I’ve never before ridden at night through a desert, its such a peacefully place with the moon and stars lighting up the desert dunes and casting shadows before your eyes. We pressed on into the night from checkpoint to checkpoint before being handed over to the city police in Bam who escorted us right through the city to our hotel in their brand new police car with the red light’s flashing. A couple of weeks ago I would have thought this as being strange but now I seems to be a part of everyday life. Bam was once the jewel in Iran’s tourism before it was raised to the ground 3 years ago in an earth quake that killed 40,000 people. Now there’s not much left to see. 

Surprise, surprise guess who was waiting in our hotel lobby this morning, yes it was our good old army buddies here to show us the way once more. Whilst loading the bike I got talking with some earthquake relief workers from Germany only to discover that a Japanese tourist had been kidnapped 2 days ago right in the area we’re in and that a German has been missing for a week also last seen in this area. I then thought maybe having these army guys around for another bit wasn’t such a bad idea. We then had to go through the ordeal of getting petrol or as they call it benzene. The locals are only allowed 3 liters a day and we’re looking for about 20 a day so it becomes a hassle to get. Finally we were on our way back into the desert, to my surprise we were left alone after about 100km, has all become safe all of a sudden,  I guess we’ll have to wait and see, we’ve stopped off at a little town called Kerman and started feasting ourselves on kebabs , got a hotel and called it a day .

 We left Kerman this morning on a 450km drive through the desert to Shiraz, at first I was really enjoying the desert but now I’ve had enough, sand, sand and more sand with some rocks thrown in for good measure, only joking I’m loving every minute of it, it’s a strange and inhospitable land, if you break down and run out of water here it’ll be a nice slow death. We went through the mountains again this time getting to an altitude of 2600meters, it’s freezing up there. We were only stopped by the cops twice today which was quiet surprising for this part of the planet so we made good time. We got an apartment here in Shiraz as we'll be staying for a few days, I'm still looking for the middle east.

Day 59

 Today I went to the Persepolis an ancient Greek City built by some guy named King Darius the great.  Just how much he actually built himself remains a mystery, I bet that he didn't get his hands dirty once during the whole construction, He also liked to be called King Darius the great, He wouldn't get far in Cork with an attitude like that . It was a 100km round trip so I spent some time there, It was quite impressive, I'd love to see it back in the day. It took over 200 years to complete and would give the acropolis in Athens a run for it's money, the great thing was I had the whole place to myself, no one blowing whistles when you step on a pebble like they do in Athens. 

 Back In Shiraz, I done some more tourist stuff until I got bored, It was then time for Kebabs once more, the food is great here compared to everywhere else I've been so I've been stuffing myself all the time. There's no Alcohol in the whole country so passing the evenings with a few beers isn't an option so you do as the Iranians do and sit around taking tea. I'm after getting used to this strange concept of sitting around with complete strangers talking about everything and anything while drinking tea. It's just like you do down the pub but the conversation doesn't get exaggerated all out of control and  there's no hangover in the morning. The tea keeps flowing well into the night or until your bladder can take no more.

Day 60

 We left this morning for a place called Yazd. Yazd boasts the best old and still inhabited city in the country. According to UNESCO the old city in Yazd is one of the oldest in the world. This place is built from straw and mud, the skyline is dotted with things called Badgirs, wind towers designed to catch and circulate the merest breeze and funnel it underground to the living areas. 

 In the silk road hotel we met up with Joe "The Celt" Walsh a fellow Bike rider and Irishman from Belfast. Joe's on his way very slowly I might add from Dublin to India on a bmw 1150 gs. I met Joe the same way I've met Chris on a Motorbike travel Internet site. Joe's an old hand at this having previously traveled south America on his bike, It must have taken him years judging by the pace he travels.

 Well it was time for us to hit the sand, we removed what we could easily remove from our bikes and went out into the middle of the desert, this was the most fun I had in a while, riding on the soft sand, dried up riverbeds and natural ramps made by the desert winds was both exciting and dangerous. We spent all day out there 50km from the nearest road riding through this desert. When we got back to civilization the cops were on us in a second, they didn't say anything but they were most likely wondering where we were as we had turned off the road a ways back and then just reappeared in a cloud of dust through the desert, They even knew who we were and where we were from. The desert riding has got me wondering if I could some day take on the challenge of the Dakar rally.

 This is one of the most wonderful, friendly ,warmest places I've ever been, I really feel at home here. The only thing is they censor everything, even the women, there like walking black mailboxes. I saw a guy stop a woman in he street and give out to her because she was wearing fancy sun glasses, she removed them and walked off. The Internet is also censored, even yahoo and goggle, I had to get a guy to hack in so I can check my mail. I'll update this when I can, tomorrow I'm heading to Esfahan then the back roads to turkey, there's snow in the mountains here and we're going to try and avoid it.....

Friday 16th of November

 There’s not much to do on a Friday in the Muslim world, it’s their day of prayer so
I spent the day sitting around relaxing in our little oasis the silk road hotel before heading to the towers of silence for sunset. These towers are built upon two hills just outside the city of Yazd and were used up to 1960 by the Zoroastrian community for disposing of their the dead. The body’s would be left upon these towers for the birds ( what sort I don’t know ) to come down and eat. This procedure would be watched by a priest to make sure everything went alright, you would receive good luck in the after life if your right eye was plucked out first and bad if it were the left. This practice no longer exists, nowadays they encase the body’s in concrete before burying them, they believe the body’s would contaminate the earth otherwise.
 Then our little community from the oasis hotel moved on to the best hotel in town for dinner, the food here is great, the chef was something like the guy from the Muppet show and kept us all entertained, they brought out flags for all the different nationalities that were sitting at the table except for the New Zealand flag. They said they misplaced it but I suspect that the last Kiwi’s there nicked it, there’s a worldwide shortage of Kiwi flags. Then it was back to the silk rd to take more tea.   

17th November

  We packed up the bikes early enough after breakfast and bid goodbye to our new friends ( thanks for the great company  Joe ,Dave and the gang and remember to leave there sometime ) and hit the road for Esfahan a short trip of 300km. Chris ran out of petrol halfway there in the middle of the desert but luckily I carry 4 liters in my top box for just the occasion. The desert winds were strong and at some points on straight roads I was leaning the bike into them as if I were going around a corner just to stay on the road. The wind’s then suddenly die and you’d go flying across the road once more. There is nothing between towns or cities here except for miles and miles of endless desert cut in two by black tarred snakes weaving through to the horizon, Chris fell asleep again yesterday while riding, it’s only a matter of time for him I think, sleeping while riding a bike’s not the best way to a long life. We reached Esfahan found a dump of a hotel and explored the city. It’s a pretty cool place so we’ve decided to stay for two days and check it out properly.It is certainly the most liberal city I've come across in Iran so far. The younger women here don't even wear the burkas instead opting for a head scarf, trench coat past their butt that doesn't revile there figure and lots and lots of make up, although there expecting a crack down at any time as the hardliners are upset. A few women even say hello in the street a crime that could get them a serious beating if caught by the police, I'm almost afraid to talk back in case I get them in trouble. I still haven't found a bar though.

  We’ve been wearing these scarf’s for a few days now just to shelter from the winds but when we got to this city I noticed we were getting some strange looks, I just thought it was because we look different until a shopkeeper told us there a symbol of terrorism worn by Hezbollah and the likes and we could get our selves killed for wearing them. It was then off to a new scarf shop with us to find some less offensive material but I’m keeping the other ones for when we get to Syria, they could come in handy there. 

18th November

 After almost no sleep due to the crappyness of my hotel and the traffic outside I got out of bed and went exploring, there's the world's second largest square here, second only to Tienanmen square. It's got 2 mosques in the middle, if you stand in the dead center of Iman mosque and stamp your foot or even utter a quiet word it echo's 7 times throughout the structure getting louder and louder, an amazing design if done on purpose as it was built in the 16th century. After that it was time to take tea and plan our route, something that should have been done a while back as now we're running out of time and with a high mountain pass covered in snow between us and Turkey we have to plan carefully, for soon we'll be heading to the cold winter of Europe..

                                                                            Turkey 

 

 19th November

 

 Leaving Esfahan behind around 8am we were on the road for a journey of 600km to a place called Qazvin via Tehran, the capital of Iran. It's getting colder each and every day we head north, it's strange being in the desert with 2 jackets, gloves and thermals on, it's not what I imagined it would be like, we passed some salt flats on route, it looked like the sea had just evaporated there and then, untouched and un spoilt. I filled my bag with it, no more wasting money on salt for me.

Tehran has an official population of 14million but unofficially they reckon there’s 21million living there. It is also one of the most polluted city’s on the face of the earth and the traffic there is terrible so we decided to avoid it by taking the ring road around. Easier said then done, driving here is alright except for when your in the city’s, then a game of Russian roulette would be a safer option, beat this, cars entering roundabouts have right of way over cars on the roundabout, this results in, yes you guessed it, complete chaos, the traffic on the roundabout can’t exit because of the entering traffic so everybody’s all jammed together in a big circle. And the great thing is there’s roundabouts everywhere. They also drive on the wrong side of the road here, my bike is left hand drive so it makes it more exciting once again. Its lucky the people here are so nice, if it was like this anywhere else the whole city would be going postal.
  After dicing with death for 40 min or so just going around Tehran we were on the right road north for a pretty uneventful cruise on a motorway, your not allowed on motorways on motorbikes but we sneak on and keep going until we get kicked off, then we sneak back on again, it’s getting us there. We got a room at the Hotel Iran, another delightful place and went exploring, not much to see here but tomorrow we have a short ride to the Caspian sea..  

 

20th November

Deciding that today’s journey was going to be too easy we thought we’d make it a bit harder by heading over the mountains instead of going around. This turned out to be a great idea, one of our best yet. We left Qazvin at 9am and headed upward, when we got about 110km into the mountains the road turned to dirt, sweet, I taught to myself, a little off roading, We checked with some locals who couldn’t utter a word of English to see if we were on the right road, of course we were and they confirmed it or maybe they said we were completely off course, I have no idea as my Farsi needs improving and I was concentrating on an escape route as they were bringing out the tea. In we went skidding and sliding through the dirt, on ward and up ward. It wasn’t long before we came to our first cross roads, left or right, left looked harder so left it was. This dirt track wound it self up to 3600meters pretty fast, this was real wilderness, at the top of one of these mountains there was a rescue station but there was nobody home, all the same I was glad to see some building in case we needed someplace to sleep. We pressed on upward for another 2 hours until we were riding on ice and snow, a cold wind started to blow and hunger was setting in, being prepared for such eventualities is most important up here, we had half a bottle of water between us. Finally we started to descend and could see a village in the distance about 3.5 km below us, about half way down there was some workmen fixing the dirt back into place so we stopped to take some tea, this was the one time on this whole trip that I needed tea but they didn’t have any, what they did have though was strange hand gestures that translated into mudslide road blocked ahead. It was now freezing and getting dark, we had 2 options ,sleep here with these guys or try get back to civilization, seeming they had no tea we had to go.  I hate nothing more then doubling back but we had no choice so once again we started our accent. When we got to the top it was snowing hard and visibility was down to about 5 meter’s. One small mistake here and it’s all over, in parts the road falls away beneath your wheels. Some how it’s always quicker on the way back, it is when it’s snowing anyhow, we were lucky to get out of there alive with our bikes in one piece, I had visions all the way back of myself sleeping under a rock freezing and starving to death at the same time. Eventually we got back down to the village where it all started waved a thank you to those lovely people who foolishly let us do as we pleased, went into the only shop in town which happened to sell nice fresh cakes and pigged out on all sorts of delights. It was then a 110km ride in the pitch black of night back to Qazvin where the day had started for a nice hotel with hot showers, after 4 hours I finally turned from blue back to white. I cant help but wonder what tomorrow has in store for us….   

 

                           

21 November
 
 Well we left Qazvin again for a second time, this time we skipped going to the Caspian sea and went to Tabriz on the motorway, the journey was mostly uneventful except for the cross winds, these were the worst yet, I got blown all over the road all day from side to side, I also ran out of petrol as the stations were about 440 km apart, luckily I had some spare in my top box. We reached Tabriz early enough so I changed the oil in my bike went for dinner and called it a day.   
 

22 November

 We set off for a town called Orumiyeh  About 150km away across a lake, according to my map there is a bridge right across it, imagine our surprise when we discovered the bridge wasn’t finished yet, I think my road map is what the Iranian government wishes the roads were like. Lots of people must have the same map because there was a ferry crossing , the Q was a couple of hours long so we played the dumb foreigners and rode right up to the front and rode straight on to the next boat. When I was putting the bike on it’s center stand I let it slip and it gently fell over to the Chris’s delight, he’s dropped his 8 times now and crashed twice (one time into a cow in Nepal) and was delighted to see mine go down for the first time, it only happened because of the metal floor Chris. An half hour later we were back on dry land and looking for a hotel. The town was a bit of a dump and Turkey was only 50km away so we said the hell with it let’s go, we had 2 hours before it got dark. All went well at the Iranian side of the border, it couldn’t have been easier, we were into turkey in an  half hour. The Turkish side , well that’s a whole different story…


 Iran was a mystery to me when I first entered, I didn’t know what to expect but it turned out to be the friendliest country I’ve ever been to, the people are great and I think the west could learn a lot from them, the way they treat one another is no different from the way they treat foreigners, there polite and friendly at all times, maybe the Koran is onto something, there culture is completely different from ours and takes some getting used to, there’s no alcohol in the country but the people don’t care their happy to do without, the way they sit around taking tea they’d be drunk all the time if they did drink. The landscape is as diverse as anywhere else ranging from deserts to snow covered mountains to green valleys by the sea. If your looking for a holiday off the beaten track with little to no foreigners you might want to give Iran a go, trust me you’ll enjoy it.

 

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