National Geographic: “Out of Eden Walk - Caravan Stop”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is making an unexpected stop in Georgia while he retraces on foot the global migration of our ancestors in a 21,000-mile, seven-year odyssey that begins in Ethiopia and ends in Tierra del Fuego.

After being denied a visa to walk through Iran, Salopek’s plans changed and instead he will spend the next few weeks and possibly months in Georgia waiting out summer and escaping the torturous heat of his next destination – Turkmenistan.

In Georgia’s capital Tbilisi he stumbles upon a café owned by a man named Nodar in old Tbilisi.

Nodar says: Stop. Stopping is good, he says. Why? Because life is short, and only friendship lasts. Friendship is perhaps the finest treasure in life, Nodar says. It is beyond price, and possibly above all forms of love. How does one acquire this precious jewel, this rare prize—friendship? How does one keep it? By stopping. By pausing. By walking into Nodar’s little café in the old Armenian quarter of Tbilisi,” writes Salopek for National Geographic.

"So on an elbow of the Mtkvari River in Georgia, under the peeling facades of the crumbling fin de siècle mansions, beside the old brick domes of medieval steam baths, and among packs of stray dogs taking themselves out for walks, I sit down. I order a drink. I halt my journey for a season.”

Read the full article here: www.outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com