A Short Walk With My Horse

No doubt reconnaissance is seldom wasted, and should always be a multifaceted affair, but two years on foot under canvass in the Turkish Middle East leading a modest horse caravan as an emerging market entry strategy can’t help but be a multi-dimensional love affair with daytime spent looking down and nighttime looking up. Sadly, no records remain, so you’ll have to take my word for it, or do it yourself! I can reveal I had an excellent Russian guide called Ouspensky who I picked up in the UK before I left, and a set of exercises I stole off a Vietnamese buddhist called Thong in St John’s Wood London that helped me survive -30° nights and snowstorms over winter in Kars, which appropriately enough is Turkish for snow. I got off lightly enough, just a touch of PTSD that I bottled up with the rest of the experience, and stuck in the old cellar for minimum 20 years like instructed, come what may. Not long to opening time now!

The desolate Turkish North East in Kars district during winter, often compared with Siberia