Fond farewell to Iran

After an awesome time in Tehran with Niloufar it has finally come down to our last few days in Iran, and we are back in Kerman packing up the bikes to head to the desert tonight for a night. Then tomorrow we will head down to Bam - an ancient city leveled in an earthquake in 2005. It is also where we will likely have to pick up a military escort for the next 4 days or so across to Multan in Pakistan.

My last post on here was that we had just had it confirmed that we had 30 days on our visa and were planning what to do next.

From Isfahan we traveled to Touleshk to visit Mohammad and his family who have for years hosting Cyclists and Bikers and showing them the village and surrounding area while also enjoying traditional Iranian hospitality. After a really nice night there with good food and watching one of the women making a rug (amazing - never seen someones hands move so fast!) we rode in the morning (with Mohammad on the back of my bike) to the sand dunes nearby.

This was my first time in the dunes and apart from coming off a couple of times I loved it, so far as I am concerned it is some of the best biking that can be done - the sand dunes become a playground! I just wish I had the correct set up to take full advantage of my bike - ah well, next time!

After being shown around the village and seeing the ingenious ways that they get cool water from the mountains to storage in the middle of the town we said good bye and headed east again to Yadz.

After lazing in Yadz, updating facebook and checking a few things on the Internet we finally got sorted and had a walk around the beautiful old town. I have found in Iran that even though the modern parts of the city are where all of the shops are the old towns where people still live in houses made of mud are the most atmospheric and interesting. From each street more and more veer off, often to a dead end or a small courtyard. To spend an evening getting lost in these places is a great experience, especially at the end of the day in Ramzam where people are all hurrying to prayers and then back home for food!

Our plan from here was to head down to Shiraz and Persepolis then from there down to Qeshm Island where we would do a few dives (it is possible to dive on sunken warships from the recent wars) and then head up to Kerman where the plan was to try and find a place to leave the bikes while we take the train up to Tehran to meet up with a friend of Georges.

To begin with the plan worked (in itself a miracle) , we left Yadz early and got on the right road to take us southwest to Persepolis. Arriving in the area of the Ancient city in the evening was breathtaking, after riding through the desert all day suddenly we arrived in a lush fertile valley that was fed by a river running the full length (100k or so) and was green with crops.

We turned up at Persepolis at 10 past 6. unfortunately the site closes at 6 pm and was not open the next day due to a public holiday in memory of Imam Ali's death. No amount of begging and pleading and eventually bribing would get us past the guards - even for a quick peak! We were not going to have ridden all this way just to get turned back at the last minute so we went for a look at the tourist arial map of the area and planned a way to get in in the morning. After camping in a nearby park we woke at 5 when it was still dark and snuck up to the city walls using every available shadow. From here we crept around the back of the guard barracks and climbed the only section of wall low enough, then it was a simple matter of jumping over the fence and we had the entire place to ourselves. I think we managed to evade the police for about 20 minutes before one of them spotted us and shouted for us to stop. We played it calm and kept taking photos like innocent tourists while he tried to phone his superiors. We were lucky that after showing us to a few more police (Including customs) and checking our cameras to ensure we hadn't gone anyplace we shouldn't (ie renovations) we were let go and just walked back out to collect our bikes , had breakfast with some Iranian tour guides (who just laughed at what we did) and then got on the road to Bandar Abbas.

The ride south from Shiraz was one of the most starkly beautiful that we have yet seen. Right from the city of Shiraz these amazing mountains appear where the ground has literally been turned on its side due to the collision between the Eurasian and Arabian Plates. These mountain ranges created many valleys and they were a very different experience to ride. For starters the temperature was somewhere around 45 degrees (so, hot!) and this combined with the wind caused hundreds of tornado's to form - an interesting thing to ride through on a motorbike that's for sure. After being batted around by these and exhausted from the heat we got near the coast where I was expecting it to still be hot but tempered by a sea brease - no such luck i'm afraid - It was just as hot, maybe hotter and instead of the dry heat of the desert it was humid. Not a pleasant combination and by far the hottest place I had ever been.

After arriving in the evening in a small fishing village called Bandar Khamir we asked a local where there was a hotel we could stay, after much gesturing we understood that there wasn't a hotel but if we followed him he would lead us to somewhere we could stay. This turned out to be a group of 4 small buildings in the park (luckily air conditioned, unluckily locked!) where he told us to wait (either 10 minutes or until 10 o clock we didn't know) until he came back. Typically he didn't come back and we spent 3 hours being pestered by people who wouldn't leave us alone to eat and we couldn't sleep there because everything was too hot - the floor, the walls, the air even the water in the taps was about 30 degrees!

Finally when I was away at the Police station trying to get us a cell to stay in for the night a family offered to take us in (the only English speaking people in the town I think). They were very good to us and provided food and a lovely air conditioned room to sleep in. We got on well with the family and they invited us to stay another night and would take us to see the Mangrove forests and other sights. We readily agreed and had a great time out on the boat swimming (in hot sea) and walking around the forests. Then in the evening we went to see the local hot springs, however there was no way I was getting in 50+ degree water when the outside temp was pushing 40 at night!

On the third day we made it to the island against all odds of being given the wrong boat times by everyone and having to import the bikes (even though it is part of Iran the island is a free trade zone or something - ie, its an island so there is dodgy stuff going on!)

Again, hot was the order of the day and I have never wanted to get inside more in my life. We had to enlist the help of some police to show us to a hotel (First they took us to the other side of the island and pointing at the sea proudly proclaimed "The Persian gulf" - oh so helpful!) then they took us to a big expensive looking hotel and despite our protests that it was too much promptly drove off! Anyway as we were there we decided to try our luck and as soon as we walked in the door the price dropped from $50 to $10 each. Done.

Kit off the bikes and cooled down by the air con we set off to find the dive centre and get ourselves booked in. It turned out to be in the second place we looked, a resort type place about 20 k our of town. The place looked professional enough and they were just back from a dive and all seemed alive so we booked in for 1 dive the next day (price was $60 rather than $30 like we had been told - still we had come all this way). That all taken care of we rode back to the hotel and again sat under the air con until it got dark and a tiny bit cooler.

Heading into town I got us lost in the old town but eventually made it to where we assumed all the restaurants would be - the waterfront. Apparently not as it turned out, all there was was a load of fishermen and smugglers who wanted to look at the bikes and take photos with us. Normally when surrounded by 30 guys in the docks area of a city its a course for concern but they were all very good and all smiles and it turned out that we had no problems (luckily).

Sorry, but i have to interupt this as it has taken longer than i thought. I will pick up when we next get internet access, prob in Lahore .