Who is Bo on the road?
- rosemary
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
"food as authentic as it gets" Bo on the Road
This is a young lady who calls herself Bo on the Road, and who writes a website, for which she makes videos and writes articles, called Authentic World Food. I'm not at all sure how I came across it now - probably because I was researching one of the recipes she has posted. Something in the particular post I found must have appealed to me and so I put it on my list of websites to investigate. Some of those have proved to be very well-known and are in fact super professional, some are tiny, and like mine, probably a hobby that is accessed only by a few friends. This one is probably somewhere in the middle.
She has a YouTube channel where you can see her videos - 65 of them, but most of them were made 10 or 11 years ago - the channel was begun in 2013, and the latest one that I found was made 3 years ago. Nevertheless there are 19.8 k subscribers.
Initially I could find nothing about her, not even her real name, as she gives very little away in her short About section. The first paragraph of this tells us her intent:
"I am a surfer girl. I solo travel and on my travels, I am not only chasing waves and watching beauties of visited countries, but I am trying to spend loads of time with locals. I film them cooking and document everything around food as authentic as it gets."
She also tells us that so far she has visited: Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Malay part of Borneo and Morocco, the last of which I think must have been in a separate time frame, because in an article on The American Bazaar I found that she had travelled for 10 months through South-East Asia (and the Indian subcontinent) which resulted in her sharing her stories and the recipes she had gathered along the way on the website.
It was also here that I found that she was Czech and that her name was Bohunka Kosová. but it didn't really tell me much more than is explained on the website. So I visited the other link she had given in her About section - an interview on Backpacker Travel. Frustratingly, as on her website there was no date, but I suspect it was some time ago. However, I did learn a little more:
"I studied horticulture, then I took a marketing course, and my last job was a Brand Manager in a huge global company."
She had taken that 10 month trip when her love of surfing and travel, limited by having a job which only allowed 5 weeks off a year, caused her to make a complete change in direction. I have to say that she was very brave to set off completely on her own, with a limited budget, to see what the world was all about. In the interview she maintained that:
"I think traveling is the best education ever. It is like a school where everything is very interesting, exciting and useful for your life. It’s also unlike any traditional school as travel actually even refutes lots of stuff we are taught. ... I have taken complete responsibility for my life, and traveling and meeting loads of new, inspiring people has really broadened my horizons"
The mystery is really what she has done with her life since then. Obviously she set up the website, and edited her videos before posting them on YouTube, but how she was making a living I do not know.
I found this photograph, and a very brief article - in Czech, and dated 2019 - so I had no idea what it said, but the text included the word 'start-up'. So maybe she has her own business doing something - but what? Oh so tantalising. Travel, surfing, media, journalism, or a return to marketing - even growing things. Or something completely new. 2019 is now six years and COVID away, but she has added at least one video to her YouTube channel since then. But then again - just one. Is she fully occupied with a job, a husband, children ...? Although she does not say a great deal in her blogs, or on her videos, I was obviously intrigued enough to note her website down.
So a few examples might be in order. The first is not food-related but is a rather touching story about a beautiful wooden top that she bought from a small child in Lombok, Indonesia, which she calls The best souvenirs are the ones with a story behind.
That string is made from two pieces of cloth so clever in itself, but also how beautifully the colours of the cloth match the colour of the top.
And to end, two random recipes: Moroccan-style omelette and Ginger pepper fish Kerala style.
She doesn't say much by way of introduction, there is no video and the recipes are very short, but that's a bonus isn't it? The omelette is reminiscent of my leftovers omelettes I make at home, but with cumin, paprika and saffron.
It made me feel old and also very unadventurous looking at this website. Although I guess my student trip to America with best friend Carole when I was a mere 19 years old was pretty adventurous really. And I suppose my exchange holidays in France in my teens were adventurous too. My son and his partner's 8 month long overland journey back from England to Australia was super adventurous. But neither I nor they were on their own. Bo on the Road was, but maintained in that interview, that she very, very rarely felt in any danger, although she did note that she did not take risks - in her eyes anyway. And she is certainly right that traveling is the best education ever and to my mind leads to much greater tolerance of the difference in 'foreign' cultures and beliefs.
Alas I won't be travelling in an adventurous way - or indeed very far - anytime in the near future. Those times are long gone. Adventure, other than in the food I eat and cook, has gone.
The glory of food however, is that in a very tiny way we can get a glimpse into other worlds, whether it be geographically or historically. Bo does this less by the written recipes and more by the fuller blog posts and videos - such as this one about a Rajasthan gypsy lady making chapatis out in the desert. It beautifully demonstrates her mission:
"I do not claim, that the exotic recipes you will find on the Authentic World Food website are the most original or the most traditional in each country. I just filmed the food I tried and loved, at the place the food was prepared."
But I do wonder, as always, what she is doing now.
YEARS GONE BY
December 20
2024 - An AI suggestion
2023 - Christmas is ... prawns
2022 - Christmas dilemmas
2021 - Nothing
2020 - Missing
2016 - Wild plum jam done ✔️
The young love to travel. Must be a genetic thing. But eating is usually reserved until later in life!