An intense journey full of thousands of questions

Pratibha, my Nepalese friend, was visibly shaking as we flew in an eight-seat single propeller plane above the Himalayan foothills.

A veteran reporter from these parts, she had covered far too many airplane accidents to know the journey was anything but safe.

Landing on a stretch of gravel perched atop a mountain, I gripped the chair in front of me as the plane slid to a halt, then stepped out to begin the food crisis assignment.

The Nepalese mountains are both stunningly beautiful and frighteningly poor. My days wandering the mountain paths of Dolpa talking to farmers left me with equally mixed feelings.

The children that gathered round my camera after each picture to laugh at their images and poke fun at my newsgathering contraptions still make me smile, while the stories I heard of basic survival in the harsh reality of decreasing rains and more children to feed haunt me still.

Dolpa is remote, exotic and in need, I would urge anyone with an adventurous spirit to visit.

Flying into Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on my next stop was a very different experience. I took a taxi through the dense city to a small guesthouse on the edge of the Dhanmondi Lake.

It was a simple room with lizards running up the walls but a welcome oasis from my frequent trips into the city slums to work on the story. Slum dwellings are rarely as you would imagine. Simple yes, smelly quite frequently, but always full of surprises. One of these was the peanut seller who took me under his wing as he toured a neighborhood at night, scared that my camera might attract unwanted attention. Another was the toothless old man who insisted I sit in his house and drink tea while I waited to interview a rickshaw driver.

It's rare these days to find such a welcoming crowd as you do in Dhaka's streets.

Manila was wet, so wet in fact that my camera refused to demist throughout my first full interview, in spite of my many attempts to defog it.

I enjoyed every moment of my trips out to the rice farms where I would escape my interview trail every so often to look over the rice fields and just enjoy the peaceful scenery.

In Los Banos I found myself in hostile territory as even the mention of biotech crops brought a barrage of animated rebukes from a group of professors, but I found their sweet organic coffee and a jar of the best banana chips I have ever tasted more persuasive and have since rethought my eating habits.

My last stop in Hyderabad was rushed but fruitful. As is often the case when covering such complex issues, by the time you near the end there are a thousand questions you want to ask but rarely get the chance.

At a conference partly dedicated to biotech agriculture I felt I acted like an over-enthused student as I stalked experts for exclusive interviews and tea-break discussions.

In the evenings I escaped on the back of a friend's motorbike as we toured the city to photograph the markets and landmarks.

It's a vibrant and colorful city with a fascinating history, and it is all the more intense in the evening when the air cools and people come out to shop and socialize.

It's been an intense six weeks but with few disappointments. It seems food is a subject everyone wants to talk about even if they have different views on how it should be cultivated and distributed.

I don't feel I have found an answer as to how to feed rising populations in Asia over the next 40 years, but I am happy to have raised the question. I am planning to continue this assignment in the future.

(China Daily 08/01/2011 page11)