The last 48 hours have been pretty tough. When local people up in Khulo let me know on Friday night that the pass through the mountains just beyond their town was blocked because of heavy snow, I felt for a little while as though my plans were in tatters.

I realise that there are plenty of people who take a less dogmatic approach to cycling around the world than I do, and I know that fun can come because of the lack of dogma rather than in spite of it.

And yet this concept I have of joining every dot from home matters to me. There will come a point where the unbroken chain has to be broken – it’s just not feasible to ride every inch of every road in a deglobalising world that’s increasingly xenophobic and fractured. But for now there’s huge joy for me in knowing that, solely through my own pedal power, I’ve connected home to all these new places I’m visiting.

I was naive to press ahead through the mountains on Friday, having seen the weather conditions, but in mitigation the total failure of the eSIM I’d bought to allow me to research my routing while on the go really didn’t help. I’d tried to ask some local people for advice along the way, but the language barrier proved insurmountable.

On Saturday morning, I took a minibus back down the mountain to Batumi; even at 1,000 metres, the snow had settled prohibitively from a cycling perspective, and the wintry journey downhill was unrecognisable from the spring-infused ride I’d done uphill just a day earlier.

Once back in Batumi, a stomach issue that I’d been nursing since the previous day worsened, and it was a relief to get an early check-in to my newly booked hotel.

At a fairly low ebb, everything is an opportunity for upside! And so it proved. I planned the rerouting of my ride north of the Ajara mountain range, booked hotels in the new intermediate stops that I’m now making before Tbilisi (Kutaisi and Surami), and bought a fully-functioning replacement eSIM!

None of this improvement in my fortunes would have been as effective without, once again, the striking kindness of strangers. The staff at the hotel I’ll be staying at in Tbilisi, in particular, have been exceptional in reshaping my booking and offering to help me source – with less time to play with now – a cardboard bike box and packing materials for the flight I’ll need to take to Baku. I’ll take that flight after having ridden to the Georgian side of the border with Azerbaijan, and in readiness for the logistics that will allow me to pick up again on the Azerbaijan side. More to come on that little escapade!

Today’s ride from Batumi to Kutaisi (140km) went well. I decided to take it as easy as I could given my stomach issues, and that paid dividends – in terms of my health and in terms of really being able to enjoy the passing world around me.