Out of Eden Walk: Food to power a walk around the world
National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek is on a 24,000-mile, transcontinental journey, and he’s traveling the slow way: on foot. In this installment, we learn a bit more about the local foods he’s eaten along the way. He tells host Marco Werman about some of the dishes he’s tasted — from a meat dumpling stew in the Palestinian West Bank, to fresh fruits and vegetables gathered on a Turkish farm, to pizza in rural India.
The finished product: Mandalay mont di coated with daal powder lentil flour—and garnished with roasted chicken topping. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden Walk
In recent months, The World has been following the journey of National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek. On foot, he’s been on a 24,000-mile trek across the globe, which is being documented through a project called Out of Eden Walk.
Today, Salopek is more than halfway through the trip that started in 2013 in Africa’s Great Rift Valley and will end on the southern tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego.
He recently completed his walk across China and caught up with The World’s Marco Werman to share about the local dishes he’s enjoyed across the globe so far.
Marco Werman: Today, we thought we’d ask you about some of the food you have been coming across and eating on your journey. I want to start near the beginning of your walk in Ethiopia at an archaeological site called Gona. You called it “the first kitchen.” Why is that?
Paul Salopek: This project is based on following the first humans who walked out of Africa, right? So, of course, I’m looking down at my feet as I walk through one of our origin sites, the Rift Valley of northeastern Africa. After talking to experts, they say the place is just littered with millions of stone tools. And what are those stone tools? Their kitchen utensils, choppers, meat cleavers, cutters and scrapers. So, the African Rift, where we were born, was basically a giant cutting board, a kitchen, an antique kitchen.
And why is that important? Because it’s about hominids evolving, right?
It has a biological premise. When we were able to cut open animals for the first time millions of years ago, using stone tools, we basically sliced open all this energy from the ecosystem that we couldn’t get with a strictly plant diet or a mixed plant diet. Animal protein, animal fat, especially marrow organs, were so nutritious that they “proteinated” us and allowed us to evolve the way we’ve evolved today, big-brained apes.
So, crossing Ethiopia’s border into Djibouti, you wrote about a drink that’s popular across Africa, palm wine. For folks who have yet to taste it, how would you describe the palm wine you sampled in Djibouti?
It was kind of lemony. It was almost like a light lemonade, frothy, kind of fizzy. And it’s not super alcoholic. It’s actually quite nutritious. But it was kind of funny because we walked out of the desert into these palm groves, and there were a bunch of people out walking around with very large knives because they’re chopping these notches in these trees to collect sap, kind of reeling in front of us, waving their rather large knives.
A young Afar boy slices open palm stumps to collect the juice that makes desert wine. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden WalkThe cut that quenches thirst — slicing doum palms to make palm wine. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden Walk
Now, moving along into the Palestinian West Bank in Nablus, you spent an afternoon working in a kitchen preparing Arabic dishes. What was that like?
Yeah, this is the case, you know, in a highly conflicted area where humans are at each other, and I’ve covered quite a few wars, as well … Food takes on an even more heightened power when humans are in extremis. And I think it’s one of the few places where a kind of a safe zone is the kitchen. And so, in Nablus, my walking partner, Bassam Almohor, and I joined a group of women who were trying to preserve Nabulsi traditional cooking. As one said, “Everybody’s eating Kentucky Fried Chicken now.” And they were trying to find these original ingredients in a culture of food in the Levant, which is basically a crossroads. You know, they’re influences from Rome, they’re influences from the Ottomans.
Ohood Bedawi and Fatima Qadoumy perform the rite of remembering. Nablus, West Bank. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden Walk
To that point, one of the Palestinian cooks told you, “Our history is mixed into our food.” And I’m just wondering how present that kind of attitude was when you were making food with these three Palestinian women in this kitchen.
Absolutely. In this ancient city founded by the Romans 2,000 years ago, this kitchen was an outpost of cultural resistance and preservation. These women [were] very conscious that the herbs they were cutting, the dough they were kneading, the dumplings they were stewing … were kind of symbols of identity for them.
Making the dumpling “helmets” for shish barak. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden Walk
Well, now, walking across Anatolia, in eastern Turkey, your traveling companion Murat gathered food from farmer’s fields. I mean, you weren’t even aware he was gathering while you were hiking until the end of the day. But the photos of ripe tomatoes and berries, they’re just mouthwatering. How much grazing do you do when you’re traveling by foot?
Yeah, I consider it one of the fringe benefits of walking across the world on this project, Marco, is gleaning orchards, and about 80% of my route, I think it’s like 15,000 miles so far, is through farmland. Think about it. Out of Africa, through the Levant, into Anatolia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It’s pretty rural, so I’m eating a lot of fresh food straight out of people’s fields and orchards. And my walking partner in Anatolia, a Kurdish guy, a photographer, Murat Yazar … he would empty his rucksack at the end of the day when we were making camp and out spilled this cornucopia of tomatoes and figs and fiery peppers and kind of very fresh zucchinis that snapped when you when you broke them. He would just kind of smile wryly, and I say, “Where’d you get this stuff?” And, he’d say, “In our culture, Paul, it’s allowed.”
Kurdish harvesters tap the cornucopia of Anatolia — tomato fields outside Severek. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden Walk
One final taste from the journey, Paul, is in eastern India, in a small town called Kishan Ganj. There was a pizza shop there, and the owner told you how he learned to make it. Tell us the story of the pizza maker, Mohammad Afaque Quraishi.
Yeah, this is one of the more surreal food stories of this global journey. So we walk into this small town, it’s mainly a Muslim town, on this river in Bihar in eastern India … and I see a sign that just pops. It’s a pizza sign. It says pizzeria, and it had an arrow. It’s a handmade sign in the market. I hadn’t had pizza eons. So, I followed this sign to a guy’s shop, and imagine kind of an Indian busy marketplace, right, with awnings sticking out onto streets and lots of activity, local produce. This guy had been a defense contractor in Afghanistan with the US military, working for two years at Pizza Huts on US military bases, on FOBs, forward operating bases. Which, as you know, are like mini American cities. That’s the American way of war. You bring your Pizza Hut pizzas with you. And he had learned to make exact duplicates of Pizza Hut pizzas here in the middle of India. And he was so proud of it. He had custom-designed an oven. He was importing spices from a big port on the Indian coast. And I said, “How’s business?” And he got a little bit deflated. He said, “Paul, I think I’m a little bit ahead of my time. Nobody knows what pizza is here, and nobody eats it.”
Mohammad Afaque Quraishi opens his pizzeria for another day of abysmal business in Kisanganj, in eastern India. He misses the Afghan war, where he worked as a civilian contractor making pizzas at a US military base. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.Paul Salopek/National Geographic, Out of Eden Walk
So distinct foods from disparate places along your track. What a curse you when you think about the common thread and the place food holds for all these people you met.
You know, every one of these people I met, every one of the kitchens I had the privilege of stepping into, the dinner tables that I sat around, whether it was a Kazakh shepherd on the floor or on a rug on the sand, or whether it was a Saudi prince’s palace with 16 courses, is that food is the common bridge to each other. No matter what culture, ideology, geography, politics … If somebody invites you to break bread, you’ve made it. You’ve made this kind of primal connection. And just as Murat was, you know, grazing the farmers’ fields as we walk through Anatolia, internalizing his home. Right. He was a he was a melancholic Kurd, and his part of the world was in civil war for 50 years. He kind of was internalizing. He was eating his landscape, eating his home. I see this project as the same, at a global level, that the planetary landscape sustains us. It’s our table, and we better respect it. And every time we eat, we’re savoring a bit of home. So, it’s an important, important glue that holds humanity together.
Parts of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.
Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonders of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.
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