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'Come and rest,' they called to me and into their hut I went, planning to stay for an hour or so. Light from the window lit up a cheese on an aluminum plate that dripped into a bucket. Cloud flowed in through the door like smoke. An edge was sliced off the cheese and put on the table. Out came another fresh cheese, salted, and piles of lavash wraps. I sat on one of the carpet-covered beds while flies buzzed in cow-y air. Two hours and then two nights passed, cocooned in this smokey hut in the Armenian mountains. Sergo, 64, green-blue-brown speckled eyes, and Aram, 11, big ears and beautiful skin, work together during the summer in the herby mountainscape. Both speak good Russian. Their herds of cows and horses are protected by terrifying dogs, whose ears have been clipped from birth to make them hear the wolves and bears better.  Herding cows We run with sticks to gather the cows while thunder claps us and ice pelts our cheeks. Wild strawberries, pink daisies and orange star fl...

Metro A solid wall of people trudges at snail's pace, tightly packed in, herded by old men in high viz and women in red hair and shocking lipstick. I try in vain to connect to the free city wifi, 'Tbilisi Loves You'. Beggars line the sides, some selling cacti in margarine pots, one has a spotty enamel mug, others display signs or grotesque stumps of limbs. Someone is singing. A man ahead has an Oxford university backpack. On we shuffle, so close our numerous legs merge into a conveyor belt of flesh.  On the metro, there is a family of three munching doritos. The children stare ahead, legs open wide, wedging these triangles based-end first into their mouths. There are a lot of tattooed necks today, one man has T H U G L I F E on his knuckles. VW keys are strapped to a belt. A woman's cross necklace looks alarmingly like the Nazi insignia (in fact it's the Georgian Orthodox cross...) and a long stringy teen in a completely green tracksuit resembles a human runner bean...