Portrait of a Swedish man in Tblisi.

There's a wonderful ethos which is universally shared between travellers in far and foreign lands. I have already mentioned the Czech father-son backpackers and the American diplomat and there are many more chance encounters I have not spoken about which have all temporarily lifted me from hours of solitary boredom, staring at my mucky feet in run-down bus stations.

You meet some hardy nomads, too.

One guy pulled up to the hostel last night on a hunking, great Dakar motorbike. His gnarly beard, sun chapped eyes and the country stickers plastered all over his panniers told of a year long (and still counting) solo trip round Ukraine, Russia, Iran, etc...

I cut quite a different figure this morning walking back into the dorm with toothpaste round my mouth, skinny jeans and sticky-up hair. This great voyager was sorting out his bag, all neatly organised, regimented, ritualised after months on the road.

I was heading over to pack mine; sprawling, dirty and tangled on the floor.

I gave him a wide berth out of some sort of sub-conscious respect, but, in doing so, like a lumbering , great bulldozer, I demolished the wooden leg of the bunk-bed with my little toe.

It gripped me, slowly- searing pain climbing up my nerves.

But, the traveller! He'd travelled around the world several times, and I can barely make it from the reception to my bunk. Something compelled me to compress the pain, inhale my wail. For what? I don't know. If I started crying, like I wanted to, he know that I'd never be capable of travelling around the world.

***

This portrait is one of the Swedish people I met on the bus from Yerevan to Tbilisi, they offered me sweets, biscuits, crisps and then paid my taxi and took me to dinner
after we arrived.

That's traveller ethos to the wonderful extreme.