Hello from Iran

So I have to use Blogger now as Facebook is banned and all my (one) attempts to beat it have not worked - turns out the Iranian government is more advanced than Shaftesbury school!

We are safe -that is the main reason for this post - mum, dad, we will try and call again later but it seems that calls to the UK are blocked at the moment (at least from the Hostel). Apart from the barricade to the outside world, Iran is amazing. It is easily the best country I have yet been to and George agrees, the country is beautiful and the people are crazy friendly... so much so they will scream across 3 lanes of motorway at 140kph to wave and take photos!! Every time we stop on the bikes we are surrounded by people wanting to ask where we are from, what city (London, England is much easier) and wishing us welcome to their country.. in other places(Turkey) these are often questions pre some kind of con but in Iran they are all genuine, interested and above all.. polite.

We are in Esfahan at the moment.We have had a very interesting first few days in Iran. We arrived at the Turkey/Iran border at 10am as estimated after leaving Dogubayazit and got through the Turkish side of the border in maybe 1h 30 min - mainly because someone did not click something on a computer! typical, but were helped through by the border guard who left his post to help us through - at the expense of everyone else who needed this guys stamp!! The Iranian side was the usual beauraucy expected but was not too bad (total to cross both borders 4hrs), and all was going well until two guys at customs declared that out Visas ran out on the 8th of September!!! "sorry, what?!, no no no my friend, you are mistaken, we have 30 days in Iran" "No, you have 7" "Bugger!" everyone agreed that we had 7 days to cross Iran -doable but completely missing the country which is a massive part of the trip. We were convinced this was wrong as George had checked with Persian Voyages specifically to ensure the dates.. but as we had some doubt and the cost of overstaying is alot we decided to find out for sure at an embassy or something.

For this end we rode that afternoon to Tabriz hoping to find out there, we stayed at a hostel recommended by Lonely Planet that was fine (even though we were on the 3rd floor (we have about 70/80 kilos of gear plus tyres and clothes etc) and went out to see some of the city. The first thing was a security guard playing air guitar with his AK47!! haha, i wish we had a photo of that! We then had fun trying to figure out how to cross the street (answer, follow an Iranian, but them between you and the cars!) and trying to find food (really, it appears that there is nothing but biscuits). next morning we went to the Visa office and found (though lots of sign language) that we did infact have 30 days, problem was that this place wasnt very official and not clear.

Still thinking we had just 6 days left in the country we decided to head quickly to Tehran via a quick night at the Valley of Assassins and then the final 250k to Tehran early in the morning.

The Valley was amazing!

Entering it you come off the motorway at Qazvin and ride up a hill/small mountain, then comes 2 hours and 80k+ of hairpins, bends, twists hills and gorges to rival and even beat anything the alps had to offer, through the most beautiful landscape (huge craggy desert mountains and a lush fertile valley fed by all the streams and waterfalls, interspersed with tiny villages) until you arrive at a giant rock face, and perched on top you can just make out the ruins of a fort. As we arrived at the base of Almut Castle a man came running out to ask us to stay at his Hostel, about 100meters away. We jumped at this offer as we had spent the whole day on the bikes and the last 2hours had really finished us off. It was also now evening and we still wanted to climb to the fort. wow! it was worth it, amazing views up and down the valley as the sun was setting, amazing. We stayed up until dark and then navigated our way down the 400 odd foot stairway on the cliff.

For our early start to arrive early in Tehran we woke at about 5:45 and were packed and ready at about 6:30, very good, until George pointed out I had a flat rear tyre and my chain probably wouldnt make it to Tehran. I repaired the puncher and fitted the new sprockets just to find that the chain was about 6 links too long (note to Duncan, the reason i could wheelie better but you were getting better fuel efficiency is because i was running a 14! tooth front sprocket - now a 17 -big jump) Luckily the friendly Iranians came to our aid and took George to the town (Gazor Khan) to cut the links out and we were up and running by 11 am... bit later than planned and was still 4 hrs from Tehran, not enough time to get there before the Visa place closed and didnt open for 3 days... ah.

We figured that we should push on and get to Esfhan where we could sort the visa or if not still make Pakistan before the 8th. This meant just basting past Tehran which we both wanted to visit..

Fortunately or not (as we at least saw the city) we arrived at rush hour and promptly found that a city with 17million people and different climates due to the size, combined with a complete lack of useful road signs (no names of citys out of Tehran, only expressways named after famous people) and absolutely mental drivers, is very difficult to navigate.

We got lost, for 2 hours, in Tehran, in the heat, in the smog and cars just trying their best to kill us! Fun!

(a side note on Iranian driving, its bad, the best two examples are guys on motorbikes trying to read our speedos while we are riding at 60kph and the classic of a completely empty motorway, and 3 cars in the fast lane trying to overtake each other, and in the process pushing one into the lane divider!)

We camped on Thursday nigh about 50k from Qom in the hills overlooking the salt lake (very cool, very beautiful) and woke early yesterday to see the sunrise and get an early start to Esfahan, lovely empty motorway (extra good because Iran is limited to 200cc bikes, which are banned from the motorways for being slow, this means that when me and George turn up on big bikes the toll booths dont know what to do, so they let us on , for free! great!)

We arrived in Esfahan about 4 and quickly found the hostel (great city) and went for a walk to see the sights (Esfahan is the cultural capital of Iran). We went to the Imam Mosque (most beautiful in islamic world) and there were shown around by a local who knew the security guard and so let us in! cool. After being shown around for about an hour (free) we met some Austrian overlanders traveling to India in a caravan. Really nice people who we had a picnic with in the town park, and i hope to meet again in Pakistan or somewhere. As we arrived back at the hostel we met a guy pushbiking from Ireland to Thailand and saw (but not met yet) a vespa scooter from Italy.

This morning we finally managed to get to an open, official visa office and confirm with them that we have 30 days in Iran, now we can do some planning!


Sorry for that being so long, but I really cant describe how much I love this country, I will try to do some more, smaller and more regular updates while i am here, and maybe i can go back to the part of Turkey i missed out.