Borders are strange things. They are artificial creations; lines and limits, indicating something starts and ends at a particular, precisely indicated place. In the case of countries borders do work of course in precise ways in administrative and legal sense. And often we assume, by extension, that these borders also exist between people. That in a different country people are different, live different lives, eat different foods, believe different things. And to some extent that is of course the case. In all the countries I cycled through there were some very specific cultural ways; whether it concerned food, architecture, dancing, what you can and cannot say or do, and the political and social concerns people have. But in reality I found we share so much as human beings, and I felt at home in most of the places I have been.

In order to make building materiel for a nest, a wasp masticates wood, mixing it up with saliva and spitting it out into a pulp. I have never tried making a home that way myself, but that sensation—chewing wood and wanting to spit it out—is what I felt the first time I ate Abkhazian food.