Eight Thousand Euros I Don't Have

Day one hundred and sixty-five, Georgia. Two weeks in Tskaltubo now, near Kutaisi. It has been clear for a while that I won't reach Tibet before the winter. The snow is about to close the Himalayan passes and it doesn't melt again until April.

So I have time. Time to work out how to finance the Carnet de Passage — the passport for the car and trailer that Pakistan and India want. The table says I must put down a deposit of eight thousand euros.

I don't have eight thousand euros.

On top of that, the German economy is going down and the commissions aren't coming. I am in the same position as a great many people.

So I have to reinvent how I earn. There is a plan. I am working on my storytelling, and on the craft of writing copy that takes hold of somebody's attention. Every genre has its own rules for why a text works, and those rules can be learned.

That way I can do the thing I love — telling stories — and win clients by winning clients for them.

That is the outward road. The inward one goes into the quiet, and it is the one I am less able to plan.

I love the ruins here in Tskaltubo.