Last days in Iran

Day 109 - 113

The bus ride from Shiraz is about as fun as a 20 hr bus ride can be. I hop off the bus in Tabriz and all of a sudden realise that winter is coming. It is drizzly and cold. My sandal tan had been progressing very well but I think it is as good as it's going to get this year. 

I find my couch surfing host and spend the day eating, visiting the museum and bazaar and eating some more. I have the nicest baklava I have ever tasted. 

We have dinner at my hosts parents house and eat an amazing meal.  I continue to be overwhelmed by the hospitality given to me. Also the food is delicious, my favourite Iranian meal.  

The weather is a little better the next day and after buying some food, including bread straight out of the oven I head toward lake Urmyia and the Turkey border. 

It is only about 190km to the border but I know that it is uphill so I give myself three days cycling time and one day to spare. I don't want to see what happens if I overstay my Iran visa. It seems a little excessive at the time but it turns out I made the right choice. 

The weather is cool with the occasional drizzle of rain. Iran continues to deliver more boring, flat riding, with the occasional head wind for good measure. 

I find a pretty nice campsite next to the old, unused highway. There is even a pile of hay for me put my tent on. My tent flaps in the wind all night. 

I continue on in the morning, into the head wind and eventually cross lake Urmyia - a salt lake. 

After a cup of tea (I love my new thermos) it starts raining. I have lunch in a shelter in the town of Urmyia. Just as I pack up to head out of town I am invited for chai in the office of a trucking company. With the miserable weather It doesn't take much convincing. 

I eventually muster up the motivation to head out. A couple of hours later I pitch my tent near a village. I had tried to find somewhere under cover to camp but everyone is hiding inside. 

The rain continues and I forfeit a hot meal for a picnic inside my tent. I have a restless sleep and it rains all night. It is also cold. 

I lie in my tent and the day slowly grows more bright. As it does I realise that my tent looks as though it is about to collapse. Turns out all that rain last night was actually snow. Outside it is a winter wonderland. This would be great if I wasn't camping in it and my shoes weren't frozen and my gloves soaking wet. It's not nice, dry powdery snow. This is wet snow. 

I manage to pack my panniers and take the pegs out of the ground before my hands stop working. I wander up to the village and a very kind man notices me. He has a confused look in his face. 

I mange to invite myself/ get invited inside and I defrost my hands and dry my gloves next to the stove. He eventually figures out where I came from and together we finish packing up my tent and move my gear to his house. I am plied with chai and bread and eggs for the next couple of hours. 

During this time I am wondering what to do, continue uphill to the border? Go back to Urmyia and take a bus? For the first time during this trip I turn back. The weather is horrendous, my shoes and gloves are soaking wet and I do not want to spend all day riding uphill in the snow. 

The ride back to town is horrible. My toes goes numb. It feels like a am continuously having a slushie thrown into my face. 

An hour and a half later I stumble back into the office where I had chai the day before. I take off my soaking rain gear, shoes and socks and gloves and I am given a chair in front of the heater. Also countless cups of chai. Amazing. 

It turns out there is no bus to Van, my next destination in Turkey, but a truck driver can take me to the Turkey border and from there I can get a bus. 

We drive up to the border and I am so glad I am warm and toasty in the truck. The snow is continuing to fall and pile up next to the road. Once at the border town of Serov we park the truck next to about 50 other trucks and head out for my last Iranian kebab. 

The Turkey border is closed to trucks so my driver, John, is spending the night in Serov. It is late and I still have one day left on my visa. I spend the night in a bunk in John's truck. It is awesome. And dry. This is the most bizzare place I have slept since leaving home. 

The following morning John is still stuck in Iran and unable to cross the border. I load up my bike and thank Mother Nature that the snow has stopped falling. I cycle the last couple of kilometres to the border and leave Iran. 

The Turkish customs is in shambles but I manage to get through after about an hour. Two buses and about four hours later I find myself in Van, waiting to meet my warm showers host, Levent

That evening Levent, two of his friends and I sit around drinking beer and eating delicious kebab that Levent cooked. I even indulge in a shower beer.  My new Turkish friends have never ears of this concept but promise to give it a go. After nearly a whole month without beer this is bliss. 

17/10 Tabriz: rode 17km, ODO 3278km

18/10 Tabriz - lake Urmyia: rode 85km, ODO 3364km

19/10 lake Urmyia - village: rode 84km, ODO 3444km

20/10 village - Urmyia: rode 18km, ODO 3462km

21/10 Serov & Van: rode 6km, ODO 3468km

Yazd & Shiraz

Day 103 - 108

My first morning in Yazd is spent applying for a visa extension. Because I only got a visa on arrival I can only get one 10 day extension. I am not terribly impressed but there isn't a lot I can do. I would love to be able to spend more time in Iran but I have no choice. 

After dealing with beurocracy, I catch up with Jeff and Neil and we go to a garden and drink an amazing milkshake. This garden has the worlds largest bagir - tower designed to catch the wind and keep houses cool. 

Vahid's cousin, Moien meets up with us and we grab lunch and then hot the sweet stores. Yazd is famous for its sweets and I am not disappointed.

Moien also takes us to an ice cream shop and I have the best banana smoothie I have ever tasted. It has rose water ice cream and pistachios and I don't know what else. Amazing. 

The afternoon is spent napping before meeting most of Vahid's other siblings in the evening. 

We pack our things in the morning and head to town. I pick up my passport with my measly 10 day extension and then find Neil. He has found a welder that will fix our broken aluminium racks. A few hours of waiting and $6 later my front racks are fixed. They were in poor form, one had broken in two places and was held together with tape and a nail working as a splint. The other was only broken in one spot. My front racks are the only problem I have with my bicycle set up. Next time I will use forks that have rack mounts and get steel racks. 

Due to time restraints the three of us have decided to catch the bus to Shiraz. We get in at about 9.30pm and find our couch surfing hosts. It turns out that the host Neil has arranged lives about 100m from my couch surfing host. 

My host, mamali is rad. He plays in a band and works at an awesome cafe around the corner from his house. I spend a wonderful few days hanging out with him and his room mates, swapping music and stories, eating fruit. 

Jeff and I visit town and do some sightseeing, Vakil mosque is very impressive, flowery tiles line the large domes, very different from the mosques in Esfahan. 

In the evening we visit a nearby village with Neil, his couch surfing host and a bunch of other couch surfers. This village is very relaxed and we manage to get hold of some wine. Not the most delicious wine I have ever tasted but it is pretty cool to drink wine in Shiraz. 

The following day is pretty low key, sitting at the cafe, waiting for emails to load. In the afternoon I visit another mosque and then have ice cream with Jeff. 

Jeff and I are up early the following day to visit persopolis.  It is amazing. It must have been such a rich society to spends so many years, money and labour building such big palaces and statues. The carved rocks are amazingly well preserved. Funnily enough, there is graffiti from explorers in the early 1800's. 

In the evening Neil, Jeff and I have one last dinner together at a very fancy house. 

I wake in the morning and meet some new couch surfers that arrived last night at Mamali's place. It turns out that I met the two travellers in Murghab in Tajikistan. The world is a small place sometimes. 

My last morning in Shiraz is spent at the cafe, one last check of emails and arranging a couch surfing host in Tabriz. I am sad to say goodbye to Jeff and Neil, the three of us going in different directions. I am also sad to leave Mamali, he has been a great host in the most relaxed and laid back Iranian city I have been to. 

11/10 Yazd & Shiraz:  rode 23km, ODO 3245km

16/10 total Shiraz: rode 40km, ODO 3261

Koshan - Esfahan

Day 93-95

After a quick shop and a bowl of soup for an early lunch (that is given to us by the restrurant owner, so kind) we head out of town, hoping to buy petrol on the way. On the outskirts of town a French cyclist, Jeff catches up to us and now we are three. He is heading to Esfahan as well. 

We cycle on through a very brown, dry landscape. It is hot. Jeff's bicycle computer reads 39 degrees. I am sweltering in my long pants and long shirt/dress. A car stops at the top of a hill and offers us a drink, we can choose water or wine. Wine in this heat, cycling? I take the water. 

We ride past a nuclear power plant, our passport gets checked twice, the second time by no less than six police/ military personnel. 

By the time it is nearly dark we still havnt found petrol for our stoves and have only just enough water to last us a night and get to the next town. We set up camp under some trees and cook over a little fire. 

By 8.30 the next morning sweat is dripping into my eyes, dragging my freshly applied sunscreen with it. We slog uphill and arrive in Natanz, stocking up on petrol and grabbing some more veges. 

The days riding is fairly unexciting, hot, mainly uphill, occasional head wind. We have a two hour lunch/snooze break at a servo.  In the evening we enjoy a beautiful sunset from our campsite, drinking tea. 

The previous days climbing pays off today and we make fast progress to Eafahan. We reach the main highway and manage to avoid being hit by trucks and taxis to make it to the edge of town for an early lunch, 1130 and 75km under the belt already. 

We make our way across town, through city traffic madness as reach our next couch surfing hosts house. The afternoon is spent catching up in emails and relaxing. 

1/10 Koshan - just before Natanz: rode 72km, ODO 2717km

2/10 just before Natanz - a bit before Morchekort: rode 61km, ODO 2777km

3/10 a bit before Morchekort - Esfahan: rode 101km, ODO 2880

From Tajikistan to Tehran

Day 90 - 92

It was a very sad goodbye leaving Vero's house in Dushanbe. Neil, a South African cyclist was on the same flight as me to Tehran and we planned on spending the next couple of weeks together before splitting due to different timetables and visa schedules. 

The flight to Tehran was a little stressful. Neil and I had packed out bicycles together into a large box. A little too large as it turns out. After paying too much for our oversized baggage we had to repack the bikes seperatley at the very last minute and just managed to make our flight. On top of this I was a little anxious about being denied a visa on arrival

Turns out my VOA worked out just fine, apart from being charged 100 euros for a two week visa. Even more amazingly, our bikes both made it in one piece, albeit falling out of their boxes. 

A long taxi ride took us to the north of the city to our couch surfing hosts places. Ania lives in a quiet part of Tehran, close to many cafés and surrounded by trees. We spend the afternoon chilling out, followed by an evening stroll past said cafés. 

The following morning it is business time. Ania very generously donates her time to traipsing around the city, catching a multitude of buses. We change money, buy a map, find a bike shop (new chain for me) and procure a local SIM card. By the time all this is done we are toast and head back up the hill to her place. 

We are lucky we have a local with us, the traffic is madness. Every time I cross the road I wonder if it will e the last. There doesn't seem to be any rules. Even the traffic lights have given up trying to create some sort of order, they just flash orange, as though actually directing traffic is jut too hard.

During the day Neil and I had been trying to get our heads around the money. The currency is called Rials. One US dollar is about 32 000 Rials. Prices are advertised in Tomen, which is a factor of ten less than a Rial (one zero cut off) although when talking shop keepers leave off 3 zeros. All in all, if someone says 4 than they mean 4000 Tomen, which is 40 000 rial. Confusing much? 

The other thing I had been trying to wrap around my head was my scarf. I felt very out of place walking around the city and on the bus. I was wearing a blue shirt/dress and a bright green scarf. Ania is also brightly dressed. About 80% of the women are all in black, mostly chadors - a long scarf/ cloak that goes to the ankles (chador translates directly into tent). I have trouble getting my head around that fact that I am wearing these items of clothing because the government dictates it, not because I choose to (and it's so bloody hot that I would normally be wearing shorts and Tshirt). 

Neil and I head to a cafe for a little while, partaking in our first Iranian water (shisha) pipe. I ask for a lemon soft drink and get Iran's beer substitute, a malted lemon soft drink. Delicious. This would become a staple during sweltering days. We smoke the apple flavoured pipe and sip our soft drink, lamenting the lack of beer. 

After two wonderful nights at Ania's it is time to move on. We figure out a route to get to the bus terminal in the south of the city. We can not avoid the expressway. Luckily we are going downhill and managed to keep up wth traffic, zooming along at 50-60km/hr. The hard part is leaving the expressway. After a bunch of frustrating city riding we are on a VIP bus, loving the air con. Surprisingly we also get snacks on the bus. 

A few hours later we are deposited in Koshan and manage to leave the bus station without paying extra for our bikes. We don't agree with paying extra at the end of the trip when the agreed on price has already been paid. We find our couch  surfing host, Mohammed, and he points is in the direction of some historical houses. 

Neil and I visit wander down lanes, surrounded by mud brick walls and make our way to Tabatabaei historical house, built by a carpet merchant about 225 years ago. The house is pretty amazing, lofty ceilings, carved stone, tiles, mirrors. 

30/9: Tehran/ Koshan: rode 32 km, ODO 2644km