Caroline Eden's culinary journey through Central Asia, well off the tourist track

Lamenting the loss of international travel has become a pandemic pastime. Getting on a plane, passport in hand. Checking into snug homestays or swanky hotels, gliding down slopes, catching waves or getting caught in the crush of museums and markets. In fixating on the mere acts of travelling abroad, though, we ignore the most transportive part.

Magic happens in the stillness: Taking your time, letting the atmosphere seep in, travelling thoughtfully. Rather than following a jampacked itinerary from sightto-sight, we forge the most memorable connections to people and places when we allow the unexpected to happen.

“To travel unhurriedly is a great privilege and a great gift,” says Edinburgh-based author Caroline Eden. “And more than that, to travel deliberately and to observe quietly.”

Her third book, Red Sands (Quadrille, 2020), is an invitation to ramble around Central Asia. Vicariously, for now, hopefully fuelled by curiosity and appetite later. “People are desperate to wander in whichever ways they can and if that's within a book, then that's what we can do,” says Eden. “I'm doing the same thing, just trying to escape. I'm reading a lot of novels.”

Eden spent six months travelling through four of the five Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. (She doesn't include Turkmenistan in Red Sands as “reporting freely there is problematic.”)

Guided by springtime blooms on the steppe and a bountiful fall harvest — roaming the world's largest walnut forest in Arslanbob, southwest Kyrgyzstan, sucking the seeds of roadside Fergana Valley pomegranates like candy in east Uzbekistan, and tasting rare varieties of apples and pears in a tranquil orchard in central Tajikistan's Rasht Valley — she split her journeys between two seasons in 2019.

Writing Red Sands came a decade after Eden's first trip to Central Asia. Having travelled extensively in the region, she chronicles the “march towards modernity” she's witnessed as some places have started opening up. “I'm very invested in Central Asia. I absolutely love it,” she says. “I just wanted to write something personal that put down on paper the changes I've seen.”

As physical reminders to sit still and take in the details — both the ordinary and the exceptional — Eden travelled with the books of two British writers: Isabella `Ella' Robertson Christie, who travelled to Central Asia in 1910 and 1912; and John Wardell, who arrived in 1914. “If you're trying to explain development and transformation, and recording the past and the present, it does take time and attention,” says Eden. “If you're somewhere that's relatively unsung and untalked about, you've got to do it credit. So I think you do have to try and take time and reflect.”

While some of the places she visited are undergoing rapid development, many remain untouched by mass tourism. Khujand in northern Tajikistan is one such place. Set on the Syr Darya river, it's a beautiful city, Eden says. But save the handful of tour buses that typically turn up at a museum devoted to Alexander the Great, it's far off the tourist track.

In the pre-pandemic era of fast travel, escaping the nondescript mark of globalization — coffee chains, fastfood outlets and fast-fashion stores lining downtown streets — was often elusive. Cities such as Khujand restore your faith that places untouched by mass tourism still exist, says Eden.

“I literally spent half a day once trying to find a coffee. Where in the world does this happen nowadays?” she adds. “It's amazing, really. And you go to the market — the Panjshanbe Bazaar — and it's unchanged, really, since the `60s when it was built. It's time travel.”

In Red Sands, recipes punctuate essays — each named after a man-made structure or space. A blushing quince jam Eden enjoyed at a guesthouse in the fortressed town of Nurata, central Uzbekistan; hotelier Vladimir Lee's kimchi, a chaser of sorts after night bled into day at a dive bar in Shymkent, south Kazakhstan; and a Soviet sanatorium appetizer inspired by a surreal spa in the Gissar Mountains, west Tajikistan.

As in Eden's second book, Black Sea (Quadrille, 2018), the recipes “are emblematic. Edible snapshots, if you like.” They must capture the feeling of a place, she says, not repeat recipes readily available in other books and teach readers something new. Tied to a particular person, place or point in history, they enhance the essay they're paired with as an expression of the journey. They're also a treasured part of the process for Eden, a connection to the places she visited once she's home.

“They help me reconnect to the journeys that I've been on. And when I'm on the road, food is such a comfort,” she says. “And the older I get, the more I need it, look for it and have to have it basically because it's a punctuation in the day. Three times a day, you sit down and digest what you've been doing. You have a rest. You think about things and you pause, and you appreciate what you're doing rather than just harrying through.”

Eden draws a parallel between travelling curiously and trying a recipe for the first time. Ripe with possibilities, they share a sense of wonder. She equates recipes with maps — connectors to help her find the way. If everything goes according to plan, you end up with something interesting and fulfilling.

“They both open windows onto other worlds,” says Eden, adding that as with travel, there's the lure of the return to a favourite recipe. Places we go back to time and time again, even if we can't always explain why we're drawn to them. As with destinations, you may have several different recipes for laghman, samsa or plov, but for some reason you always turn to one.

“I think that's to do with success. If you connect with somewhere or the recipe goes well, obviously you return there. And if it's a disaster, you probably don't,” says Eden, laughing. “Travelling and cooking with hope is certainly something I do.”