So today’s meeting at the Embassy didn’t produce any visas, but we have the full support of the First Secretary (Consular) and his staff, and we have 48 hours still left on the clock, so we’re still feeling hopeful.

Monday afternoon here, and we’re still visa-less for India. We haven’t given up either hope or effort – I’ll let today’s blog title speak for itself (credit goes to ‘Frankie Goes To Hollywood’).

We’ve got 70 hours left within which we need to score a touch-down – so watch this space okay ⏰

PS: Karen got her stitches out today at a local hospital and they were just brilliant! We have nothing but praise for the medical services she has received in Iran….exceptional!

Yep, that’s right folks – if it’s Sunday morning we’re back at the Indian Embassy in Tehran, ever hopeful that they’ll shift into gear and organise our visas as time is rapidly running out.

We caught a taxi down to the embassy and got there just after 09:10am, and were surprised to find the visa section open as the embassy website advertises open hours of 10:00am – midday.

The waiting room was sparsely populated this morning – a stark contrast to our previous experience, and familiar with the system we queued up at the first window to be logged in, then queued up at the second window, directly behind a young Italian guy applying for his visa. He has previously lived and worked in Finland, China and India in his work associated with student support services, and was hoping to go work in India again.

We chatted with the Italian guy for a while, and a young Iranian lady – the only one I’ve seen here in Iran to have facial piercings – a bold statement in such a conservative society.

We didn’t have to wait too long before we were served – and were then told to wait another 30 minutes as some discussion was required. A while later we were instructed to queue up waiting for admittance to the inner sanctum – the waiting room we’d been in previously, and eventually we were summonsed to see the senior visa officer.

He offered us visas for air travel which we politely declined, and then Karen launched into a passionate description of our travels, and our need for the visas. The visa officer was quite taken with our stories and was impressed when we showed him some photos of our motorbike – fully loaded with gear and 2 x spare tyres, and with Karen wedged in behind me – and he disappeared upstairs to seek approval whilst we waited again in the waiting room, but ten minutes later he stormed into his office and slammed the door shut – the body language did not bode well.

A few minutes later one of his minions came out and told us that approval was still required from New Delhi, and that we should return in two days time. How frustrating – we knew that approval from New Delhi was required a fortnight ago and still no answer has been received.

Back at our hotel we mapped out our next moves – we’ll return to the embassy tomorrow to get an update, and we’ll be ready to escalate our case to New Delhi ourselves if necessary. We also put out an SOS to the Horizons Unlimited New Delhi community – perhaps they have some magic oil we can grease the embassy’s immovable wheels with.

Dinner was enjoyed at the Tehran Chinese Restaurant – the food was good as always and the staff there pleased to see us return, and then it was early to bed, with Sjaak Lucassen again waxing lyrically from the DVD player. We’d hoped for a restful sleep as last night sleep was difficult to come by, unfortunately this evening proved no better. The stress caused by this ongoing wrangle with the embassy never leaves us.

After our 920km ride from Shiraz to Tehran yesterday, today was planned as a down day, allowing us to relax before we go visit the Indian Embassy here in Tehran.

In reality, ‘relaxing’ translated to myself spending all day and most of the evening drafting and redrafting a memo to various embassy diplomats seeking assistance with our visa applications. If we fail in our last-ditch attempt at least we’ll have the knowledge that we tried everything we could think of.

Karen spent the day uploading photo galleries to our blog, a time-consuming activity that was impossible to do in either Esfahan or Shiraz as the internet connections there were too slow. She also patiently reviewed each and every draft I worked on – that’s teamwork for you!

We also finally managed to watch the DVD we bought months ago from Sjaak Lucassen – “Sjaak the World” – “The story of a motorcycle trip that none of us will ever take” – 5 years, 5 months and 1 day travelling the world on his R1. Karen suggested that we have a movie night for the “Perth Motorbike & Sidecar Riders” group when we return to Perth and show the video, and have a small cover charge and then send the proceeds to Sjaak to help him with his plans to ride his R1 to the North Pole. That’s the great thing about Karen – she’s always thinking about how she can help other people 🙂

My original route for Iran consisted of Tabriz – Tehran – Esfahan – Shiraz, then out to Yazd, Kerman and Bam enroute for the wild east frontier town of Zahedan where we would set ourselves up to cross into Pakistan, but I hadn’t counted on the bureaucracy of the Indian Embassy in Tehran, so from Shiraz Karen and I needed to return to Tehran to once again try and obtain our visas for India.

On Thursday I was looking at some maps and gauging distances, as if we get our Indian visas in Tehran we’ll need to bolt to Zahedan to meet a convoy of overland travellers and quickly cross Pakistan’s western lands with them, before our Pakistan visas expire, and when asked by Karen how far the return trip from Shiraz to Tehran was I erroneously said “630km” (this is actually the distance from Tehran to Yazd), rather than the correct answer of 920km.

Around four o’clock Friday morning I woke up having realised my mistake, and I fretted over that for the next two hours until the alarm went off at six am, and I could explain the error to Karen. To be quite honest the stress of the India visa challenges is having a flow-over effect, and I’m making mistakes in simple things like distances and dates, something I’m usually pinpoint accurate with. At least my riding hasn’t suffered, not yet anyways.

Karen was unperturbed about the additional 300km we’d need to cover in order to get to Tehran in one day, as the alternative meant stopping overnight at the halfway point (Esfahan) and that would introduce its own set of challenges, so we loaded the bike and were leaving Shiraz’s city limits by 07:30am.

We stopped for fuel just out of Marvdast, perhaps 40km north of Shiraz, to ensure that we had the range to reach Esfahan. We’d planned also to get a drink but some big guys at the servo were taking too much interest in the bike so we refuelled, remounted and rode off immediately.

We stopped again in Surmaq to find some breakfast, as Karen had spotted a cafe that was open. Some men inside were reclining on a large day-bed, sharing food and smoking their pipe, and I tried to order two omelettes, similar to what some of the men were eating, but we were served with a tomato paste and something concoction, and some flat bread. I ate the sloppy mix with my flat bread but Karen thought it reminded her of dog vomit and couldn’t eat it. We bought some little cakes from the shop next door and hit the road again.

We stuck to the 110kmh speed limit and made steady progress back to Esfahan, averaging an actual on-ground speed of about 90-95kmh by virtue of our stops and occasional slow traffic conditions – the most extreme of these being the police checkpoints along the road that have speed bumps to slow you down to a crawl as you pass the officers standing on the side of the road. The external temperature down here was about 36.5 degrees – warm but manageable.

We refuelled about 40km south of Esfahan – our intention being to then stick to the ring-road deviation around Esfahan and avoid the need to enter Esfahan city for fuel, but the deviation was poorly sign-posted and we got sucked into the vortex of Esfahan. As I battled with the traffic and Karen kept her eyes peeled for the few road signs that vaguely pointed the way towards Tehran we attracted the attention of two men onboard a little Honda 125cc motorbike, and they started to follow us.

I slipped through a red-light – to be quite honest if you stop on the red you run the risk of being rear-ended by cars because they are expecting you to go through – and the little motorbike came along with us, pulling up alongside Karen with the rider gesturing at her to pull over. Karen presumed that the rider was one of the guys that had tried to get our attention a few minutes prior, and she just waved back, indicating that we didn’t have time to pull over and stop for a friendly chat. Over the Sena intercom Karen advised me to keep on riding.

The rider then pulled forwards a bit and when I glanced over I could see the badge on his uniform, the pepper spray he was holding in his left hand, and the AK47 slung over his pillion’s chest. That was enough for me – we pulled over and stopped in some shade on the side of the road, the Honda blocking our forwards movement once we’d come to a stop.

Neither of the two policemen could speak a word of English, but we ascertained that they wanted to see the bike registration papers, so I pulled the laminated papers out of the tank bag and passed them over. The rider inspected the papers whilst Karen asked his gun-wielding pillion if she could take his photo, but he declined and I had the papers returned to me by the rider with a wave for us to carry on our way. Upon reflection we’re convinced that he couldn’t read a word of English so the papers would have been indecipherable to him, but he was happy with what he saw and we were happy that we hadn’t been pepper-sprayed.

We left Esfahan behind and settled into the second-half of the ride. Karen was parched and we looked for a shop selling drinks but the first few we scouted didn’t have anything for sale. Things were getting a bit dicey as the temperature had climbed over 40 degrees, and whilst we had bottled water on our panniers the bottles are exposed to the sun and not insulated, so the contents are close to boiling point.

We saw signs indicating that Natanz wasn’t too far away – I’m talking 85km further north which was better than Kashan at around 135km (Natanz you’ll recall is the little village off the main road we stopped at on our trip down to Esfahan a week ago) but shortly before the Natanz turn-off we spotted a rest area just off the main road, so we peeled off and made our way there. We bought a large bottle of cold water and shared that and the little cakes we’d bought earlier in the morning under the shade of a small hut in the car park, and then rejoined the six-lane highway.

The temperature at this stage was hovering over 44 degrees and Karen was starting to feel the effects. I was warm but I’d kept my jacket zipped up and that was keeping the hot wind off my chest. I’d planned to refuel and stop for water at the rest area south of Qom we’d used on our trip south to Esfahan, but it was much closer to Qom than I recalled, and so we had no option but to suck it up and press on through the blistering heat.

The highway north of Esfahan has a posted speed limit of 120kmh but I was cruising around 100-110kmh to try and manage the bike’s engine temperature. It seemed like ages but eventually we saw the sign to the rest area, so we left the highway and once again I parked the bike on the forecourt of the large restaurant-shop. The guard waved to Karen, gesturing to park the bike in front of his vantage point in the shade, and I thanked him with a few IRR later for keeping onlookers off the bike whilst we had a few bottles of water inside.

We remounted and rolled around to the adjacent servo for a top-up, but I was distracted in conversation with some locals as I refuelled and the nozzle didn’t click off when the tank was full so I spilt a fair bit of fuel over the bike and ground before I realised. Karen had to jump out of the way to avoid the splash, and that was registered in my mind as something to be watchful for in future. As I washed the fuel off the bike with our hot bottled water some guys on a small Honda came up and started chatting but Karen didn’t like the pointed questions being asked about the bike so we remounted quickly and scooted off.

On the highway we were constantly being photographed by people in passing cars – sometimes they’d jockey from one side of us to another so they could photograph us from all angles. We also attracted the attention of more policemen about 50km south of Tehran, this time cruising in their patrol car.

We pulled over – I let the patrol car stop in front of us and then I rode around it so it was between us and traffic coming from behind, and two of three officers got out of the car and stood behind the bike for a minute or so checking the license plate before the senior officer approached and shook my hand before asking for our passports (I think, as his English wasn’t up to Oxford standards), whilst his mate chatted to someone on his mobile. I indicated that our passports were in the top-box, which was buried underneath our spare tyres, but as I prepared to alight and get the passports out his mate wrapped up his phone call and spoke briefly to the senior officer, who then tapped my helmet and indicated that I could put it back on and carry on our way. It looked to us that whoever was on the other end of the phone call had given us the tick of approval, and we were allowed to go.

I do note that the highway between Shiraz and Esfahan features a network of ‘automated traffic violation system’ sites – point-to-point cameras that detect forwards-facing number plates used in calculating average speeds over known distances, but despite the odd burst of speed to clear obstacles our average speed would be well under the permissible limit, and our bike doesn’t have a front number plate. Also, I acknowledge that I’ve seen plenty of road signs indicating that motorcycles aren’t allowed on the highways here, but the police didn’t have an issue, and neither do the toll-booth operators who wave us through with a smile, free of charge.

About 100km south of Tehran we started to encounter congestion on the road and began dicing with the cars. Often I’d try and sit in the slow lane but that could lead to being trapped behind a very slow truck or ute, so occasionally I’d pull out and blast ahead, making full use of the three lanes available to us.

If I’d thought ahead when we were last in Tehran I would of marked our destination – the Tehran Grand Hotel – in our GPS, but I hadn’t, so instead we plunged into the hectic traffic of this city of 17 million people and navigated by instinct and luck towards our hotel. Road signage was again vague and often displayed too late to react to – when you’re the only motorcycle in a melee of cars and buses five abreast on a three lane road you don’t get much chance to make early lane selections and often we’d get swept away from where I wanted to go, as life preservation rated higher than lane selection. I kid you not – the rules of the roads here looks like this – “If you want to turn left you should be in the outside right hand lane and vice versa” – as every intersection was an absolute shitfight of jostling cars. Add to the mix our camera-snapping fans who would drive within a whisker of the bike, and you can imagine the situation we faced. In fairness I think that Iranian drivers are accustomed to squeezing their cars into the narrowest of gaps and as the bike doesn’t occupy the whole width of a car lane we frequently had cars nudge ahead of us from either side as I simply couldn’t protect our space from both sides simultaneously. The concept of safety buffers simply doesn’t prevail here in Tehran.

The going got a bit easier when I noticed some local riders on their 125’s were using the dedicated bus lanes, so whenever I could I slipped down these lanes, grateful for the buffer away from the cars. I was looking for Valiasr Street – a 17km street that runs north-south through Tehran and which leads to our hotel, but despite our eastwards cross-cut of the city and a few promising but ultimately misleading signs we missed the street and overshot it. I turned north on a random whim and by complete fluke Karen and I started to recognise things we’d seen on our previous sightseeing tour through downtown Tehran – a building featuring a large mural of a martyred soldier, and the park opposite. We’d walked through this area and then caught a taxi back to the hotel, so shouting above the road noise as Karen’s Sena had run flat, we retraced the taxi’s route to the hotel. We picked up Valiasr Street, elated with our efforts and surrounded by other riders on their little bikes, waving and shouting out encouragement in the early evening traffic as we head for our destination. Negotiating the final intersection involved cutting across six lanes of cross-flowing traffic as you can’t stop despite the red light, and Karen assisted by hand-signalling the drivers that we were moving across – great team work.

I rode up to the entrance of the hotel – Karen thought I was going to ride through the doors into the lobby, and switched off the bike – 920km and twelve hours after departing Shiraz that morning. I was elated at our success, but Karen was looking shattered – I think she thought she was going to have a heart attack as we rode through downtown Tehran.

We unloaded the bike and parked it underground as quickly as possible, and then showered and ordered room service as it was now about 9:00pm and we were tired from our day.

I penned a little ditty to celebrate our success but I think it was lost a little bit on Karen, but she deserves full credit for her support and stamina over a very hot and challenging ride in which we faced a lot of potentially scary situations as she surmounted every difficulty thrown our way.

Sung to the tune of Petula Clark’s 1965 hit of the same name my ditty goes like this:

Downtown
where everyone goes
Downtown
where the traffic never slows
Downtown
Riding in Tehran
Down Town.

And that was our day. Fingers crossed that our efforts will be rewarded and we’ll get our Indian visas this week.

A knock on our ramshackle door awoke us at 08:30am, and Karen was ready to draw blood before her feet hit the floor, less than impressed at being awoken from a deep sleep that had taken most of the night to achieve. On the subject of doors – our rickety double-door here at Niayesh Boutique Hotel uses a simple padlock at the top to lock it closed, and has a nesting pigeon watching guard from the lintel overhead. Karen calls the pigeon ‘Princess’ 🙂

The door-knocker was a cleaning lady wanting to clean our room, so we threw on some clothes, grabbed the Mac and iPad and went outside into the covered courtyard to check our emails before breakfast, when a few minutes later the taxi driver that Reza had sent for us came through to collect us and take us to see the surgeon.

We jumped into the taxi and had a wild ride to the surgery. Our taxi driver was fantastic – sometimes I even caught him looking left or right before we charged across oncoming cars or merged into one of the log-jams that were starting to form in the early morning traffic, and once he lashed out and used his indicators – “very stylish” I thought.

Reza was waiting at the secure doorway to the surgery – this is the place we attended yesterday afternoon without seeing the surgeon. Reza had gone there early in the morning and had worked his magic to get Karen an 11:30am appointment, and whilst it was about 09:00am when Karen and I arrived there Reza explained that it was best to be early, and we certainly didn’t want to miss our appointment.

We were calls upstairs and had a short consultation with the surgeon, who was very caring and understanding. Karen explained her history and concerns, and the surgeon agreed to go straight in and remove the lump, before ushering us downstairs so we could watch some soccer on TV in the waiting room.

After a short wait Reza was instructed by the surgery receptionist to get Karen something to drink, so we jumped into Reza’s Renault and he drove to a nearby fruit drink bar, where Karen and I had a pineapple smoothie each, and Reza a carrot-flavoured one. At a pharmacy across the road Karen had her script filled – the one written out by the specialist she had seen yesterday, as he had prescribed a combination of sunscreens and other lotions and potions to help protect her skin from the harsh Iranian sun.

Back at the surgery we watched Iran thrash Kuwait 9-2 in indoor soccer on the TV before we headed upstairs, where Karen changed into a hospital gown and hat before being led by the hand into the fully-equipped operating theatre, and I was given a 2001 edition of ‘National Geographic’ to read by the surgeon, as he walked by on the way to theatre.

I hadn’t quite finished the article about tensions in Indonesia before the surgeon walked past and gave me a wave, followed shortly afterwards by Karen, sporting a big smile and a specimen jar containing her lump.

We had a quick conference in the surgeon’s office before we were back in the Renault, with Reza whizzing us through town to drop the jar off to pathology. Reza managed to pull a few strings here as well, getting them to fast track the pathology report so whilst it takes a few days for the tests to be completed, we hope to get the results as soon as they come available.

Reza had us wait at the pathology office whilst he went back to the surgery and collected some paperwork that had been left behind – Karen’s histology report from Perth – and we went downstairs to the pharmacy below to fill the script the surgeon had given Karen, but by this stage I was out of Iranian Rial and only had a couple of US$100 notes on me, so with a smile and a wave the pharmacist gave Karen the pain-killers and antibiotic cream free of charge.

Back at Niayesh Boutique Hotel I arranged with the front desk for us to stay three additional nights – so now we’re here til Friday morning at least – and then Reza, Karen and I enjoyed a relaxing lunch in the courtyard. We took the opportunity to learn more about daily life in Iran from Reza – he explained about the cost of university and how imported cars attract a 300% import duty, amongst other things. We’ve asked Reza to take us sightseeing tomorrow around Shiraz, and I think he’ll take us out this evening as early morning or evening is the best time to go around Shiraz at the moment, as the afternoons are stifling hot.

Lunch concluded, we said farewell to Reza and went and laid down for an afternoon nap, still quite amazed at how quickly and efficiently Reza had been able to arrange the surgery for Karen. Only half-jokingly did we wish that he’d been available to help us get our Indian visas in Tehran, the only other cloud hanging over our otherwise sunny trip.

Whilst I’d set the iPad alarm for a 07:00am wake up, it was actually almost 09:30am when we awoke, so the early start to our 480km ride to Shiraz was dashed before we even commenced.

We skipped breakfast and got straight into packing and loading the bike, and by 10:30am we were in the thick of Esfahan’s morning traffic, making our way south across the road bridge and looking to pick up Route 65. We passed Siosepol Bridge (the Bridge of 33 Arches) over the Zayandeh River, it’s the longest of the 11 bridges in Esfahan. Karen jumped off the bike and walked through the park to take a few photos of this impressive footbridge whilst I plugged Shiraz into the GPS.

Karen was wearing her helmet still as she went to photograph the bridge (to keep her hair covered as we were in public) and our Sena’s were still switched on. I could hear her saying hello to two local ladies that approached her. The next second I could hear Karen over the radio yelling out “Don’t hit me, if you hit me again I’ll hit you back!!!!” What had happened was the younger one had asked for money and when Karen had replied she didn’t have any money (which was true) the girl took umbridge and hit Karen on the shoulder. She was shocked but unhurt. I asked her over the Sean if she needed any help but she was already on her way back to the bike. You meet all sorts on the road!

At one of the major roundabouts we needed to negotiate the traffic was absolutely chaotic, something like seven or eight lanes merging down to four, with buses barging through the gaps and cars weaving all over the place. It was hot already and the cars were barely crawling along, and I managed to stall the bike at the most inopportune time, but a quick restart got us out from underneath a bus and back into the melee.

On the outskirts of Shiraz I pulled over for fuel at a CNG station, already crowded with long lines of cars and trucks. The pump attendant waved us forwards and we squeezed through the cars to the front of a line. We were wedged between the pump island and the refuelling cars, and so I stayed on the bike and refuelled in situ as I couldn’t get off. We had hoped to buy a drink of water and perhaps some breakfast but there were a few commotions in the line behind us and we were starting to get a bit crowded, so we just paid up and took off.

As soon as we’d left Esfahan behind the desert took over again. This time we were on a dual lane highway, max posted speed 110kmh, though we just cruised at 100kmh as I was trying to conserve fuel in case we couldn’t any more fuel on the remaining 460km to Shiraz. We saw a few small dusty shops tucked into a curve and pulled over for a drink. A couple in a car pulled over and started photographing the bike, then got out of the car and carried on photographing, and when I told them not to touch they nodded (the guy at least spoke English), but when I turned my back he was encouraging his female companion to climb on the bike for a photo opportunity. Karen quickly and clearly voiced her disapproval, and they bolted back to their car and sped off. It’s not that we don’t mind people admiring the bike, but it’s unstable when parked up on awkward slopes and it’s not a plaything.

Traffic was light on the highway. One blue dual-cab ute kept on passing us and then we’d overtake it, and eventually it drove up right next to us – so close Karen could have reached out and touched it, and the rear passenger tried to pass Karen a melon out of the window, but a tap of the brakes and quick wiggle had us drop behind and away from the car into some open space. Once again today we’ve noticed that the more the Iranians like you and want to get to know you – the closer they will drive to you, which is very disconcerting at times.

We pushed on through the 35 degree plus heat, and pulled over at Soghad when I saw a servo, ready for more fuel and some lunch. The men in the dual-cab ute where also stopped there, so we had a brief and friendly chat until they drove off and I repositioned the bike out the front of the small food shop.

We got a bottle of water each and some small cakes for lunch, and once again Karen had to admonish some guys that had started to fiddle with the switches on the bike.

Back on the bike we passed a sign saying we had 235km still to ride, so we were passing the half-way point, and it had taken four hours to get this far (it was about 02:30pm at this stage), so I wasn’t expecting an early arrival in Shiraz.

The temperature started to rise and we were both getting quite thirsty, so when I saw signs just outside of Pasergad pointing to a tourism restaurant we pulled off the main road and negotiated some road works so we could double back and find the restaurant, which stood out as it offered shady trees to park under, away from the blistering heat. A bottle of water each and a snack on some potato chips that we’d bough the evening before, and then we headed off again.

We entered a well-defined valley and could see signs of crop cultivation. Soon we could see green crops growing in the fields, and occasional herds of goats and sheep. A deep river bed cut through the fields on our left, but we couldn’t see any water in it. The closer we got to Shiraz the more abundant the crops became. Some of the fields were barren, and in them we could see the goat herders and their goats. In some fields we saw tents and pens of goats, and in another field people were herding their goats up a ramp and into a covered pen, in preparation for loading onto a truck.

About 20km north of Shiraz the traffic started to become more congested, and the riding more challenging, as cars and trucks weaved all over the road in the race to the front. Where I could I’d slip to the back and get some clear air, at other times it was easier to bolt to the front, but that would often bring on a challenge to other drivers, and they would quickly close the gap and swarm all around us.

I’d studied my Google Maps the preceding evening and was able to rely on my memory to get us close to our hotel, but I missed the last turn and took us on a little excursion. We pulled over and asked some locals for directions and they pointed us back up the road, and an elderly gentleman who ran the fruit stall adjacent to where I’d pulled over stopped the traffic for us so I could then squeeze the bike between a small gap in the low fence that divided the centre of the road, and get us travelling in the right direction. I rode up to the mosques as instructed, and again we pulled over to ask for directions, this time from a young man on a scooter. He waved to us to follow him, and after a laborious u-turn we followed the scooter down a little side-alley and straight ahead I could see signs to our hotel.

We checked into the Niayesh Boutique Hotel, and whilst Karen blocked the toilet I unloaded everything off the bike and covered it up, but not before chasing off a hotel guest who had climbed on and was getting the hotel security guard to take photos of him.

Dinner was at the restaurant in the sister Niayesh Hotel, tucked away down a few covered alleys and served in a caravanessi style. I enjoyed my lemon chicken kebab and rice, but Karen couldn’t face her greasy and unpleasant vegetable and meat stew, and left it untouched, and having tasted a bit myself I could understand why she didn’t want to eat it. And so ended another long day on the bike 🙂

Today’s Thursday 30th July, and the objective was to crunch the 460km from Tehran to Esfahan, as part of our whirlwind tour of Esfahan – Shiraz – Yazd, whilst we wait for the Indian Embassy to consider our visa applications. I need to remind myself what day of the week it is and where I should be, as my brain was so frazzled after the Indian visa mess that I kept on screwing up hotel bookings I was making in Shiraz and Yazd (via email, as few places use websites & online forms), and then I’d send an email to correct the erroneous dates, only to send a new batch of wrong dates. Duh !!!!

Anyway, this morning we slept in til about 8:00am – we had planned an early start but we were both still weary from the visa stuff so it was up at 8, breakfast downstairs, before loading the bike in the underground car park and then scooting up the ramp into the sunshine and stopping out the front of the hotel to (a) collect Karen, (b) set off the SPOT, (c) get the GoPro running and (d) say goodbye to Sam the hotel manager as he arrived for work.

I’d used Google Maps last night to plot our route out of Tehran and down to Qom, and I’d drawn a mudmap for me and had written out navigation notes for Karen, but they all went to shit basically when the road didn’t go the way Google Maps said it would, so we played a quick game of ‘find the freeway’ before we could be assured we were heading in the right direction.

The morning traffic wasn’t too dense I think, even for Tehran, and the only people who nearly crashed into us where the ones who wanted to take our photo as they drove along, or they wanted to get our attention as they waved at us. I kid you not – the number of people who almost shave our panniers and then wave nicely at us is unbelievable 🙂

As soon as we left Tehran behind we were into the desert, albeit on a six lane highway. There were quite a few toll booths along the highway, but as bikes aren’t allowed on the highways they have no fee set to charge us by, and a wave from us and yelling out that we’re Australian is enough to have us let through.

As we approached Qom we saw what passed by an industrial complex set in the desert – Google Maps suggested yesterday that there’s an enrichment facility in Qom but GM doesn’t always get things right.

Karen spotted signs for a tourist park just out of Qom and we pulled off the highway and entered the slip road, but the servo was empty and the park desolate, so we rejoined the highway. At this stage I was keen to get fuel as we only had about 80km range left in the tank, and I was hopeful that a servo would be attached to the toll booth at Qom but I was out of luck, with a sign indicating that the next servo was 30km down the road.

At this stage I throttled back a bit as the freeway has a 120kmh limit – enforced by quite a few police radar checks – but at that speed the fuel consumption is quite high, so we cruised along at a leisurely 100kmh whilst Karen complimented me on being so precise with planning our refuelling stops.

When the Maral Setareh Rest Area (including servo) appeared 30km later I was quite pleased with myself, as we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to Kashan. An almost full tank of fuel plus refilling our 1l bottle cost less than AU$15 – I love riding in Iran!

We did a loop of the restaurant area looking for somewhere to park the bike away from attention, and I ended up riding up onto the forecourt and parking out the front. The bike attracts attention everywhere we go – often it’s just a photograph besides the bike that people want, but sometimes they try and climb onboard and that’s a definite ‘no’ – so we endeavour to park the bike where we can keep an eye on it. Beyond that, I can’t lock the tank bag and we have things in there that I don’t want to go missing, so security is always in our minds when we stop.

We ordered some food from the fast food section and were told to wait ten minutes, so I had a quick squirt in the WC and Karen had a mission in the ladies, as she needs to remove her jacket, slide out of her braces, drop her heavy & bulky riding pants and then make sure she’s lined up with the squat dunny, and then put everything back in place afterwards.

Lunch was a bit ordinary, but a chocolate ice cream cooled us down a bit before we got back on the bike and out into the 41c degree heat. We picked up the pace and cruised along at 120kmh on the highway, with just a few cars and trucks as company – though you could almost guarantee that all the vehicles around for miles would somehow jam up in a bottleneck that had cars and trucks and bikes swerving all over the road before the blockage cleared and we could ride on alone for a while before we found another bottleneck to join.

The road followed the contours of a low mountain range just on our right hand or southern side, and the earth and rolling hills were parched and devoid of any signs of life. In places it was easy to imagine that we were on the surface of the moon as all the water had been sucked out the soil, and the hot wind that whipped around us was drying us out as well, so we peeled off the highway looking for a cold drink and pulled into Natanz, a dusty sleepy village hidden in the crook of the mountain foothills.

We rode slowly along the dusty main road looking for a shop, but they all seemed closed and barred. Karen spotted an open shop with some shade outside, so we parked up on the footpath and alighted. First one guy came along the street to admire the bike – Ali – and he was soon joined by four or five others. We grabbed a few bottles of cold water – the water bottles on the panniers heat up too quickly – and drank those outside so we could watch the bike and shoo away Ali when he tried to climb on, and one of his friends who wanted to try on my gloves.

We rejoined the highway and blasted through the low mountains towards Esfahan, joining a steadily growing throng of traffic. Again I’d written out some notes for Karen, but I’d left them in the tankbag and so I had to rely on my memory – and I did a pretty good job, but near enough isn’t good enough when you’re looking for a specific hotel, and so we ended up Criss-crossing Esfahan for a fair while until we chatted to a local couple on a scooter when we stopped for a red light, and they led us to our hotel – the Safavi.

Prior to locating our hotel I’d tried to follow my memorised notes – but where the road should have been straight it went off on a tangent due to earthworks, and where it should have been two-way it was one-way and we were again forced to take a detour. At one stage I tried to take a short-cut from a back street back to the main road, and ended up riding along the footpath of a shopping area and over little bridges that divided the arcade. Karen found this particularly entertaining and extolled both my navigational prowess and ability to dodge shop mannequins on display on the footpath. Truth be told I’d been lured down the path by the sight of some small bikes parked up ahead, but s Karen pointed later they are teeny-weeny 125’s and as narrow as a push bike where as our BMW isn’t much narrower than a small car.

Once settled in our hotel and having cooled down after the long hot ride we walked back to the tree-lined street we’d ridden along before as we looked for the turn-off to our hotel, but couldn’t find anywhere to get some food, so after strolling through the brick-domed bazaar that featured nothing but ugly jewellery we walked back to our hotel. Karen asked at the desk if they served dinner at our hotel and was told “no”, but after a bit more questioning she got a “yes – dinner is served from 8:00pm onwards” so we did a bit of blogging before grabbing some dinner in the downstairs restaurant when it opened at 08:00pm.

Sunday is the first day of the working week for the Indian Embassy in Tehran, so our goal for today was to attend the Embassy and lodge our visa applications. Three hours after first arriving at the Embassy we departed, still without being able to submit our applications but at least now we have an appointment to meet the First Secretary (Consular) tomorrow morning to discuss our request – so cross your fingers everyone as we need some good luck.

Sunday afternoon was a lazy affair – we had been up to 02:30am this morning working on an email to alert the First Secretary to our plight, and then awake again at 07:00am to get ready to visit the Embassy.

We wandered down Valiasr Street a bit, and stopped at TFC (Tehran Fried Chicken) for the closest thing to KFC I’ve ever tasted. A bit further down Karen found a shop selling clips for scarves, so she bought a few of these, and across the road saw a mantou she liked, but the shop was closing – it appears as if shops close at 2:00pm and re-open at 7:00pm, so we just had a quiet afternoon before re-emerging about 7:30pm to go for a stroll in the cooling evening. Karen treat herself to a new mantou, and we bought some nibble mix from a shop before grabbing a cheap and cheerful dinner at the downstairs canteen we’d discovered yesterday. We had earlier picked out a Chinese Restaurant and planned to go there for dinner, but without any success with our Indian visas as yet we weren’t ready to celebrate.

In our hotel – the Tehran Grand – the walls are adorned with framed black and white photos of ‘Old Tehran’, and Karen took some photos of these. If I’m reading and converting the Farsi date on the frames correctly then the photos date back to 1951 or 1952, and the old-fashioned cars and buses in the photos look about that vintage.

I found an email from a good friend this afternoon (Craig – head honcho for a riding group back in Perth and Honda Gold Wing aficionado) – the junk mail processor on the Mac is overzealous and places valid emails into the junk folder – and he suggested that now we’re in Iran the adventure will really start, and he’s hit the nail on the head. A few days ago enroute to Kandovan I needed to refuel the bike so pulled into a servo and that proved interesting as all the fuel pumps were labelled in a fluorescent Farsi script that was colourful and eye-catching but impossible to figure out if the pump was for petrol (benzine) or diesel.

Drivers here in Iran are more courteous and switched-on than in Turkey – largely keeping within their lanes and rarely speeding excessively. I have noticed a large police presence on the side of the roads – even stopping once to chat to some police after being flagged down – on the dry desert highways they park their cars under sunshades erected over sloping mounds custom built as vantage points from which to use their speed detectors. In the cities the driving is a unique combination of cut-and-thrust and politeness – everyone charges in but no one is overly pushy, so whilst the driving can appear uncomfortably close everyone just glides past one another – at times with barely a centimetre between cars.

Most of the motorcycles here are very old 125’s of an incriminate brand – perhaps Chinese copies of old Hondas, and many of them sport a large Perspex windscreen that sits vertical on the handlebars and features a removable window at eye-level, and as an extension option to the windscreen many bikes also feature a vinyl roof that clips into the windscreen top edge and covers the rider’s head. I was looking at a new bike this afternoon – the Boxer BM 125 – and it features drum brakes back and front – more suited to the ‘Old Tehran’ era perhaps. With that said – Iranian riders have no fear – they just launch themselves into the traffic without a second glance but rather an unwavering belief that the car and bus drivers will avoid them. You do need to watch out for them on the footpaths though – at times they’ll whiz along the footpath faster than the traffic on the adjacent road. I’m not sure you could get away with that in Perth 🙂

Thursday 23rd July – Tabriz to Zanjan via Kandovan

Lonely Planet recommends to visitors to Trabiz a visit to Kandovan, approx 60km south-east of Trabiz, and Ali – the retired English teacher we’d spoken to at the bazaar yesterday recommended it as well, so after leaving our Azerbayjan Hotel about 07:30am and stumbling across the road leading toward Kandovan whilst looking for the road to Zanjan, we agreed on a little detour. At one stage I’d got a bit lost inside a town enroute to Kandovan as it’s off the main road, so I pulled in to get some benzine and showed the attendant the Farsi that Ali had given me the day before and with that the attendant explained how I could get back on the right road. Iranians are so helpful!

Ali had described Kandovan as the Cappadocia of Iran, but when we arrived at the little village – and once we’d paid the bridge troll 50,000IRR to enter the village – we couldn’t quite see where to go. The village itself had a cobblestone street running parallel to a river, and on the other side we could see what looked like merchant’s stalls, perhaps enroute to a walk to see the sights, but neither of us were inclined to go exploring, and after an orange cordial drink and a few biscuits from the Tabriz bakery, we headed back north to Tabriz, enroute for Zanjan via the main road to Tehran.

Fortunately it was much easier for us to pick up the road to Tehran coming in from the south, and after dodging an ugly traffic snarl – road workers resurfacing the centre lanes of a four lane highway with no advance warning signs – we made our way steadily towards Zanjan.

We stopped once at a fuel stop for lunch, and met some lovely people – Reza and his friends from Esfahan, and Saaed and his wife, also from Esfahan. Both Reza and Saaed have invited us to join them in Esfahan when we pass through. Further down the road we stopped again at a roadside stall as Karen wanted to buy a sheet of rolled fruit, and Reza saw us and pulled over again for a quick chat, as did a gentleman in an old car that we’d overtaken a few times previously just to have him pass us – gesturing for us to stop for a drink as his wife waved to us. He couldn’t speak any English but we had a quick chat, and he drove off with a big smile on his face.

The landscape we passed through today was stunning in its beauty. The road passed through a mountain region, dry and parched except the for irrigated land in the valley that looked like it was being watered from bores as the river was dry. Further east we passed through a sedimentary area devoid of any plant life, but the colours in the earth brought the scenery to life.

We encountered a few toll booths but they all waved us through, sometimes asking first where we came from. About 85km west of Zanjan we turned off the six lane highway and picked up the “Old Road to Zanjan”, an old dual lane road that followed the contours of a river, and divided the market gardens from the dry slopes to the south. Just as I was applauding myself for not having been stopped once for speeding on the trip so far I caught the attention of two policemen standing next to their parked car, so whilst one policemen pointed out on my speedo what the limit on the road was (100kmh, a bit less than the 117kmh I was doing when flagged down), his offsider was having a photo opportunity with Karen. After a round of smiles and handshakes and greetings, they waved us off and we carried on down the road, just to be stopped at a police checkpoint by another young officer – this one just curious about where we had come from.

At this stage we were only about 15km out of Zanjan, so within a few minutes we were picking our way along the Main Street looking for a hotel – any hotel. A taxi driver had us follow him to the main square or roundabout, and we quickly spotted a hotel, so Karen jumped off the bike and entered to make the arrangements, whilst I wrestled the bike off the road and onto the footpath, out of the way of traffic. We checked in and parked the bike underground, and then after a shower had a stroll around town looking for food, which turned out to be surprisingly difficult, but the friendly and generous staff in the little hamburger joint we eventually located more than made up for the effort.

Back at our hotel it’s out with the iPad and Mac as we have four days of notes to catch up on – no rest for the wicked!!!!

Addendum:

About 8:00pm it dawned on us that Zanjan comes alive in the cool of the evening, as all the stalls that had been shut during our afternoon walk were opened up, and the footpaths were full of families out for a stroll. We went down to the street to join them, diving down some side alleys so Karen could check out a few manteau shops, and eventually found our way to the covered bazaar. I tried some small grape-like fruits offered in the fruit section – very bitter and tart but refreshing as well, and Karen snapped a few photos of sheep heads for sale. Back on the main road we slipped into a place advertising pizza, but it was essentially a bit like an Iranian Subway. Two young men came in for dinner and one of them – Amin – struck up a conversation with us.

Amin came from Kurdestan, and aged 18 he had just arrived in Zanjan the day before to start his compulsory 21-months military service. Prior to arriving at Zanjan he had aspired to study the sitar at a musical academy in Tehran, however despite teaching himself from books and videos due to the lack of music classes at his high school, he hadn’t been successful in the entrance examination. Amin was hopeful of being placed into the medical side of the military training, and planned once he finished his training to travel to Finland and study nursing as one of his aunts lives in Norway. Obtaining a passport was quite difficult he said, and completion of his military service would help towards getting a passport. We had a very pleasant conversation with Amin, and wished him the very best for the future.