The Lone and Level Sands: through the desert from Esfehan to Yazd and Shiraz

I'd always wanted to see the desert. It was one of the things I'd harp on about to anyone who asked, and it's one of the things Iranians are proud of - theirs is a land of contrasts, they'll tell you, high mountains and tropical coastlines, howling deserts and groping jungles. Actually, I've seen plenty of photos of the "jungle" in the Caspian basin, and it doesn't look any more daunting than British woodlands - it's hardly the Darien Gap. It may be a translation difficulty, or characteristic exaggeration. But I digress.

Esfahan was a wonderful city, where I spent a few days to recover from the flu. I reckon I spent more time sleeping than sightseeing, but still, what a place. Mosques and squares and rambling bazaars and on top of the history, a great bustling sense of activity and possibility. Esfehan does suffer in one way from its success - the pervasive smog didn't half choke my delicate lungs, and I was there three days before I realized there were mountains around the city, hidden as they were behind the jaundiced fog. It'll always be yellow in my memories. It was the first Iranian city, though, that I enjoyed walking around - Zanjan and Khoy and Tabriz belong to the car, but in Esfehan it is still possible to wander as a pedestrian, which is my favorite way to explore cities.





I still didn't feel great when I left, but the visa clock was ticking, so off I rode towards Yazd. Nice tailwind that day, and I soon found myself surrounded by...well, nothing, which is one of the things you look for in a desert. Apart from the road and the telegraph poles and power lines to either side of it, nothing. As well as nothingness, one of the things everyone knows about deserts is that they are cold at night, when the heat radiates away to the stars. The stars were spectacular when I was away from the towns and cities, though with the cold I was unwilling to linger long outside my tent, and in fact the first night away from Esfahan, I slept at Mohammad's homestay in the town of Toodeshk, which is a wonderfully evocative name, the eastern promise in the drawn out first vowel and the guttural finishing "shk" sound. Toodeshk had a very traditional air, mud brick buildings and narrow alleys and sand.

Mohammad also gave me some good tips about the next bit of the route: "it's uphill after Toodeshk, downhill to Naín, then flat to Yazd, don't camp too close to the mountains as there have been reports of wolves, and if you camp in the ruins at Now Gonbad, the old man who cooks the omelettes will come to your tent and try to homosexual you. If (!) you don't want this, wave your phone at him and shout 'police'! He'll leave you alone." There was more advice after that, but I mainly remembered the part about Iran's Uncle Monty, and I didn't camp at Now Gonbad.

Sina had arranged for me to stay with his friend Ali in Yazd, though there was a slight language barrier in that I can only speak a few words of Farsi and Ali only speaks a few phrases of English. Luckily we had Sina on speed dial as a translator, and I had an enjoyable afternoon soaking up the atmosphere in Yazd. Ali took me round the mosque and the bazaar and best of all, a meander through the ancient streets and alleys, where the desert winds have worn the sharp edges from the stone. There was also Dowlatabad Gardens and its amazing wind tower, an ancient form of air conditioning. An afternoon wasn't long enough, but I still felt the sands of time running out on my visa, so I had to say farewell to Ali's hospitality (which was as generous as ever - I had to put my foot down to stop him from emptying his own cupboards into my panniers) and get straight back on the road.



Now, Ali is a cycle tourist, and he had ridden from Yazd to Shiraz, so I checked out his photos and asked him about the route. He warned me about a few big hills, including one near Deh Shir, about 45 miles from Yazd. Something must have been lost in translation, as he didn't tell me that those 45 miles were ALL uphill. In my weakened condition, I came damn close to chucking my bike over the nearest hedge, except this was the desert and there were no hedges, and I wouldn't have had the strength anyway. I like hills and mountains more than most cyclists, I suspect, but I was not prepared for 45 bastard miles uphill. I spent the whole day not quite believing that it would keep going up. Even with a tailwind it was a brutal slog, and I gave it up at about 3.30 after 43 miles, and camped just off the road, behind a spoil heap.

Overnight, naturally enough, the wind changed direction to become a headwind. At least it was only another 3 or 4 miles to the summit, even if they were tough miles which took me 48 grumpy minutes. I scowled at an Iranian couple who'd stopped their car to take photos of the view, and then of me. I couldn't help smiling. They waved me down and fed me some welcome chocolate.



It was flat or downhill to Abarkuh, and the desert landscape was making a reappearance after my excursion over the mountains. I plugged away into the wind but I was disappointed with my slow progress, and starting to worry that I wouldn't have time to renew my visa in Shiraz, and to visit the Persian remains north of Shiraz.

I was thinking about this and letting myself fret as I rode south on the main Esfehan-Shiraz road. Yet another car beeped at me (as one in every three or four seems to) and, feeling bad-tempered, I flicked him the v's. Nobody in Iran knows what this means, so it makes me feel better without offending anyone. Except this time, the car stopped and pulled off the road about a hundred yards ahead.

When I got alongside the car, the driver was waving his flask at me and saying "Chai! Chai!" Well, I'm not one to pass up an opportunity for tea, so I said bale/yes, and in a whirlwind of activity Mahmud (which was his name) had laid out a cloth on the ground and a whole picnic of crisps, fruits and nuts, but sadly no tea, though he did provide the bizarre substitute of an effervescent vitamin C tablet in water. Mmm. He even tried to set up a water pipe, and generally fussed about like an English housewife who's just heard that the Queen's coming for tea. It was surreal, and wonderful.

I had to stop for the day not long after setting off again, as my legs had given up. I pulled up next to a wagon, hoping to blag some water from the driver so I could set up camp for the night. He didn't have any water, but he did offer me a lift - which I had been secretly hoping he would. I had absolutely no energy, and when I saw the size of the hill I would have had to go over, I knew I wouldn't regret that decision. It would have taken me until the next day to get over that bastard.

It also added another dimension to my journey, though the conversation (Mehmat spoke pretty good English) became a bit repetitive.

"Hey, got any photos of English girls?"
...
"Oh, you're going to Thailand? Beautiful girls there."
...
"So what do you think of Iranian girls?"
...
Etc. I told him he should come to the UK and I'll take him somewhere like the Bigg Market on a Saturday night.

He dropped me about 70 km on, at Pasargard, the first in a series of ancient Persian sites I wanted to visit. It was getting on so I camped up by the local fly tipping spot - it was dark, and I didn't realise it was the dump until morning. No harm done, though I started to realise that my fatigue was more than just an after effect of the flu - without going into too much detail, you didn't want to get caught between me and the toilet at the wrong time.

At Pasargad, I was the only visitor so early in the morning: the desert air was crisp and clear and the light was amazing. The tomb of Cyrus the great is the most impressive relic there, sited alone on the plain. Apparently it was originally surrounded by a pleasure garden, but on its own it has...presence.



Still feeling knackered, I talked another wagon driver into giving me a lift to Persepolis. Like Mehmat, he refused any kind of payment, though his English was nearly as limited as my Farsi. He did, however, insist that I visit Naqsh-e-Rostam before Persepolis, and he was quite right to do so, as it is a powerful place. The Achamaenid kings' tombs are carved into a huge rocky escarpment, each tomb open to the elements so that the bones can be picked clean by vultures, in Zoroastrian tradition. I also met an English woman and her Iranian family; proving yet again that it's a small world after all, she told me she was born in Darlington as soon as I said that's where I'm from. She also reminded me that it was Christmas day - I suppose it's no wonder that I forgot, as spending the day amongst the relics of a civilization which rose and fell before the birth of Christ is about as un-Christmassy as you can get.



My last Achamaenid visit was the daddy - Persepolis, or Takht-e-Jamshid as it's known locally. I'm not likely to forget this, as there were loudspeakers at the site blasting out a commentary from some local ham, and the words "Takht-e-Jamshid" occurred at least once in every sentence.

It had a very different atmosphere to the stark dignity of Pasargad or the sun-scorched antiquity of Naqsh-e-Rostam. Persepolis is big business, though refreshingly it's only 5,000 rials to enter (about 30p). But the huge car park and the rows of businesses mean there's money there, though not so much in the middle of winter, even if I did find it warm. I also found it quite busy compared to the other sites. It must be dreadful in high season.

There's no denying the scale of Persepolis, though. You climb up the hill behind the city and you can look back over the pillars and arches and try to imagine it as a place of wealth and power, the capital of an empire that stretched from India to central Europe. I even managed to tune out the commentary for a bit.



I haggled and earned myself quite a cheap rate at the on-site hotel (proximity of a toilet was quite important to me at that moment) by using my natural charm and the manager's confusion about the difference between dollars, tomans and rials. With so many noughts in the currency, even Iranians sometimes get confused, and for once it worked to my advantage.

The next day I rode down to Shiraz, where I renewed my visa easily, which both relieved and annoyed me. I didn't have to dash to the nearest border in the two days before it expired, but I could probably have relaxed a bit more and seen more of Iran. Ah well. I put that behind me and tried to find a hotel in Shiraz where I could rest up for a few days.

The first hotel (Ferdowsi Hotel on Zand) was not the haven of rest I craved. The staff were sort of friendly in a grinning-inanely kind of way, but quite useless. They spent ten minutes asking me questions when I'd explained that I was tired and wanted to go my room. I asked for the shower and they pointed me to the toilet, so I had to go back and get the shower key, then they asked me for my passport even though I'd handed it over ten minutes before. Useless. It was also too loud in my room adjoining the courtyard, and the centerpiece of the evening was spanging cockroaches with my pan, then watching the local ants guzzle the remains. I moved hotel the next morning, to the simple, cheap, friendly and clean Zand Hotel. That was my base for an abortive exploration of Shiraz. After Persepolis and the rest, it was always going to be a let-down.

Hospital and Hospitality: through northern Iran from Tabriz to Zanjan

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"Hospital" is a bit dramatic, I admit. But I picked up a strain of flu which has been going around Iran, and it really took it out of me. I tried to cycle out of Zanjan after an unpleasant night's coughing and sweating, riding with the famous Matt and Andy (The Cycle Diaries), a couple of English cyclists I'd met when we all took shelter in a Bostan Abad hotel after riding out of Tabriz and into heavy snow. That was a filthy day, as all the passing cars churned the snow into an Iranian toothpaste of snow, grit, mud, petrol and other thankfully unidentifiable roadside crap. We ate dinner and watched the snow fall - one poor guy cleared his car, then went away for half an hour, and when he came back the snow had covered his car again.



The next day was better: it was bright and clear and the snow had stopped, though it was still thick on the ground. Andy suggested that we should follow the motorway, which was wider and clearer than the parallel road (and the guy at the toll booth just laughed and waved us through - bikes win again), even if the lack of facilities started to make itself felt after a while, and at the end of the day I expected we'd be camping. I'm nearly always quite happy to camp; my rule of thumb is that it should be above freezing during the day to make camping reasonably pleasant, and it certainly was. However, Matt and Andy had a magic letter in Farsi which introduced them and what they were doing - Matt showed this to the guys at a local community centre which was about the only building for miles, and without hesitation we were wved in, fed, watered and entertained for the evening. Iranian hospitality is an amazing thing. They turned out to be a gang of navvies who maintain the motorway between Tabriz and Tehran, and the evening passed with a revolving cast of locals coming and going. While we were eating our second evening meal in the warm, I pointed out to Matt that we could have cycled another ten miles if we'd been willing to camp - well, you wouldn't believe the language he gave me in response.



The navvies even gave up their beds for us, which made me feel a bit guilty until I realised that the floor would probably have been softer.

We had an early start the next day as Matt and Andy had arranged to stay with a cyclist in Zanjan, and we had ninety miles to cover. That was when my flu started to make itself felt, as I had a thich head and heavy legs and a chesty cough made worse by the thick fumes from passing HGVs. It should have been an easy day, as there was a strong tailwind and the terrain rolled up and down, and I'd actually had five days off the bike in Tabriz, but my legs weren't getting the message, so it was a day of endurance as I tried to keep up with the others but ended up watching them ride over the horizon while I gritted my teeth and found a plodding pace I could maintain.

I'd also been stopped for a friendly chat by a passing police car, and Andy asked if I had a sign saying "British Spy" above my head, as I'd already been questioned by the police in Azarshar and Tabriz for about five hours apiece after some friendly locals took me hiking up to what was apparently a strategically vital waterfall in the Sahand Mountains. I could have done with a drink after that.





Actually, the hiking trip to Hargalan was a grand day out, despite the views of police station interiors which followed, and which probably wouldn't feature in the highlights reel of anyone's trip to Iran, but it was a relatively painless affair and there was even a touch of comedy when the sergeant in Tabriz offered me his chai as a gesture of tarof (ceremonial politeness - I was supposed to refuse until the third offer) and I unthinkingly took it, much to his amusement. Hey, I was thirsty.

The walking in the high mountains gave me another excuse to rest up in Tabriz for a few extra days, and it was just bad luck that I picked up the flu. Sina - the cyclist we stayed with in Zanjan - and his family expressed concern that I shouldn't be cycling, but I thought I'd be able to ride it off, and I didn't want to burden these kind people with my illness. However, when it took me two and a half hours to ride seven miles away from Zanjan, I decided to turn back.

Sina and his family were amazingly kind and generous. Here's a picture of the food mountain his mother, Soosan, forced on me before I left.



They had already fed the three of us the night before, and invited the family round for a wonderful evening, although I was a bit too ill and lacking in energy to play the part of the guest to the same standard. I'm sure they understood, and Sina insisted I visit the doctor, which was quite a bit different from the UK experience. Instead of just being told to rest up, it was Blammo! straight in with the penicillin injections, one in each buttock plus another in the right for good measure, followed by a course of antibiotics. I was feeling a bit vague and fuzzy, which didn't stop one of the enthusiastic locals from jabbering at me while I was lying across the bed in the surgery like a slab of meat.

Despite feeling distinctly woolly, the flu did give me a welcome excuse to hang around Zanjan with Sina and his family - we had a look around town at the knives for which it's famous, and at the local picnic areas, and I bought Soosan some flowers as a small thank you for the hospitality we'd been shown. We had discussed bringing a gift before we arrived, but as the only place on the motorway was the service station, we decided that a gift of petrol, banana wafers or twenty Mayfair would not be appropriate. Buying the flowers may have been a tactical error, as it only seemed to increase the amount of food I was given when I left. Not that I'm complaining, as home cooked food in Iran is very good indeed, and quite a contrast to the limited fare available at restaurants.



I'd looked at the distance I had to travel, and the time left on my visa, and my ability to ride, and I made the decision to take a bus down to Esfahan. Time was looking to be a real issue, and something had to give. Sina did say that the ride to Esfahan was boring, but I was skeptical about that, as he'd said the same about the route from Bostan Abad to Zanjan, where we passed between glowing mountains and amongst rocky valleys which reminded me of a snowy Arizona. If that's boring, he should try the A167 down to Busby Stoop ona grey Sunday afternoon.

The night bus was an enjoyable run, especially as I was lucky enough to be seated next to an English speaker from Qom, so I now have an open invitation to stay in Qom, which in another country may have been a polite nothing, but Iranians mean this when they say it. Still, I wasn;t unhappy when he got off, as I could then roll up my fleece and lay it against the window for a pillow and get a couple of hours' sleep before the morning arrival into Esfahan.

Linky to Photos on Flickr.