Few people give much thought to where what they wear beneath their clothes really comes from, and so it was for Elizabeth Gowing, until a recent visit to an underwear factory run by women in northern Albania. Bras slither from a table, a heap of knickers are piled in a corner. Am I in a brothel? A teenager's bedroom? When I came to Albania I was warned there was an underworld I might all too easil

Thirty years ago there were 50,000 Christians in south-eastern Turkey speaking a dialect of Aramaic - the language of Christ. Now there are 2,500. Talking to one of them, the BBC's Jeremy Bristow learned that instead of Three Kings, there might actually have been 12. Fresh out of his farm clothes, Habib the mayor now sits at his table in a crisply ironed shirt. He's a gentle, almost diffident man

It was one of the world's most opulent railway stations, sitting imposingly on the French-Spanish border - but then it fell into disrepair. Now, writes Chris Bockman, the building is showing new signs of life. When they built the station at Canfranc, it was on a grand scale and with no expense spared. It had to be bold and modern - an architect's dream come true, built in iron and glass, complete

Thousands of Italians emigrated to Scotland in the 20th Century, but it seems that 400 years earlier a group of Scots may have settled in a village in the Italian Alps. So local legend has it… And there are plenty of signs to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it's true. High up in the mountains of northern Italy, just a few kilometres from the Swiss border, the people of the tiny village of Gurro sp

The Hadza are one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes in the world. It's thought they've lived on the same land in northern Tanzania, eating berries, tubers and 30 different mammals for 40,000 years. The BBC's Dan Saladino went to watch them foraging and hunting, and to ask whether their diet holds lessons for everyone.

The minefields laid in the Falkland Islands were intended to kill or maim British soldiers, but over the last 35 years they have become de facto nature reserves for penguins. For better or worse, however, the time has now come for their home to be demined, reports Matthew Teller. I'm following a crunching gravel path leading up over a headland. To one side stretches a sweeping curve of white sand,

Albania has become the largest producer of outdoor-grown cannabis in Europe. The potent plant has been described as "green gold" for struggling farmers. In a poor nation, it's a billion-euro industry. Off a dirt road, in a small village north of Tirana, there's a half-built, tumble-down, brick house. It stands alone and looks abandoned. It isn't. The sweet, heady odour that seeps from one of the r

Despite the growing intolerance Copts face in Egypt, they are finding great success in the country's recycling business. It's the sweet, stifling, nose-crinkling scent that hits you first. Mingled with engine fumes and the whiff of hot sand as we burn up the Cairo motorway, it's the stink of damp cardboard and decaying fruit. It's the smell of Garbage City. And for some, it's the smell of success.

Park ranger Andre Bauma has been taking care of orphaned mountain gorillas at Virunga, Africa's oldest national park, for the past seven years, and he says he loves them as if they were his own children. One gorilla, Ndakasi, is particularly close to Bauma. She sees him as her mother, and despite being a man - and a human to boot - he has taken on that role. "We shared the same bed, I played with

Last year, more people fled to Europe from Eritrea than any other African nation. The government in Asmara has recently been accused of crimes against humanity, but when Mary Harper was given rare access to the country she was surprised by what she found. I push back the thick, deep red velvet curtains and find myself in complete darkness. Drops of rain come through the ceiling, and hit the floor

If you give clothes away to charity or for recycling, there's a good chance they will pass through a warehouse in the Hungarian town of Szekesfehervar, writes Nick Thorpe. Geza, Grand Prince of the House of Arpad, founded Szekesfehervar or "the seat of the white castle" - now a bustling town of 100,000 people - in the year 972. The whiteness of the castle, they say, was either due to the dazzling

This year, Afghanistan is expected to produce more opium than the world consumes. Although billions of dollars have been spent trying to eradicate the crop, in some places the trade seems more institutionalised than ever, with local police openly supporting farmers. Mazar-e-Sharif is one of the safest and best-run cities in the Afghanistan - a model of good governance - yet just half an hour out o

Ascension Island is a tiny dot of green in the tropical mid-Atlantic, a volcanic outpost of empire where it's hot and cold at the same time. It's a place where Charles Darwin helped inspire an alarming change, writes Matthew Teller. A scrap of British territory marooned in the tropical mid-Atlantic halfway between Brazil and Africa, Ascension is a place of enduring oddity. Officially, nobody is fr

A cell at Skien prison, where Anders Bering Breivik has been serving his sentence since 2013 Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, is arguing that conditions in the prison where he is held violate his human rights. Many Norwegian prisons, on the other hand, are seen by foreigners as extremely cushy. Lars Bevanger describes a system referred to by one American visitor as "prison utopia". Two

It may not be the kind of place you would expect to stumble upon a mosque, but Muslims have lived among the forests and lakes of Lithuania for more than 600 years - showing that tolerance reigned here in the Middle Ages, even when religious strife was rampant in other parts of Europe. At first glance, the square, wooden building looks like thousands seen in villages all over the Baltic. Neat timbe

When foxes discovered little penguins on a small Australian island, they nearly wiped the colony out. But a farmer came up with a novel way to protect the birds - and the story has been made into a hit film. As a premise for a film, think Lassie meets Babe meets Pingu. What's not to like? Middle Island, a beautiful, rugged and windswept outcrop off the coast of southern Victoria is home to a colon

Until recently it was common for people in Bhutan to share stories of their encounters with the Himalayan yeti. But with the arrival of modernity, villagers no longer need to climb high into the mountains, where they once saw traces of the yeti - or thought they did. So a legend is slowly fading away. Perched on a mountainside surrounded by dense, virgin forest where tigers, snow leopards, and wil

Europe has been so transfixed by tragedies in the Mediterranean in recent years that a similar crisis in the Indian Ocean has gone almost unnoticed. It is caused by the magnetic attraction of the French island of Mayotte to the inhabitants of the neighbouring Comoros Islands. "Ahmed was dead before the fisherman arrived to rescue the girls and women. Initially, they agreed to take his body, but th

At first glance it's paradise, a small Caribbean island with palm trees swaying in the breeze, white sands and emerald waters, untouched by mass tourism. But Old Providence has a guilty secret - the huge number of people who have turned to drug-running and then disappeared. On Old Providence nobody rushes. Nobody looks stressed. They never stop smiling. It's a tiny island, colonised by British Pur

Welcome to Varosha, the Mediterranean's best kept secret. Miles of sand where it's just you and nature. Dozens of grand hotels where you'll have the pick of the rooms. Just remember to pack your bolt cutters to make a hole in the fence - and watch out for the army patrols with orders to shoot on sight. Before the division of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha - a resort in Famagusta - was booming. The rich a