over my face at the sheer irony of it all. Australia, and many other more wealthy nations, is now so resource rich that people are actually rewarded for not underusing an available commodity.

I sensed the need for some compromise.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

The Cold, Hard Sell

Quail Marketing in Hajikabul, Azerbaijan

We’ve all been there, sat at home watching daytime television, when the ring of a telephone breaks the monotony. A barely detectable feeling of excitement wells up as you approach the phone, racking your brain as to who this mystery caller might be. Quickly, excitement is replaced with annoyance as you realise that the voice on the other end of the line is attempting to sell you insurance. It’s the dreaded cold call.

You aren't in the market for insurance, so you insist that Income Protection will not be necessary. That’s when the pitch changes. Now it is the job of the sales representative to suggest something that you are interested in, on the off chance that a sale can still be made. “We also provide cover for your home…” drones the battle-wearied voice in your ear. You don’t even consider it, and hang up.

Fruit vendor in Baku

The Azeri men and women took their cold calling much more literally than their UK counterparts, their yells almost freezing solid in the bitter Siberian crosswind. Rather than a phone line, the selling arena was the streets of rural Azerbaijan. Instead of insurance, quails were the product of choice.

The whole idea that you could sell quail to a person pedalling through the snow and ice twenty-five kilometres from the next town, Hajikabul, was as ridiculous as alien abduction insurance. But that wasn’t about to stop these eternal optimists.

The men were stationed at 100m intervals along the road. The first man, a heavy-set middle-aged campaigner, tried to sell me one of his finest dead quail using vociferous persuasive techniques, running to keep pace with me as long as he possibly could and enthusiastically shouting prices that rapidly descended the further I managed to cycle away from him. I chuckled; in my experience as far as sales goes, nothing scares a person off like being chased by a man clutching a bird corpse.

Before long, I was in the realm of the second salesman, a skinny teenage boy, who had an alternative approach. He calmly tried to point out the benefits of buying a dead quail from him, namely, that it was already dead, ready for consumption, and would fit in one of the bags I had attached to my bicycle. Given that the young fellow didn’t speak a word of English, this was quite an achievement.

I turned my gaze up the road, attempting to suss out my next adversary. It was a younger guy, maybe mid-twenties, and he was so slight that he almost looked like a dark wisp against the white snow bank. He froze, pondering his approach in light of his colleagues’ failed efforts moments earlier. As I closed to within earshot, I swore I could hear the light bulb go on inside his head. Abruptly, he dropped the lifeless bird in his hand to the tarmac and crouched, eagerly rummaging through the white potato sack behind him. A broad, cheeky smile spread across the man’s face as he locked eyes with me. Standing up, with a glint in his eye, the man dragged a live quail, still thrashing around, out of the sack and held it aloft triumphantly.

Meat vendor in Ganja

Still beaming, the charismatic seller mischievously hinted that the freshness of his produce surpassed that of his competitors by nodding in the direction I had just come and disapprovingly wagging his finger, before nodding towards the live bounty in his grip and giving it the all-conquering, thumbs-up seal of approval.  He did, after all, have a point. The freshness of a dinner cannot be questioned if it is still trying to fly away.

I am not ashamed to say I was actually temped. I wanted to reward the sheer audacity and likeability of my new friend but, other than a handlebar trophy, I had no use for a quail, not dead and absolutely not alive. Likewise, I had no use for insurance, neither income protection nor home insurance. I am still being called with regard to insurance back here in the UK, and I am certain that those men are still out there on that stretch of road in Azerbaijan, trying to sell quails. I have come to learn that common ground is often found in the most unfamiliar places.

Now, I am aware that there is a big difference between selling birds on the roadside and selling insurance on the phone, but often-times there is a lack of genuine enthusiasm on the part of many salespeople in the UK. To be slightly melodramatic, our culture, with all its perceived politeness and guards against social discomfort, occasionally strips salespeople of their charisma. The shamelessness, cheek and bravado of those Azeri salesmen were brazenly endearing, and I for one would be thrilled to see more of it.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

Fit For Purpose

Somewhere Between Mekhnatabad and Shurobod

“Your tubes”, he mimed. “Give them to me”. I had heard of thriftiness, but this Tajik child was intimidatingly entrepreneurial. 

I had been cycling for months, and the latest lung-busting climb had left me somewhere between Mekhnatabad and Shurobod in the blazing midday heat on my way into the imperious Pamir mountain range in central Asia.

The boy’s brown eyes emerged from beneath his shaggy, black hair and bore into mine. A loose, grubby grey T-shirt hung from the boy’s wiry frame and was tucked professionally into his threadbare black shorts. The boy stood defiantly and his striking, angular features added to the almost inappropriate authority he commanded. His left arm stretched out, pointing towards the deflated tyre mounted on the rear rim of his outgrown, rickety bicycle, and his right hand had uncurled into an expectant, open grasp. He couldn’t have been older than ten, and as I congratulated myself on having found my way into a stand-off with a small child in the Tajik mountains, a threatening smile spread across his muddied face, revealing both his greying teeth and the demeanour of an individual who would be willing to take my tubes by force.

I came to realise, with help from that charming episode out there in the dust, that there is an interesting difference in attitude to recycling between the haves and have-nots. Let me explain. By the time Eastern Europe rolled into view, it was apparent that the litter was becoming less well managed the further East I pushed. In parts of Bulgaria, rubbish laboured across the road in the gentle breeze like tumbleweed in an old Western, and the situation was occasionally so bad in Turkey that even the helpful crows had come out to litter-pick.

Two children using a polystyrene box as a boat in Manado, Indonesia

But communities in many developing nations had also taught me that it was possible to smite three birds with

one innovatively functional stone. And no, I’m not talking about the crows this time. Bird number one is the issue of waste disposal, and bird number two is the expenditure on materials. Our friend, bird number three, is the need for creative expression.

Every day people in the world’s poorer countries do this real life impression of Rumplestiltskin’s miraculous gold-spinning act of turning straw into gold; the useless into a utility. Tyres became flip flops in Indonesia, gutter rainwater became a cheap car wash in Uzbekistan, and road-kill became a beautiful stew in Azerbaijan. Tat was being used, and a need for something or other was being fulfilled, but most of all, people had pride in their creations. They had used their imaginations to produce something for themselves that was not only free, but truly theirs, all the way from conception to execution.

This resourcefulness is something that seems to be eroding in the West as a result decreasing necessity, yet is so prevalent in some of our poorer societies that I had a boy standing in front of me demanding an organ transplant, bike-to-bike.

Back-pedalling a little, we should realise that there is a lesson to be learnt here. Given the environmental imperative these days, we should use all the methods of recycling at our disposal. The kind of sterile, institutionalised recycling we have, with organised boxes and reward schemes is all well and good (and, I accept, highly necessary), but we should turn our everyday lives back into artistic medium, and actually ask ourselves whether we could re-purpose any of our “useless stuff” before tossing it in the appropriately coloured bin. After proudly proclaiming “I made that!” we might just cut the electricity bills at the recycling plants. In fact, my granny used to do just this, carefully re-using envelopes and enthusiastically collecting old buttons. I thought it was kooky, but I've since upgraded my opinion.

The whole thing made me wonder what I would do with my bicycle when I finally brought the curtain down on my cycling act. Create a sculpture from its melted frame perhaps? And use the spokes to craft chicken coop for a local farm? Whatever I decided to do, a more pressing issue was at hand: the expectant boy that stood before me. The problem was, while his thuggish exuberance was admirable, the boy wasn't planning to make a creative offering to the world and turn straw into gold; he was planning to simply turn my gold into his gold. No innovative recycling this time, just theft.

I helped to patch his tube up, and ruffled his hair as I wheeled my bike away. I guess he had turned me, something useless, into something useful after all. He laughed. His plan had worked.


WORDS BY DANNY GORDON

What We Learnt at Holi One Festival

Holi: one of India's oldest festivals. This religious Hindu festival takes place in March and marks the beginning of Spring, as well as the triumph of 'good' over 'evil'. Inspired by this this tradition, the creators of Holi One introduced Europe to colour festivals. Communicating the message that "we are all one", the act of covering people of all backgrounds in paint is a symbol of mass equality. This month, London held its first Holi One Colour Festival at Battersea Power Station, drowning the grounds in clouds of fluorescent powder. The top DJs, dancers and beautiful-smelling pulled pork trucks all contribute to the amazing atmosphere of this celebration. Here's some Chaat! advice for those planning to go in 2014...

• Wear white if you want to look extra colourful. Don't take any items of clothing you love - everything will adopt a pink tint in the wash.
• Print your ticket. There's a much longer entry queue for people with tickets on mobile devices.
• Fill your paint bags with half a bottle of water if you want the it to stick and stand-out.
• Be prepared for spontaneous hugging. There's no room for social awkwardness - new friends will want your paint to rub off on them.
• It's probably best not to take a drink in with you during a colour countdown. The mist of multicoloured paint may look pretty but it's not a great cider accompaniment.
• Invest in a phone or camera cover. Still experiencing a slight charging malfunction from the amount of paint embedded in the charger socket.
• Throwing paint at strangers is therapeutic. We want more paint in our lives.
• Does what it says on the (paint) tin; this chaotic but peaceful festival brings people together. It's definitely one for the bucket list.

Bangladesh Sundarbans

I was very young when I first arrived in England in the early 70s. I have returned on many occasions, but I’ve never felt I’d seen the real Bangladesh. All I knew was the sanitised and guarded evergreen view of my hometown of Moulvi Bazar. I wanted to explore the true country that I was born in. I wanted to see the true Bangladesh, and the Sundarbans was at the very top of my wish list. The largest mangrove forest in the world, the Sundarbans covers an area of 10,000 square kilometers that spans both Bangladesh and India. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a shortlist to the New 7 Wonders Of The World, it’s home to one of the most impressive animals on our planet, the Royal Bengal Tiger, an animal I’d wanted to see in its natural habitat all my life. I started planning my visit and contacted The Sundarbans Tiger Project.

The Sundarbans Tiger Project (STP) was set up by the Bangladesh Forest Department
in 2004 as a scientific research project with help from the University of Minnesota. It was initially set up to find out about the Sundarban’s tigers and how best to conserve them. Since then the STP has teamed up
with The Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh and The Zoological Society of London to expand their work further. To spend any time with these devoted conservationists was a true honour. My first destination was The Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh where I met with Henry Churchill, the STP Campaigns Manager and his conservation team, Dr Adam Barlow and Christina Greenwood. Dr Barlow explained how the project works in tandem with The Bangladeshi Forest Department and is committed in becoming leaders in tiger conservation through research. They’re also dedicated to the reduction of tiger and human conflict via their Tiger Response Team. Tigers are known to wander into villages and attack or kill humans: between 15 and 50 people killed on average every year in the region.

The team wants to help build relations with local people and avoid unnecessary suffering from tiger attacks. Or indeed retaliation attacks on tigers. A recent development has been a new resource centre set up by the Bangladesh Wildlife Trust and STP to help future generations on the issues of conservation. But they’re a tiny team and have thousands of kilometers to cover; the work is never ending.

Full article in Chaat! Magazine (issue 1)
By Nazmul Islam