man on a mission

File this under really stupid things somehow worth doing.

"Several of these countries have little freedom of press and expression. Tourists are rare. Visas for photographers were hard to come by. I often had to instead go into the countries on tourist visas. Despite my efforts not to arouse suspicion I was, on several occasions, accused of being a spy and only narrowly avoided getting caught up in something rather awkward. With reluctance this added to the adventure and made each new discovery even more precious. In Abkhazia my driver accused me of being a Georgian agent and photographing sensitive material. He demanded a bribe, otherwise, it would be “straight to the militizia and a firing squad”. Needless to say, he was not convinced by my story that “I have only come to your country to see your pretty bus stops”. I was happy to escape from the journey with relatively little drama, and even happier to have captured some of the most beautifully insane bus stops I had ever encountered, safe on a memory card tucked into my underpants."

I suspect that the taxi driver knew damn well that he simply had a naive chap on his hands and acted accordingly.  Anyway, the book is out in September, and I for one will be helping the author recoup his bribe.