THE hostesses on Uzbekistan Airways are grim, says the historian Dan Cruickshank. “If you ask for anything, they snarl and tread on your foot. And the aircraft, Russian Aeroflot rejects, belong to aviation history.”
Cruickshank has been in a number of flying machines that most of us would go out of our way to avoid. On the other hand, if you want adventure, you have to take risks. “I was in a helicopter once,” he recalls, “when it began to spiral out of control, there was smoke coming out of the engine. Another time I travelled in a rattling old ex-Russian Army plane that was steering over pine forests north of Archangel when, for a hideous moment, I thought we’d had it. It is at times like these that you contemplate the meaning of life.”
Or change career.
Cruickshank has been almost everywhere. His latest journey, for a new TV series, Around the World in 80 Treasures, covers most corners of the globe. Licence-fee payers may be relieved to know that the BBC is parsimonious and such jaunts are tightly budgeted. “The BBC makes us travel the cheapest possible way so we see real life; there is no business class for us. And we have to take early flights so the airports are dead and the queues long,” he says. His laptop and a radio that will get the World Service save him from going mad.
His earliest travel memory is a visit to Poland, where his nine-year-old imagination was stimulated by the salt mines. “There were underground tunnels like fairy grottoes with crystals of salt creating natural architecture. They are weird, exciting places where the workers used to carve out chapels to St Anthony for their protection. Because of the moisture in the air, the salt gradually melts, like candles.”
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He always takes a tie — you never know when you might be invited to an embassy do — the Bible and the Koran.
Some people advise taking pens and pencils to give out when you are travelling to remote regions but Cruickshank thinks that this is not such a good idea because you never have enough. “I find that pictures of the Virgin Mary and your family are very useful.”
It seems to be a prerequisite of intrepid travelling that you eat lousy food, sometimes literally. In Iraq he lived on a daily diet of starved chicken, oily aubergines and gritty rice, but that was a feast compared with other places where disgusting insects, animals’ private parts and unidentifiable gooey stuff were on the menu. He, however, is of the opinion that such items are gourmet fare. “I am keen on insects, they are the finest food in the world, ” he says. “Pure protein. Green ants are full of vitamin C. You bite into their little green bottoms, which they wriggle. They have an intense taste, like a sharp citrus fruit, and can make your gums go numb. Silkworms, on the other hand, are not tasty. You bite into them and the outside is leathery and the inside a gooey gunge.
“I was a bit worried that I might get ill eating these strange things. We were often offered sheep’s testicles, and dishes of lamb with eyes staring out. Beijing was good for insects. They were also selling snacks of tasty, oily dog meat, but they would not sell it to me — I think they were worried that it would show China in a bad light.”
Women are not allowed to visit the 6th-century monastery at Debre Damo in Ethiopia but, having heard how you get to it, I will not take umbrage at that fact. It involves a 60ft (18m) vertical climb up a mountain by rope, using the centuries-old footholds. The monks don’t really want anyone to go up there. “Getting down is even worse; you have to throw yourself off and hope for the best,” Cruickshank says. By the time he reached the Andes and had to paraglide to imitate how the condor flies in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, you would think that he would be grateful to chew on coca leaves. But it did nothing for him: “It is legal there, but not much of a hit.”