10 Memorable Expedition Meals

Food and expeditions go together like cheese and pickle. Here are some particularly memorable meals from my travels:

1. Smash and tinned mackerel eaten in silence in a torch-lit tent in Betws-y-Coed after a seemingly endless downhill bicycle free-wheel (9 miles!) in the dark looking for somewhere to pitch.
2. Finally tucking into the Spotted Dick & Custard ration pack that we’d promised ourselves as a treat once we made it safely off the the Inylchek Glacier.
3. The muesli that I ate with my compass and Laura ate with her hands on the Musandam Peninsula of Oman because we’d forgotten the spoons.
4. Lying on my back in a Kyrgyz hotel after a food-deprived month in the mountains, in pain from stomach bloating through excessive eating but still stuffing more biscuits into my mouth as my body made up for weeks of malnourishment.
5. A moonlit Christmas dinner of barbecued king prawns on a deserted beach on Masirah Island. My girlfriend (now wife) and I had just cycled the 90-mile circumference and nearly died from a lack of water (N.B. minor exaggeration).
6. Discovering a hidden stash of chocolate at base camp in Russia and spending hours melting it all down only to pour it over a cake that turned out to be rancid.
7. A “taste of the war treat” of tinned pilchards with cous cous eaten in drizzle outside a pub where my friends were eating because I was trying to save money.
8. Fried egg baps at our Bolivian base camp made with fresh bread “baked” using a camping stove and the outside of an MSR pan.
9. The big, fat, delicious, juicy Argentine steak we’d been dreaming of but never thought we’d get at the Fitzroy Adventure Camp (FRAC)
10. Stopping for a quick pee in the bushes whilst pedalling my rickshaw through the north west only to find myself 1,500 calories heavier after a ‘Just taking a look’ in my snack bag.

Got any good travelling meal memories? Add them below in the comments section.