Alastair Bland

Alastair Bland

 

Alastair Bland is a journalist based in San Francisco who writes about the environment, agriculture, science and food.

Friends are easily made - and tea quickly served - while tasting cheese at the town bazaar.

What to Eat and Drink in Turkey

My favorite place in any large town is the fruit bazaar, where all this goodness is crammed together into a circus of fragrant, colorful mayhem

No doubt about it, bears had been in this area.

The Bear and the Bullet

The truck came by slowly and a spotlight swept the river bottom. "My God—they're hunting me!"

Turkish tea

Tea and Bear Talk in Turkey

"It's too dangerous," said a villager. "There are bears." His boys growled and clawed the air

Water in the Black Sea’s northern reaches gets as cold as seawater can get—31 degrees Fahrenheit—and as warm as the 80s in summer.

The Wild World of the Black Sea

Visitors come for the place and spill onto the beach and pose exuberantly under umbrellas and wrestle with colorful inflatable toys in the brown waves

Fishermen pass the hours along the Bosporus Strait. They occasionally catch sardines.

Istanbul: The Maddest City in Europe

“That’s the fattest stray dog I’ve ever seen.” A lot has changed here since Mark Twain wrote about the city, but there's still plenty of mayhem

The great Selimiye Mosque of Edirne

Where to Go when Greece Says No: Turkey

That evening a man walked into my bush camp with a gun, marched straight at me as I gaped in shock and sprawled out beside me on my tarp

A relic from the communist era lies along the road to the Kabata Hut.

Uphill All the Way in the Rhodope Mountains

I have my dinner—cheese, a four-pound organic tomato, a sack of figs and a jar of pickled chanterelles—and I’m ready to get lost on the mountain roads

Spring-fed fountains are refreshing rest spots in the Bulgarian countryside.

What to Drink in Bulgaria

The fountains are a marvel of local social infrastructure; the spouts pour out spring water along almost every mile of mountain roads

Red foxes get no love in Bulgaria.

How to Recover From Two Bike Spills

Plovdiv is studded with rocky hills and features mosques, art galleries, parks, museums, neutered dogs, bridges, a cherished old town and a Roman stadium

My bicycle, ready for its Bulgarian adventure

Why Go To Bulgaria?

Packing for an adventure to a place layered with relics from the Thracians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgars, Ottoman Turks and Soviets

To botanists, the Caucasus Mountain region is known as a center of diversity for figs as well as mulberries, grapes, walnuts, apricots, pomegranates and almonds.

The Great Georgian Fruit Hunt

Sent to the Caucasus by the U.S. government, Malli Aradhya forages through orchards and markets in search of the perfect specimen

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