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A Kurdish wedding in the middle of the night.
May 3, 2020

The dutchies offered to go check first and return if he wasn’t home. So we waited for 10 minutes before we headed up there after them. We rolled into the village trying to find our way with a map app that didn’t have the side roads on it.

It seemed as the entire village had gathered for some sort of gigantic celebration with a live band. We asked around if somebody had seen two cyclists and they pointed us the right way to the warm showers host which lied just next doors, barely 30 meters away from the party.

Apparently the owner who was Swedish was out of town, but the friendly co-owner still allowed to stay there for the night for free. We also met a lovely family who was from Mashhad and they kept us company the entire night. The co-owner of the place cooked us the most delicious meal we had in our entire stay in Iran. Some type of goat cheese, rice and fresh grilled fish seasoned with saffron, in amounts we barely could finish even after a 11 hour long day of cycling. The sale of alcohol is forbidden by islamic law in Iran, but they are very big on alcohol-free beer that often is flavoured with various fruits. The lemon and apple ones were quite good and we often drank this at restaurants. We drank the lemon one, along with coke here. You should try it if you get the opportunity!

Daniel had never been so hangry before and almost feinted from lack of energy when we were waiting for it to be prepared.
But the wait was worth it! 5/5

The buzz of the loud party in the background was undeniable and a very curious Daniel really wanted to go check it out, so the Iranian family took us all there to check it out.

Who wouldn’t want to go here?! so much energy was shooting out of this place!
Thea, Annemieke and the lady from Mashhad.

It was a Kurdish wedding and the entire village with hundreds of people and their families from around the country was there to celebrate. Men were ring dancing to energetic Kurdish music. Harm and Daniel were immediately invited to dance with them. Sadly, women are not allowed to dance and they sat in plastic chairs drinking tea whilst looking bored.

Ring dancing.

None of us had showered and were completely soaked in sweat and dirt but were still welcomed with open arms and served as much tea as we could drink. Everyone was super happy and curious as to why we were there but nobody spoke English. Whilst Harm and Daniel were dancing, Thea and Annemieke were introduced to the bride sitting under a white crescent moon on her throne, but otherwise spent most of their time laughing their asses off at the sight of two awkward white dudes trying to blend in dancing amongst the local people who definitively have had the moves in their blood for hundreds of years. We stayed up very late because of this unforgettable evening, and would only sleep 3-4 hours this night but it was worth it. The music was so unique and awesome and they kept playing many hours past midnight! Sometimes you have to push through even though you don’t have any energy left – you never know what awaits just around the corner.

If you look closely you can see the bride under her moon in the right corner.
Good times!
There are rumors circulating around on the internets of a video containing awkward white dudes dancing at a Kurdish wedding. This reward may be evidence of this video actually existing!
Delicious breakfast the net morning.
Another night with barely any sleep.
Commemorating our last day together. We had such a great time with you guys!

Two days later we’d split paths with Harm and Annemieke and cycle the remaining 250 km alone to our chosen border Sarakhs, where we would rest one full day before doing the desert dash. We were lucky to have a full day of insane of tailwinds on completely flat roads on our way to Mashhad. We were cruising at 40 km/h without any effort, barely pedaling. Just like that we had done 100 kilometres at 10 in the morning and enjoyed a long lunch break before continuing. Unfortunately during our lunch the winds turned decided to switch directions to the opposite.

No effort!

Having fought the wind and a few small sandstorms for two hours, halfway through the Mashhad bypass ringroad, we got this idiotic idea that we wanted to do another 20 km just to reach a shop in order to buy soda as we were really thirsty and didn’t have anything but 35°c warm water to drink for dinner. So we gunned it with all of our remaining energy left just to reach the point of the road that turned so we’d get semi-tailwinds again. This was perhaps 30 minutes before the sun would set and we quickly realised there was no freaking way we would make it, and there would be no camping opportunities forward. Despite this we set our record for the third time in a week doing 150 kilometres in one day. We ended up in sleeping in a large hole in the ground near some ruins. A fox also lived there and greeted us at night.

Dinner – courtesy of Thea

From here we only had two more cycling days and one mountain pass before reaching the border town. This area is known for its ever constant headwinds coming from Turkmenistan and we sure got a taste of it as they were unusually strong this day. It was completely ridiculous. We were going less than 5 km/h downhill despite pedaling and we had used up pretty much all our energy the past week of cycling 10 hours every day. After Mazdavand there is barely anything for the next 100 km, and no water sources.

A birds eye view over a herd of sheep.

We hitched a ride over the mountain pass in the standard blue pickup truck driven by two young guys. You’re not really allowed to host or interact too much with foreigners in Iran, so the guys we rode with told us to duck and hide every time they passed a police car or checkpoint. We felt like spies trying to escape the country as they were driving 140km/h on mountain roads, flinging us and our bicycles around in the back. Sometimes it felt like the wind gusts would tip the car over into the valley.

Hold on for your life!
Not much space for us in the truck.

After about 45 minutes in the back of this truck we were relieved that we finally made it alive to Sarakhs and quickly headed to Doosty hotel for a much needed rest – a place where all cyclists stay before or after the desert dash. As we decided to hitchhike we did save one day of cycling and got two very much needed rest days. The owners here were super friendly and they had delicious food in their restaurant which meant we didn’t have to go out of the hotel to eat. Perfect way to finish off this country.

What a shirt looks like after 10 days of cycling in northern Iran.
The downside of having a black leather saddle.
Our goodbye note in the hotel’s guest book.

Iran is an overwhelming place to be as a foreigner coming from Europe. It is loud, chaotic and quite polluted. The actual cycling, at least in July – the hottest time of the month, is very challenging and to be honest not super interesting. It is also a very large country and we’re sure there’s a lot more to see than the tiny bit we experienced.

But the culture and people here are amazing. It’s just vastly different from what we are used to. Everyday curious people would stop us to talk to us and take selfies, offer us food, fruit or a place to sleep. You will get so much attention that you barely can stand it in the end. We didn’t get to experience as much as we wanted of Iran, but the people we came across gave us memories for a lifetime. You never need to look far if you need any help in this country.

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Iran

A dash before The dash
April 26, 2020

We cut our stay in Tehran short by one day, already having spent 8 days there resting and getting our visas. We woke up at 4 am, barely having slept, to have breakfast and were ready to leave before the sunrise. We figured it’d be good to get out of the city centre before the traffic starts. We had changed our route from the originally planned southern desert route, which was going to be 40-45c° and headwinds for the next week. Instead we were going to take the northern coastal route which has a somewhat lower temperature, but a permanent higher rate of humidity varying between 60-100%. To reach the coast you also need to cross a large mountain range. The road also happens to pass by Mt. Damavand – Irans highest mountain.

Hungry for some cycling.
Easy to get tired of cars when cycling on the highway.
A public bathroom. Not the nicest one.
It was hot.
You’re always happy when you find a shop that sells frozen water.

We set our rather ambitious goal of the day to reach the top of the Damavand pass. Tehran resides at around 1100m, and the total climb would be 1900 height meters over 70 kilometres. We didn’t factor in the heat and Thea again struggled to keep herself cooled down, so we had to take a long lunch break once we reached the last village with 20 km and 700 height meters remaining to the pass. Completely knackered we lied in the shade outside a shop, and the shop owner eventually came outside to greet us. She’d treat us to bread and delicious ice cold lemonade and later called her son Amir, who was around our age and was fluent in English. While we were waiting for him to come, another man passed by and treated us with food from his favourite restaurant across the street. He also invited us to his home to spend the night if we wanted.

Eventually Amir showed up. We instantly felt a connection to him and would spend three hours just to chat inside their small family business. We’d learn that all business were enforced to have a photograph of the country leaders somewhere in the shop. If they refused they would be harassed or fined by police. They had hid the photo in a corner, barely visible – as a sort of silent protest against the government. Almost everyone we met in Iran opposed the government and many opressing, controversial islamic laws.

We hope to see you again dude!

Meeting people in Iran was often bittersweet when you hear things like ‘‘I wish I’d been born in another country’’ or get asked how they can start a life in Europe. Too many we met want to leave the country for a better life, but were unable to because of financial or governmental restrictions. Just getting ahold of a passport is extremely expensive and requires US dollars. Their own currency is so inflated that even if they would manage to save money for a year it would be almost pointless because the value would have decreased so much. Getting inside another country as an Iranian citizen is also very difficult. Just getting an answer for your visa application for example Germany would take 2 years! We felt privileged to be Europeans, who can travel so freely in the world.

After hanging out for quite some time we wanted to reach the pass before the sun would set, and kindly declined the offer of spending the night there. In hindsight we would’ve loved to stay with Amir and his mother for a day or two, but we kind of set ourselves in a pinch when we decided to rush to the border. We definitively hope to see them another time.

As we continued uphill with little energy left, the inclines would become steeper and steeper, and we realised we wouldn’t reach the top before the sun had set. Cycling on these streets in the darkness was a big no no. There was nowhere to pitch the tent and we gave up the goal of reaching the top by our own legs that day. We opted to hitchhike the last 7 kilometres. Luckily, getting a ride in Iran is ridiculously easy, and what’s funny is that every other car on the road is a blue pickup truck which has perfect space for two bicycles in the back. 10-15 minutes later we were dropped off at the top.

Finally at the top of the pass which resides at 2700 m.

The top is a tourist attraction and since we were the only western tourists there we were immediately the center of attention with our heavy bicycles and odd looks. A gentleman treated us with soda. Then another one did the same with energy drinks when the first one had left. We’re such spoiled kids! After a quick gaze over the valley to enjoy the scenery, we started rolling down the descent towards the coast. From 2700 meters all the way down to sea level.

Nice sunset on our way down.
Mt. Damavand in the background.

We struggled to find a camp spot here, as it would be a narrow gorge pretty much all the way down. With almost no daylight left we eventually stumbled across an unfinished building next the highway, where we would spend the night. For dinner we had some chicken nuggets and bread we had been gifted from Amir. It wasn’t the easiest to cook without any cooking oil on a Primus, but it’d suffice for the night.

Can’t say our camp spots in Iran were very glamorous but we slept well here. It was actually chilly at night since we were above 2000 height meters.

We would spend the next day cruising down a beautiful valley for many hours. It would be downhill for more than a hundred kilometres which was good since we were chased by a pack of 10 grumpy dogs at one point. But even on the other side of the mountain range it was hotter than we had expected. A local told us it was the hottest day of this summer at 39° c with 100% humidity, and one of the hottest summers they’ve ever had on the northern coast of Iran.

It helped a lot with the breeze of the wind, which was luckily in our backs for the first time EVER since this trip started. The upcoming 500 kilometres east would be more or less flat before we reached Golestan national park, and we would have tailwinds for most of the coast. Yet again we struggled to find camp spots and ended up in another unfinished house for the night. It was almost impossible to sleep because of the humidity, despite sleeping in only the inner tent and without sleeping bags.

Cruising down for over a 100 km! The Damavand pass was one of the more beautiful places in Iran.
Completely different climate on this side of the mountains! We’d down the 1.5L soda in five minutes as we were sweating so much.
Transliteration doesn’t always work.

Just as we had started cycling the following morning se saw something along the road. Two touring bicycles parked under a tree. Hey! It was the dutch couple, Harm and Annemieke, whom we had hung out with at the hostel. They had collected their visas the same day as we did and were heading the exact same route, except they would enter a different border crossing into Turkmenistan where they instead would be taking the train through the country. So we decided to team up together for the rest of Iran and would have a complete blast together. It was the first time we would cycle together with somebody for longer than a day. We initially thought they were old farts in their 40’s who casually cycled around doing short daily distances, and took trains every now and then. Boy were we wrong.

Grinding distance on flat roads with tailwinds. Daniel was really sick of hearing the traffic and used the earbuds without music just to block the sound from cars.

They turned out to be beasts who kicked our asses when it came to both speed and endurance. They are avid road bike cyclists back home and would often easily finish their daily distances of 100 kilometres in half a day. Because of our weight we were also slower than them, but now we got to test our capacity before Turkmenistan and they sure made us sweat for it.

After some hour of cycling in the crazy humidity.
For some reason we almost always ended up at restaurants that only served chicken and rice.
– Maybe I used too much sunscreen on my face?

We made it 135 kilometres over the course of 8 hours on our first day cycling together. As the sunset started closing in on us we started looking around for a place to pitch our tents. We tried finding a camp spot in a gigantic orchard but most of it was fenced off. Eventually we were met by a few local farmers who owned the land. Without anyone speaking any English they quickly beckoned us to follow them behind their motorbikes into the orchards. They took us further and further inside the endless plantation and eventually we reached an ice cold water reservoir where we could swim and cool down. What a blessing!

A cool pool.
One of the farmers and a kid.

Then they led us to a nearby container-house, which was used as a lunch/rest room for the farmers, and showed us that we were free to pitch our tents to spend the night there. They left us with the key to house and the property’s gates, as well as their phone numbers if we needed anything, and headed out. We pitched our tents and started making dinner. The farmers returned a little while later to bring us 3 litres of soda, a large bucket of fresh fruits and vegetables and a light bulb strip to hang in the trees. All of this generous treatment without asking for anything in return – such a big contrast from back home.

Pretty feet after a day of cycling in sandals. 70% tan, 30% dirt.
Finally time to rest under a fig tree.
Slept well here! Perfectly quiet and absolutely no traffic sounds.

Even the day after this we would again be invited again to stay at a guest house completely for free just because the owner loved to meet foreigners and practise his English skills. We were actually cycling towards a big picnic park/forest to finish off our day when a man we’d waved and said hello to earlier comes driving by. He stops us and says we have to come with him to stay the night at his guest house. He said it was only 2 km the other way, and the park we had planned to sleep in was like 500 meters in front of us. With the luck we had the previous night we said what the hell and went back with him. This man ran a small guest house with a few home built huts and insisted we were staying in them for free.

Cute little clay huts!
Amazing carpets inside. The rooms had toilets, a shower and air-conditioning. Couldn’t ask for more.

Once we had arrived (with very hungry stomachs) and unloaded our bikes, we almost immediately set out to cook a pasta bolognese for ourselves and our hosts. It helps having an actual kitchen and we thought the result was actually quite tasty! We don’t really know for sure if our hosts liked our cuisine or not but they seemed satisfied and asked for seconds! Things tend to taste a lot better than they actually are when you have cycled well over 100 km (even pasta soup).

After dinner we were served tea and watermelon next to a bonfire in the courtyard. They had invited a lot of friends and relatives to come chat with us but eventually we were so exhausted and had to cut the evening short at midnight. Our routine was still to wake up early and leave at sunrise to escape most of the heat. We’d only get about 5 hours of sleep this night but still had a lovely time.

Reza, between Daniel and Annemieke, was the son of the owner and spoke very good English! He later cycled together with Sam to Mashhad. Maybe got him hooked on bike touring?

In the end we managed to offer a small payment after spending a long time insisting that we wanted to pay at least something for the room in order to help out with his bussiness. You must try very hard in Iran for someone to accept any kind of payment as a gratitude for their hospitality. As we had such a cozy time here we decided to send our friend Sam to visit them as well. Sam was at the time still waiting for his visas in Tehran but did actually visit the guesthouse a few days later and even convinced the owners son to hop on his bicycle and join him for the journey to Mashhad, and they actually made it there together! Pretty rad for someone who hasn’t ever cycled more than a few kilometers to cycle 500 km in just a few days.

A really tired gang ready to leave the next morning at 06 AM.

After these first few days we would start climbing up into and through Golestan national park – a proper jungle. It supposedly hosts multiple rare animals like leopards and bears. Whether these exist or not we don’t really know but we didn’t see anything other than gigantic wild boars that mostly were interested in eating the trash left by human visitors who have picnics here.

The coastal side is lush and green and the roads are flat.
‘‘Who cares, I’ll eat this 10 kg watermelon gifted to me, with my hands, sitting on the highway.’’ – Any bicycle tourer in Iran

Cycling through here was kind of a disappointment as it was completely filled with trash and plastic everywhere! You couldn’t even begin to imagine how much trash is here and it was just sad. It could have been so beautiful!

The actual jungle part only lasted for about half an hour of cycling, but we did get our first jungle camp spot here next to a river. Wild camping is our area of expertise, whereas Harm and Annemieke only had used their tent about five times since Europe, mostly staying at cheap accommodations along the way. We scared Harm shitless when we told him there were leopards here and that they like to eat humans, and acting spooked as if every sound coming from the jungle around us was a leopard. Sorry dude!

In the evening we were so exhausted but were still going to make dinner. Harm, who was the most tired and almost out of his head, had the responsibility to cook pasta for all four of us. Turns out pasta for four people and too small of a skillet turns pasta into mushy goo, especially if you let 5 minute pasta cook for 25 minutes. We will never forget your pasta soup but we still love you guys!

Just across the tiny river we saw a boar in the evening. The boars here are unimaginably big, well above 1m in height.

The following day we cycled really really far and climbed many hundreds of height meters in headwinds and decided to look at iOverlander for camp options. It’s a community driven offline mapping app where people can upload and save information onto gps coordinates – for example good wild camping spots, actual camping grounds, water sources, cheap hotels and many other things. On the map there was a warmshowers host who apparently had lived in Sweden!

On our way out of Golestan. Just a few hours later the greenery would subside.
Heat, headwind and climbing. Put music in your ears.
Large sections of Iran are desolate. Not very exciting for us as we had seen much of the same in Turkey. Headwinds and lack of energy didn’t help. It was a tough day mentally and physically!

The only problem that it was really far away, 30 kilometers, and it ended with a 200 meter climb into the mountains. By the time we made it to the last climb, it was already dark and Daniel/Thea had barely any energy left. So we had the option of just going into a forest to camp or push our limits for the last stretch into the village, just hoping that someone would be home as we hadn’t contacted him beforehand. It was around 21.00 in the evening at this point and completely dark. We hadn’t even had dinner yet. Would we make it up there?

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Iran

Visa nightmares
April 20, 2020

The Turkmenistan and China visas are often a big gamble as of who gets rejected or not. For the Chinese visa you need to have a complete fake travel itinerary with booked flights in and out and hotels booked for your entire stay in the country. You’re bound to be rejected if you mention in your application that you’re going to Xinjiang or crossing into China on a bicycle by a land border so you need to put other destinations in your itinerary.

We probably spent around five hours organising all the paperwork and writing our itinerary for China. We’d book 7 different hotels (with free cancellations and no credit card required) in different cities, fake flights in and out of China, and wrote a basic itinerary of when and how we were travelling between large obvious tourist cities. The entry date also has to match when youre actually going to be at the border of Kyrgysztan and China because the visa validity only lasts for 90 days. So from Iran you essentially have 90 days to cross the Chinese border before your visa is rendered invalid.

Luckily we had already done all of this when we had some spare time in Erzurum. Finding a printing shop that would print color copies would prove more difficult. After an hour of being directed in different directions we finally found one that helped us print color copies – for free!

In our case we applied for 60 days and we’ve heard the embassy sometimes asks questions about your plans. We’d studied our 60 day itinerary ahead of our application, only to be disappointed that they asked us absolutely no questions. Having a passport photo with a beige shirt on a white background however.. ‘‘NO GOOD!’’.

With long queues and 45 minutes remaining until the embassies 3 hour long lunch break we hastily grabbed a taxi to the nearest copy shop to get some new photos for Thea. We made it back with 15 minutes to spare before they closed and handed in all the documents needed, in correct order. The ‘‘lady with glasses’’ (she had been given this name by other applicants) flipped through the papers with a big smile on her face and said collect on Monday. She didn’t even read any of the documents!

A traveler who was in queue before us was sent away because her hotel bookings weren’t sorted by date, and we’d also hear about a girl who had to take a new visa photo because she was wearing earrings. A French couple had run out of money and couldn’t collect their passports until they paid for their visas, and they needed their passports in order to somehow get money (remember, ATMs don’t work with foreign cards in Iran). The embassy keeps your passport for your entire application period so we made sure to get our Turkmenistan application sorted before we came here.

The Turkmenistans infamous 50% rejection rate is the most stressful part of traveling east via land. The application however was quite straightforward. A mysterious tiny square in the wall of the embassy building (usually) opens every time somebody knocks on it during their working hours. You give them the paperwork, which has to be printed in color, and fresh dollar bills, get told to come back in 7 days and then they shut the window. The only thing that is actually in color on the application form is the Turkmen embassy logotype.

You then have the option waiting for seven uncertain days in Tehran, or you can continue travelling towards Mashhad, the last major city before the Turkmenistan border, to collect your visa at the Turkmen embassy there. The downside is that if you get rejected you have to either go back and fly from Tehran or back to Azerbaijan and take the ferry to Kazakhstan – something which takes a few weeks of your time.

We were kind of surprised when we after five days collected our Chinese 60 day visa. We didn’t believe it was that easy until we actually had the passports in our hands. Either we were too well-read up on how to do the application or we were lucky. Perhaps we looked too much like dumb Europeans who in no way could be travelling by bicycle, wanting to ride into forbidden territories like Xinjiang. What is hillarious is that pretty much everybody uses the same identical travel itinerary template posted on caravanistan.com and just modify the dates.

What a Chinese visa looks like.

We decided to visit the Turkmen embassy after having collected our passports from the Chinese embassy, as they lie only 500 meters from each other. It turned out our visas were approved two days ahead of the planned date! We were so happy that we didn’t have to go back or take a flight, and we’d get to experience the desert dash through the mysterious country that is Turkmenistan!

Once you have the approved authentication code you can chose to collect the visa in Mashhad, or you can pick it up directly in Tehran. The entry date is fixed so you have to decide before your visa collection what date you want to enter the country. You cannot miss this date. Once inside the country you only have five days to cross 470 km of desert and must exit on or before the last day on your visa.

We had about 14 days left of our Iranian visa as we stood outside the embassy, contemplating what to do. We concluded to stick with our original time plan, reaching the Pamir mountains before the winter, therefor we wouldn’t extend our Iranian visa and instead gun it to the Turkmenistan border. So we set our entry date of Turkmenistan to our second to last day of our Iranian visa and collected our shiny visa on spot.

Turkmenistan transit visa with 5 GÜN to cross the country.
Ready for some desert action. We bought some caps on the outdoor shops street to shelter our necks from the sun. Daniel managed to lose his before even reaching Turkmenistan.

The road from Tehran to the Sarakhs border was 1100 km and we would now have 11 days to reach it, if we were to have some rest before Turkmenistan. We figured it would be a good warm up for the desert dash. The following next 3 weeks would be one of the most physically challenging parts of our trip. But more on the in the next post!

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Two millionaires in Tehran
April 20, 2020

After almost a full day inside a bus, we arrived just in time for the rush hour in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Trying to navigate and cycle to our hostel would prove quite the challenge.

En route to our hostel we saw the famous Azadi tower.

We first had to cross the 4 lane expressway somehow, in order to begin cycling the correct direction. We stood around waiting for a moment that would never arrive. Eventually a traffic police luckily stopped the traffic for us to cross to the other side. Traffic was very intense and we felt for the first time that it was rather dangerous being on these roads. We later tried going on smaller roads, which turned out to be one way streets. Walking the bicycles on the sidewalks wasn’t an option either as they were full of people and too narrow for our wide bikes. Eventually we just went back on the busy main road and tried getting an idea of how to become one with the traffic. The idea is to just go with the flow, never stop and don’t look back. If everybody around you drives like an idiot you too have to become one, otherwise you will disrupt the order in the chaos.

A good idea is to try to stay near the right side of the road, if you ever need to stop to look at the map.
A glimpse of the evening traffic.

People are used to motorbikes zooming in-between the cars. Here it’s also completely normal for motorbikes to be driving in the wrong direction and even on the sidewalks – right outside the shop entrances. Often when cycling in Iran we were met by ‘what the fuck’ moments. One example was a driver who was completely oblivious to the fact that you’re supposed to drive onto the 200 meter long exit lane on the highway if you’re actually going to exit the highway. You’re not supposed to brake to a full stop where the road splits, reverse your car so it stands across the two main driving lanes, then drive back around the corner to exit the highway. At least this person didn’t cause an accident. We’re very happy to have mirrors on our handlebars!

The super cozy courtyard. Despite being in the middle of the city next to a highly trafficed main road, it was surprisingly quiet at night.
Our private room complete with Aircon. We slept real well here for 8 nights.

Once we arrived to Tehran Heritage Hostel, which was located in the very city center, we quickly realised this is the hostel all the bike tourers stay at whilst they apply for visas. The courtyard had at least fifteen touring bikes – all in different guises and unique setups. Each day one or two more would arrive. What an exciting surprise! Not to forget mentioning the amount of regular backpackers who also stayed there. We’d spend time socialising with other westerners who also happened to have the same interest as us, namely bike touring, something we hadn’t done for quite some time.

A good place to meet cyclists.

There is plenty to see in Tehran if you have the energy and can withstand the heat in July. The city is like a furnace, and because of the pollution it becomes even hotter. We honestly didn’t do much, but we did travel with the metro to a few parts of the city. The metro is a very efficient way to get around in Tehran and it’s also very cheap and well designed! And of course it’s less likely to end up in a car accident here than in a blistering hot taxi on the roads.

The metro has a separate cart just for women, where no men are allowed. There is no door between the carts that separate them from the mixed gender carts (which usually is full of men, or families), but they have chosen metal bars instead of locked doors so it kind of looks like a prison for women (or the opposite if you’re in the women only cart). They even had waiting benches that were for women only.

Nevetherless, we aways rode the mixed carts. We had plenty of pleasant conversations with random Iranians on the metro so it was always fun to ride it. People would often offer us a seat or spark a conversation out of curiousity. One man even read some poetry in Farsi to us!

Mandatory hijab.

The northern (rich) part of the city houses most foreign embassies and a few fancy shopping malls which sell western brands (or perhaps copies of them). We had lunch two times there when we had visa errands, and the malls looked completely out of place. There is a definite contrast between this luxurious northern section and other parts of Tehran. It felt as if we were back in Europe in this fancy modern shopping mall where many people actually spoke English quite well. But they did have a food court! Complete with proper coffee, pastries and various western food amongst the typical Iranian food.

Thea also learned something new about Iranian culture in the mall bathrooms. Apparently, ladies who visit these malls bring specific slippers for their toilet bussiness. Bear in mind the toilets in Iran mostly consist of squatters and public toilets can sometimes be quite disgusting. But here they had a cleaning lady who cleaned the toilets sparkling clean after each use. Just as Thea was about to close the toilet stall door, the cleaning lady snuck in just to show this foreign lady that the toilet was clean for her to use. ‘‘Look, look. Clean!’’ she said with a big smile on her face and polished the bowl with her cloth another time, staring at Thea whilst smiling, before exiting. Talk about an odd situation!

Sometimes you crave for something ordinary, like tacos. A normal, cheap meal in Iran would cost about 1-2€. The price at this fancy mall was about 6€.
Headphones for big-headed people.

We also stocked up on Rial as we had spent almost everything we had exchanged in Maku. Directly outside any major bank there would be at least five black market guys standing with money belts, ready to exchange whatever amount of dollar you have. This is completely normal – even the locals exchange money here. You could also go to an exchange office, which we did once, but it’s always the same black market rate that was three times higher than the official one. They even had an entire street dedicated to money exchangers and offices in Tehran. People would sit on the street on small chairs with briefcases next to them, full of mint bills in various currencies. It’s very important to count your money, as many tourists get ripped off. This goes for pretty much all cash deals in any country and not just here.

Due to the sheer amount of banknotes you get its easy to get lost counting. After Daniel counted a stack of a hundred rial notes at an office, he noticed the exchanger had “forgotten” that he had received two hundred dollar bills, not one. Luckily we got the remaining 20mm thick stack of notes without any arguing.

It’s pretty funny to see the locals count cash as they have developed a technique for counting fast over the years, using only their index fingers to rapidly flip through the bills. Since Iranian people are tired of naming the price of things in hundreds of thousands or even millions they have come up with a ‘‘simplified’’ way of doing this – Toman.

This means removing one zero. For example 1000 toman would be 10.000 rial, 10.000 toman would be 100.000 rial. 37.500 toman would be 375.000 rial, and so on. But what is even more confusing is that shops often completely remove all the zeroes when they tell/show you the price because its easier to say/type 45 than 45.000 (Toman) when they actually want 450.000 rial.

This, in combination with the official bank rate and the black market rate confused the hell out of us in the beginning. We’d always have to ask if the price was in Toman or Rial, and then calculate in our head into dollars, and from there into our own currency – krona. Everything in Iran is priced according to the black market rate.

When we had dinner together with Sonya and her family in Maku, they kept saying ‘‘this is expensive for us, but cheap for you’’ and the restaurant stated their prices in toman on the menu. So these priced equated to like 8-9$ according to the official exchange rate we had studied into our heads. We were like fuck, this is really expensive compared to Turkey where we spent 2$ for a meal. In the end it was one third of that price due to the black market rate. It didn’t help that the dollar to rial rate was at an odd number, like 38.000 rial/1$ which made calculating prices in our heads even harder.

Confused yet? We’re not even sure we’re correct on this even now.

People are desperate to get rid of rial and its easy to see why. This was our budget for the coming two weeks, the equivalent of 300€. The most common banknote is the 100.000, and the highest one is the 500.000.

There is a fun aspect to Tehran as a city. Stores which sell similar products are very often located on the same street or quarter. For example there could be the bicycle shop street, the outdoor shop street, the shoe shop street etc. We wondered how the stores are supposed to compete when they all lie next to each other, door to door. There could be times where they sold really odd and super specific things like door handles or lightbulbs – and you’d have an entire street with shops that sell only door handles. Quite weird huh? At least its easy to find your way if you want to window shop for door handles! You could definitively find most things you need in Tehran.

A nice mural on the outdoor shops street.

Sam, whom we met twice in Turkey, arrived to the hostel a day or two after us. We’d do a day trip with him to Tochal, which in the winter is a ski resort residing just north of the city. Sam tried to convince us to do a hike up to the peak at 3964 m (the base is at 1900m..), but we opted to try to take the cable lift instead. Unfortunately it was closed for maintenance so we didn’t get to experience the peak, but we did however get a complete view over the massive city that is Tehran and all of its suburbs sprawling outwards into the desert.

At the base there was a small kind of amusement park, which mostly was closed, but they had an alpine coaster ride that was open! It seemed really unsafe and was probably constructed in the 70’s. So Sam and Daniel decided to ride it! You could gain some serious speed on these tracks, but we didn’t trust the brakes enough to let them go completely. The lanes seemed rather old and had pretty sharp curves. It felt like the cart was going to come loose at every turn.

Panorama view over Tehran – endless.
Sam and us on our way to the Tochal base camp.
A magnificent view over Tehran.
After wearing a backpack for an hour you look like this.

Other than this we didn’t do much in Tehran besides visa applications and socialising with others. Daniel and Sam visited the Golestan Palace one day. It’s a grand museum/palace and it’s sectioned up so that you have to pay entrance for each part you want to visit. Apparently this is common in Tehran, as we went by another museum which had a whopping 16 different museums within its premise. This would’ve been fine if it wasn’t for the fact that foreigners have to pay upwards of five times the price of locals. It comes in handy knowing the Arabic numerals. We tried to convince the ticket officer we should get a discount from being able to read the prices for Iranians, but he laughed and said no. In the end we chose to just see two exhibitions and the courtyard.

One of the ponds in the oh so large courtyard.
Mosaic.
Royal halls.
Everything was over the top bling, covered in mirror mosaic.

It’s easy to get mixed feelings when you visit superfluous places like this. Even more so when you see how average people struggle with their everyday life around the country. On a good note, there is at least nobody living here. The buildings and its contents are only remnants of history. It is after all part of the UNESCO world heritage list and worth a visit if you happen to be in Tehran. It is a cool place like no other and can probably eat up multiple days if you have a hunger for history.

Who knows, maybe you’ll also meet the funny security guard who loves to practise his English skills.

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Iran

Curious encounters
April 11, 2020

The northwest part of Iran is definitively less populated than most of Turkey, where you would find gas stations, restaurants and every necessity within very close distances. Here we would have long stretches of nothing, no shade and it was very hot during the day, upwards of 40°c. We would soak our headwear in water at every opportunity but still it wasn’t enough to keep Thea well.

We had with ease learnt the Arabic numerals before entering Iran, something that would come in handy many times.

Having to cycle fully covered in clothes after recently having had a heat stroke in Turkey didn’t work out. Later that evening we ended up in the middle of nowhere as Thea broke down mentally and physically after getting news of illness within her family. Countless cars would stop by us sitting on the roadside whilst the sun was setting only to ask if we were okay, if we needed help or to give us fruit. Some even offered us money. Many people offered us a place to stay but it was either 20 km in the wrong direction down the hill we had just climbed, or 18 km to the next city – Qarahziyaeddin. We were by then too tired to continue and it was also dark outside. They asked where we would stay and we said we’d just camp somewhere. They warned us of wolves but we weren’t really afraid of the unlikely event that wolves would come inside our tent, as they have little interest in humans.

One old lady comforted Thea for a while, which did help a little. She also made sure that her hijab was tightly knit in place. We decided we would just camp on a dry river bed next to the road and head for the only existing hotel in the nearest village early the following morning. We don’t think any wolves visited us during the night.

As we rolled up to the hotel the next morning we rang on the bell radio to ask if the hotel had any rooms. With a prompt “No” the guy quickly hung up. However some by-passers helped us and called the owners mobile phone, and he quickly showed up to greet us with a big smile. We would immediately be served delicious fresh bread straight from the bakery, together with honey, butter, eggs and rose tea.

One of the tastiest bread we’d eaten!

Included in the room price was lunch, dinner and breakfast totalling in at about 15$ per person. After a rest in our room we decided that we would try to cycle to Tabriz and catch a bus to Tehran from there, so that Theas stomach and body could get some rest whilst we applied for the Chinese and Turkmenistan visas. To accomplish this we’d have to go up very early each morning in order to escape the worst heat of the mid day.

The hotel owner was a very sweet man – just look at his eyes! Unfortunately we have forgot his name.

Other than a few minor errands in the city we spent the remaining time of our rest day watching Netflix until late at night. At 22.45 someone comes knocking on our door. – Mr. Daniel, dinner is ready! We didn’t know that Iranians eat dinner this very late at night and thought they’d just forgotten our dinner as time passed. But apparently it’s common for people to eat dinner around midnight. We are usually sleeping around this time!

The next day we headed onto rather flat desert roads with barely any civilisation. Just after exiting the city we passed by a car that just had driven off the road in high speed, flipped upside down, most likely having tried to overtake a car. Everybody was alright though.

Thea trying to keep the hijab in place in headwinds.
On our way towards Marand.

Eventually we passed by a few small buildings and someone yelled ‘‘STOP!’’ to us. We looked over and it was a paramedic who was stationed at this tiny E.R. station. We were invited in for Tea and a chat with Gasem, his colleague and a nearby shop owner named Akbar. We mentioned that Thea had had a heat stroke so they checked her values – everything was completely fine so that was reassuring. We were then allowed to rest as long as we wanted in their air-conditioned room whilst they were called out to a car accident. Once they got back we were served lunch Iranian style – on the carpet. We got a little insight of how hard life is in Iran. One of the guys there had three university degrees but was unable to find a job, so he had taken a paramedic course to get this job. Sadly, the job opportunities are good in this field. If you ever experience traffic here you’ll understand why.

All values were very good!
Sharing a meal together.

We wondered if they knew a good place to camp, but they insisted we’d sleep there. We did however want to come closer to an upcoming mountain pass to sleep beneath it, so we wouldn’t have to climb it during the hottest part of the day. They, as with all Iranians we’d met so far, were very worried for our safety so we exchanged phone numbers to let them know when we had found a camp spot.

Along the way we met this nice man who treated us with ice cold soda and bread.
Gloves are starting to show some wear after 7000 km.

What happened next was quite weird. We cycled for another hour or two and started looking for a camp spot near some farming fields full of fruit trees. Normally we’d just pitch our tent somewhere in a place like this, but it was mostly full of people working so we decided we would ask some of them. It turned out they couldn’t read our google translations, maybe they didn’t understand Farsi? We never really came to a conclusion. They would try to talk to us (despite us not understanding anything they said) and we kept asking if we could sleep in our tent somewhere there. They didn’t really understand our gestures either – tent, thumbs up or down?

After like 30 minutes of laughing and trying to come to a conclusion, one of the ladies brought her car and beckoned us to follow. She took us to a park and playground some kilometres down the road and said we could camp there. It was next to the main road, so we thought we would wait a while and just go further down into the forest to camp when everybody haft left.

For some reason they didn’t leave and just stared at us. So we started cooking dinner with our Primus. We think the lady now thought we would set the playground on fire so she started yelling trying to grab the now hot burner with her bare hands. Eventually they left and another family came up to play with their children. They invited us to their house but we were too exhausted to stay up and socialise after barely having slept the previous nights, so we kindly declined. They gave us a kilo of fresh grapes and also left.

Once we had eaten we headed into the forest so we were a bit further from the road. Halfway pitching the tent in complete darkness, being swarmed by mosquitoes, someone starts yelling and shining a flashlight towards us from afar. It was the farmer who owned the land who wondered who was rumbling in the bushes. It turned out he wasn’t angry at all and invited us to sleep in his house and showed us photos of many other cyclists who had stayed there!

Five in the morning – calm empty roads towards a 400 m pass.

The next day we had a very early breakfast. Before sun had risen we set off towards Marand. From here the traffic would start to increase which meant slowly climbing a mountain pass sharing the road with 50 year old trucks spewing out toxic blue exhaust clouds in our faces all day. We finally made it to the top before it had gotten too hot and had a break at a bus stop. Just a few minutes later, a couple on a motorcycle stops when they see us and invites us in for tea. We gladly accepted and descended halfway down the mountain before taking a right turn straight up into the mountains again.. They would take us to their family orchard where we’d be met by many other family members.

Cheeries, watermelon and other fruits straight from the orchard.
A few hours later we were served lunch.
Happy and well fed.

We’d yet again to be spoiled with Iranian hospitality and were served fresh fruits from their orchard, and later lunch. They wouldn’t take no for an answer and insisted we’d eat more even when we told them we were full. We would spend the entire day here with this lovely family. Farzin, the youngest of the family, was the only one who spoke English. But he withheld this information for some hour, which meant gesticulating most of our conversations until he suddenly surprised us and started talking perfect English. We would meet him a few days later in Tabriz, where he was studying at the university. After a lovely afternoon together we headed down the pass to sleep next to the train tracks.

Our farewell gift.
Halfway down the pass we saw some sweet marbled mountains.
Starting to look like proper hobos.
Only one train passed during the night.
Camp buddy.

Once we arrived to Tabriz we checked into a hotel for 2 nights to figure out how to get ourselves transported to Tehran. Later that afternoon we would be picked up by Farzin for an evening in the town of Tabriz. Fridays are weekend days for Iranians and that’s also when everyone gathers for picnics in the gigantic city park. We probably spent half an hour trying to find a parking spot in the traffic chaos where people only abided by law of the jungle. We walked around among the crowds and as we are western tourists, which are quite rare here, we immediately got a lot of attention wether we wanted it or not. Lots of selfies and curiosity towards us wherever we went. This would become the norm from now on. Being blonde and blue eyed, or two meter tall, tattooed and wearing shorts isn’t the most discrete look here.

Tons of people having a friday picnic!
Self explanatory parking lot.
Selfie Selfie!
Evening dinner together. It was impossible to pay for ourselves whenever we were a guest of somebody in Iran. Thanks Farzin!
Engage rally mode.

The next morning we’d be hooked up with Farzins friend Arash who worked as a tour guide in Tabriz. We met him for lunch and would later be taken around an exclusive tour around the city. We walked around for two-three hours in 40°c sweating like pigs, visiting the Grand Bazaar, Tarbiat street, a Museum and the Arg of Tabriz. We think Arash was a little disappointed that we didn’t have any questions about the Arg of Tabriz as the tour came to an end, then again we aren’t the typical tourists who are only travelling to see historical sites. But we still had fun together!

The mosque next to the Arg.
Gigantic carpets that took many years to complete.
Probably, nobody has ever had this shoe size.
Tarbiat street.

Something that fascinated us was the fact that almost everybody we met knew so much of Irans history and heritage, not just Arash. It almost felt as if nobody cares about history back in our home countries. A common expression in Sweden – history is in the past. But here it was told with pride and passion, since it’s taught heavily in school. Very inspiring!

Atypical tourists at the Arg of Tabriz.
The Grand Bazaar – not for the claustrophobic.
Arash and us. Thanks for the tour!

To end the day we got help from Farzin to buy tickets at the bus station which was quite far outside the city centre, where we were staying. This meant driving in rush hour traffic – a wild ride to say the least. We were almost squeezed between two cars on the highway but made it there and back alive. A ticket would could about 10 euro, or 450.000 rial at the time. We’d have to pay the driver about the same just to bring the bicycles aboard, but we already knew that. They did actually take up an entire storage compartment below the bus and we noticed other passengers were a bit grumpy about having to smash their luggage into the other rather full compartments.

The bus ride from Tabriz to Tehran lasted for about 8 hours and the bus lacked toilets, but other than that it was pretty alright with plenty of leg space and air conditioning. It would be the first time we weren’t actually traveling with our bicycles on the roads beneath us. Thea was a little sad that we had to take the bus, but concluded that it was the right thing to do. We’d also have time to rest while we wait for our Turkmenistan and Chinese visa applications, so we weren’t losing too many days of our Iranian visa. We didn’t really feel as if we missed out on scenery either. The road from Tabriz to Tehran mostly consisted of dull repetitive rocky desert.

One sad part about taking the bus was that we had been invited to stay with multiple Iranian instagram followers who lived along the road to Tehran, and we would miss out on visiting them.

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An overwhelming introduction to Iran
April 6, 2020

The last morning in Turkey we stood up early in order to reach the border as soon as possible. Thea had barely been able to sleep because of her stomach, as a result of the heat stroke. Chickens were strutting about since 4 in the morning and the owners crazy dog was still guarding our tent, so it wasn’t the best night of sleep for either of us. We had our breakfast consisting of bread with Nutella and sipped some çay together with the owners of the place as we enjoyed the sun rising, shining its light over Mt. Ararat.

Crazy doggo!
Getting ready for Iran.
To the left of the mountain range lies the Gürbulak border between Turkey and Iran.
Mt. Ararat shrouded in clouds. We would still be seeing the peak of Ararat for over a hundred kilometers into Iran.

We then set our sails toward the border of Iran and cruised the last 15 or so kilometers on flat roads. An hour later we arrived to the big border but were clueless as of where to go. People pointed us towards the exit for passengers without vehicles. So we went there, but there was nobody at the guard post where the border gate was. There was only a side entrance with a gigantic “queue” – or a funnel of people trying to cut in line from the sides, causing outbursts of anger and yelling amongst the group every now and then.

The people trying to squeeze through a 50 cm narrow corridor with metal bars on the sides, inside this rather chaotic hot hall with no air conditioning. There was no way our bikes would fit through here and nobody really seemed to know what we should do or where to go with out bicycles.

Eventually after asking around multiple people, a lady who was working at a currency exchange office told us that we would have to stand in queue, stamp out of Turkey, squeeze back through the narrow hallway with all these frustrated people, get our bikes to the gate which had no guard working. So after queueing for 20 minutes we told the immigration officer that we had bikes, and we were stamped out of Turkey with a smile and directed back to our bikes. We had to wait another 30 minutes for somebody to show up at the gate but then we were finally out of Turkey!

Shortly thereafter the Iranian gate opened and we were met by a man who seemed as if was an official working there. He asked if we had alcohol or anything illegal (which we didn’t) and told us to bring our visa and passports and follow him into the immigration office. We left our bikes outside and passed all queues directly into the office where we were interviewed by a government official as to what our business was in Iran. It’s a standard procedure where they ask where you will travel, stay, if you have any friends in Iran, what your parents do, if we were married (you have to lie about this as a couple, hehe) and all sorts of odd questions. In about five minutes we finally had our entry stamps sorted and there was absolutely no bag checks or anything else time consuming.

Back outside again, this man who apparently had helped us get this “express service” asked how much we would like to offer for his help… Oh well. He also asked if we had dollars and if we wanted to exchange them into Rial. We told him we’d do this later in the next city and he promptly replied that it was impossible as banks don’t exchange money (which we already knew was complete bullshit). The problem for international travellers inside Iran is that you’re unable to withdraw money from Iranian ATMs. Foreign debit/credit cards are not accepted due to indifferences between Iran and the US. This means you need to bring dollars and/or euros for your entire stay in Iran, accommodating for all of your expenses there. You don’t really want people to know that you’re cycling around with a large amount of mint dollar bills.

We did eventually exchange our remaining Turkish Lira (about 30€) into Rial, just to have some pocket cash inside the next city. For a weird reason it was twice higher than the official rates on the internet. Little did we know that the black market rate of Iranian Rial was, at the time, three times higher than the official bank rates, something we’d learn later that evening. Just before we entered the interview office we met another traveller who was travelling with his retro minivan around the world. He had spent 3 days at the border for his vehicle to clear customs, and our friends who’d entered the day before had spent 16 hours stuck there due to an internet failure – rendering all their computer systems non functional. We ended up giving our fixer 10$ as a tip for his help as we appreciated having crossed the border in about ten minutes.

Happy to be inside the country we hopped on our bikes and descended a few hundred meters into Bazargan, the first border city, where we were met by more loudly yelling money exchangers and flashing shop signs in Arabic lettering. It was the first time we felt that everything was going to be completely different from the previous countries. We were in a country which we know so little about in order to have any kind of expectations. A little bit nervous perhaps. We had heard so much positive things about the people of this country.

We continued cycling downhill through the city and searched for a place with a toilet since Thea still wasn’t well. It didn’t help much that the temperatures had risen to 39°c after the descent from the Anatolian high plateau, which had a much more modest temperature.

We headed towards the nearest mosque in sight and were warmly welcomed by a very sweet old man who barely spoke a word of English. He showed us the bathroom complete with showers, and later led us to the prayer room, gave us blankets and let us to rest. Normally these are separated for men and women. He repeated the phrase “Islam no problem!” and gesticulated that we could sit next to each other and that Thea could take her headscarf off if she wanted. He gesticulated sleeping/resting on the floor and said “Islam no problem!” with a big smile on his face. We’d be hearing this phrase about twenty more times as we happily tried to communicate between our language barriers.

Inside the tiny mosque.

At one point we figured out that he wanted to hear western music, by covering his eyes with his palm whilst humming a melody and slightly dancing (more like wobbling) with his body. Apparently the hand symbolised our smartphones.

We decided to take a short rest from the blistering sun in here and were shortly served Iranian tea – completely different from the Turkish çay we’d been having the past weeks. Still delicious though! Our next objective would be to exchange money and get SIM cards so we said our goodbyes to the kind old man and headed back onto the highway.

Tea and Twix.

Just a few minutes later a car slowed down and started driving besides us. A very curious and friendly lady started talking to Thea in English. Just like that were we invited to their house for lunch. They escorted us for about 45 minutes, driving slowly in front of us in chaotic traffic, to their beautiful house in Maku.

That’s how we met Sonya, her husband Yaser and their daughter Merlin – our first introduction to the famous Iranian hospitality.

We couldn’t have asked for a nicer family to invite us into their home!

When we arrived Sonya quickly hinted asked if we wanted to take showers before eating. Were we really that smelly? We had showered just a few days ago!? After having showered they quickly spoiled us with as much melon and cherries we could eat (Daniel’s favourite fruit!) as we introduced ourselves to each other. Sonya worked as an English teacher which made it easy for us to talk about anything. They were very occupied with making us feel comfortable and helping us in any way they could.

We tried drinking the Iranian version of Ayran. It’s like the Turish one, very salty drinking yoghurt, but with dill. We politely declined seconds 😉

After lunch they would take us on a tour of their city, trying to cram as much they could into one evening. Here we also got an introduction of what it’s like to be inside a car in Iran. We suggest to do this as little as possible if you ever visit this country 😉 What’s a seat belt? Speed..limit? Traffic lights? Brakes?

The first thing we did was to drive to Qoban castle – a mountain cliff housing ancient castle ruins. We walked up a rather steep hill to experience a spectacular view overlooking the entire city of Maku, as well as the ruins. There were hundreds of swallows zooming around above us, far up in the crescent shaped rock walls extending outwards. Always exciting for the legs after having cycled a mountain pass the day before.

Castle ruins that date back to BC.
Overlooking Maku.

One of the areas was completely blackened by a fire and we asked if there had been a forest fire. The reply was – No, they just set the grass on fires to get rid of the very poisonous snakes living there.

Wouldn’t the snakes then flee into the city? We never got an answer.

On the way down we had to drink from a mountain spring which supposedly had magical powers. Thea didn’t drink due to her bad stomach, but Daniel still feels the powers flow in his blood as of this day!

We had ice cream, drove to some other historical ruins, to a river park and watched the sun set, sorted out a 4G SIM card, completed a shady money exchange in a jewellery shop (at the correct black market rate!) making us millionaires for the first time of our journey.

Cash flow! Not a lot of money actually.

We eventually finished off the day at a burger place and headed back to their house to chat and be fed with more fruit and tea before we fell asleep. Yaser had to leave very early for work the following morning and Sonya usually slept until 11, so we quietly had our breakfast before we snuck out to cycle and wrote a good bye note. We couldn’t have asked for a better introduction of the country.

We did promise we would visit them again if the opportunity ever comes and we would be glad to meet you guys again!

Heading off into the desert again.
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A trip to the emergency room
October 2, 2019

After we visited Cappadoccia there was a heat wave all over Turkey, and during a 400 meter climb the thermometer hit 40 degrees. With no wind and a heavy incline Thea almost collapsed from the heat. She’s always unwilling to stop and rest in uphills, nor places in where there is no shade (that would be reoccurring stupid stubbornness). So she pushed all the way to the top and flopped on the ground like a pancake to rest under the shade of the only one tree that existed there. We camped early this day as there didn’t seem to be any possible areas to camp close to the upcoming city of Kayseri which is a very large one.

At this camp spot we were introduced to the damned insects, earwigs, which would enter every possible nook and cranny of our belongings during the night. Every morning all the way to Iran we’d have to empty our panniers of at least fifty to twenty of them, sometimes more. They like the creases of the folded top of the bags, the buckles, being inside the tent poles, inside the tent, inside every thinkable hole in our bicycles. Basically they were everywhere – not dangerous in any way, just a nuisance. We probably still have some dead earwigs in our bags as of today..

When passing through Kayseri, on the highway, we were stopped by some emergency ambulance workers asking if we wanted çay. Of course we did. We never say no to çay! We had actually planned to have lunch right next to the place we were stopped by the ambulance. Five minutes later they’d order takeaway from the local kebab place, treating us to it in their kitchen of the emergency station.

They knew a little English, but usually relied on google translate to converse, which we’d gotten used to by now. It works really well and is pretty funny, because you have this silent conversation and every now and then you break out in laughter or make a facial expression before concentrating on writing the next sentence in silence on your phone. They showed us some historical places on the map along our way and a good place to camp which we set as our goal for the night.

A derelict water park/picnic area from the 90’s made for a perfect camp spot!

The following days we were rather bored of cycling the easy, closest highway to Erzurum, but taking another one would double the amount of climbing upwards of 28000 height meters. We opted to take the originally planned shortest route with very good road conditions.

When you argue about what road to take it’s always nice to have a bird.
Can’t be angry with a bird!

It later turned more and more scenic once we got closer to the bigger mountains so it was finally getting more interesting. Things were turning more lush and green, mountain tops were stretching above 3000 meters and everywhere you looked was just serene.

Çay after every meal.
Sometimes it’s worth to climb 150 meters just to camp in a crater, completely isolated from the noise of the road.
The only snake we saw in Turkey was a baby one, about 15 cm long.
Thea found a scarf on the roadside that was later used as a Hijab in Iran.
Cruising into the mountains, wide shoulders, empty roads.

The Anatolian plateau is definitively amazing for touring and there is three mountain passes above 2000 meters towards Erzurum. They are all different in their own aspects, and the inclines aren’t very bad so you don’t really get exhausted. It felt like a great accomplishment to have cycled the first pass up to 2190 meters! Due to the elevation it’s often colder, and we actually were wearing sweaters and jackets for the first time in maybe two months. It was 10 degrees at the top, icy winds and light rain when we reached the top. There we met some very friendly guys from the Turkish ministry of roads at the top of the pass and they invited us to their workplace for lunch and endless amount of çay. They mentioned the temperature drops to minus 50 in the winter there, so we were glad not to be there in winter. It was a nice break from the icy winds and they had an electric heater going on full blast, which they faced towards the sofa we were sitting in.

After parting with them we had a long 10 km descent from 2190m all the way down to 1400m, and the icy winds froze our fingers numb and cold. Such a weird feeling after having worn t-shirt and shorts since the beginning of Bulgaria.

Not very hard to find a camp spot in Turkey. Just enter the nearest gravel road and go 1 km.
Then you can camp all alone! It was quite chilly for the first time in ages.
Some days were also brutally hot.
And you have to take whatever shade you can find.
One day we even had a swim at 2000 meters! Very nice to cool down in the heat.

The following morning, just before starting the second 2000m mountain pass, we stopped at a gas station for çay and snacks. They had this cozy green area/garden next to it – complete with tables, chairs, turkeys and chickens strutting about. A man rolled up in his car and sat down next to Daniel and asked if he was from Norway. Nope, but Sweden. This man was from Moss, just across the fjord of our city where we previously lived in Norway. He had lived there for forty years. He’d actually seen us cycling through Kayseri with our flags hanging on the back of our bikes, four days earlier but was unable to stop on the highway. We were treated with tea and he left us pondering how the world can be so small.

We forgot his name but he was a nice man!

In the second pass we were invited for tea again by the road workers. We sometimes wonder if they ever work or if they just drink tea all day long. The descent of the second pass was a super sweet constant 8% decline, with us reaching speeds that probably shouldn’t be cycled with such heavy side winds. At the bottom of it we stopped at a restaurant to treat ourselves to dinner after climbing this pass. Here we met a family from Kazakhstan who were on a car road trip through Turkey. He asked if we had a gun after we mentioned that we were going to Iran. We laughed and said no, as we thought it’s probably not the best idea to bring a gun when crossing country borders. He gave us one coin from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan for good luck.

Placing stickers after completing a pass is always rewarding.
A long days hard work over in just thirty minutes.

In the third pass we officially had very tired bodies but still made it almost to the top, with only 250 meters left. From there it took us one more day to reach Erzurum and our AirBnb host Ghazale, who was actually from Iran so she could answer any questions we had about the country! She was super friendly and helped us with everything we asked for, and was currently living in Turkey to study dentistry.

One of the first things we did in Erzurum was to eat cake.
And we filled up on some food. Usually around 2-3€ per meal. Always fresh and tasty food in Turkey!
You won’t see bigger melons anywhere in the world! They also cost almost nothing.

We stayed 5 nights in Erzurum to get fully rested. It was a nice and cozy city that isn’t too big or hectic. We sorted our Iranian visas completely struggle free in about one hour at the embassy of Iran, and refuelled with some proper espressos and cappuccinos for the first time in many weeks. If it’s one thing we don’t care about the price of, it’s good coffee. We also got to meet some fellow cyclists that arrived two-three days later than us and had a dinner together. Super fun to talk about our experiences and things we all had come across through Turkey.

After Erzurum we had two more mountain passes do conquer before reaching the border of Iran. As we made our way towards the first one on a very hot day, the road quality abruptly deteriorated. Turns out there was going to be road construction for the next 20 km, all the way to the top. They had shredded the top asphalt layer completely and started putting tar on it. All the cars driving past this road had then brought the tar with their wheels all the way down the other side of the mountain pass!

Over-stacking? Safety? Unheard of.

This meant sluggish, sticky cycling, and our wheels collecting every single piece rock and gravel, regardless of size. At some point Thea lost all energy and had to push for the remaining bit. We didn’t realise that it was the start of a heat stroke that would get worse the day after. The descent however was one of the most beautiful places we saw in Turkey.

The annoyance
Sweet descent

The next morning we only made it 5 km before Thea started feeling very bad again, we rested a lot and cycled only short stretches before we finally made it to a gas station with a picnic area where we would rest in the shade. They asked us if we wanted to camp and rest there for free, and we gladly accepted since Thea by now had a very high fever and muscle cramps. It was pretty clear by now that she had a heat stroke, so we pitched our tent just after lunch with an army of 40 clucking turkeys observing our every move.

Resting did away with the worst of the fever, but Thea still had almost no energy the next morning. She had also gotten stomach problems again which were quite bad and lasted well into Iran. Luckily the winds were on our side and we had strong tailwinds and relatively flat roads all the way to the final mountain pass in Turkey. With many breaks in the shade we finally made it to the top of it where our cyclist friends had stuck a motivational note at the sign!

We then descended, with a new record speed of 72.6 km/h, almost all the way to the Iranian border, where we would ask a picnic owner if we could camp on his land, just beneath Mt. Ararat – Turkeys highest mountain. This whole area was so beautiful and the soft warm light from the sunset just made everything perfect. It was no problem for them for us to camp there and we had some çay together before we collapsed in the tent.

The owners made sure Thea could rest comfortably once we arrived.

On our finally day in Turkey we decided to wake up early so we wouldn’t have to wait too long at the border crossing in the heat. Thea now had to start abiding by the Iranian dress code for women – meaning she has to cover her body with long sleeved clothing, and her head with a scarf. So for the first time she cycled in her new outfit she had bought in Istanbul. It’s hot. After a rather dull stretch of road we made it to the border of Iran – the strange country we know little about, but we’d heard so much positive about from other travellers and cyclists. But more on that in the next post!

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Turkey

The peaches of Bursa
August 28, 2019

Since the last time we have had countless cups of çay, cycled through such variating scenery, flown in an air balloon, experienced Turkish hospitality and have set both new height and heat records.

After having been in Istanbul for 10 days we both concluded that we prefer being in nature rather than in largely populated cities with insane amounts of people. We were both excited to get out of here and continue into untrodden territory for both of us – the Asian continent!

After a brisk boat ride to Yalova we were met by high humidity, 36 degrees and a 400 meter climb. Thea’s stomach still wasn’t well yet so it was a struggle with stomach cramps, heat and humidity – especially since we’d spent most of the previous ten days in an air-conditioned hotel room. But after the climb we got to enjoy a sweet descent down to a beautiful lake where we pitched our tent. All of the surroundings had switched from the previous farm fields and hills to lush mountains.

Our first night in Asia!

The following day we passed through a tiny village before another climb. We were going to buy some food here before continuing but were stopped by a local policeman who wondered what we were doing there and was concerned for our safety on the “dangerously trafficked road” we had chosen. Later on this mountain road we met maybe one car every 10 minutes.. Advice from locals regarding roads isn’t always the most accurate (that wasn’t the only time in Turkey).

In the village there was a drug store with a very friendly owner that advised and helped Thea with some medication for her stomach. Silly enough they didn’t have electricity on this particular day in that village, which was apparently normal for them? so they just cut the barcode from the medicine to make the scanning later.

He put our sticker on his shop before we left!

He also helped translate to the policeman who didn’t speak very much English. During this time another touring cyclist, from Turkey, rolled into the village and chatted a bit with us. Always fun to meet other cyclists! We were also offered to rest and sleep on the sofa in the drug store but we declined and continued cycling up into the mountains next to an even bigger gorge.

Later this afternoon Daniel would start to feel fatigued and in the evening also feverish. We came to the conclusion that it was likely heat stroke due to the heat and humidity, so with almost no energy we did very short days of 20-30 km and resting/sleeping a lot in the shade. Cycling with fever and stomach cramps isn’t the most fun but after two or so days they were slowly disappearing.

Gotta wash your hands when you get the opportunity!

Since we both weren’t feeling in good shape we chose the big, easy and shortest way towards our next destination: Göreme/Cappadoccia. This also meant cycling along the most highly trafficked big highways which in a very short amount of days kills much of your motivation to cycle.

We did however find some comfort from the superb fresh fruit from the road stalls, picked from the local fruit plantations along the roads. These were the most delicious fruit we’ve ever had, and the peaches of Bursa are famous for their quality. Saturated with fruit juice and so ripe that they would melt in your mouth at the first bite – they’re completely incomparable to anything we’ve had in our home countries.

Nothing beats the peaches from Bursa region.

From this evening onwards we were again welcomed every night by these damn thunderstorms, and they wouldn’t leave us alone for another week. Since our experience in Croatia where we were nearly struck by lightning we now spent a lot of energy and time to find a somewhat safe place to camp every night. Easier said than done on many days, as central Turkey is rather flat and has very open landscapes. This wasn’t the forecast we’d hoped for but there was nothing to do but accept the fact that you can’t change the weather.

As we got further away from the first two mountain passes, the landscapes changed to something as from out of the Wild West, with very long rolling hills, barren landscapes and alternating light green and gold coloured farming fields.

Spikey mountains looming in the distance
One of the nights we didn’t have thunderstorms.
One of the times we chose a small road instead of the big one. It was really nice to get away from the cars.

One of the days when we knew there was a gigantic thunderstorm heading straight in our direction later in the night, we passed through a tiny village (with maybe 2000 inhabitants) to buy some drinks and ice cream. Just as we were about to dismount and park our bikes outside the tiny kiosk, an old man came cycling in full speed yelling at us to stop. Without braking he almost ran into Daniel before stopping and asking were we were from and what we were doing here. It took just a few seconds before we realised he was actually from Norway. He insisted that we followed him to his house. We told him “we’re just buying some ice-c…” –no no no! I have everything at home! And so we followed him back to the start of the village, into his gigantic house he himself had built in here his childhood village.

Always follow strangers who say they have ice cream at home!

So that’s how we met Rahim. He had lived in Stavanger, Norway, for 30 years before retiring and moving back to Böğrüdelik in the middle of nowhere in Turkey, whilst most of his children and grandchildren still live in Norway. He is a crazy old man who likes to do everything himself, and is an active paraglider at the age of 70 something. He had a nasty open wound on his foot from a paragliding accident 6 months ago, that had refused to heal (no wonder since he refuses to rest!) and was struggling a little to walk around. Despite that he had run down 3 stairs to grab his bicycle just to try to catch up and try to find us in the village, has he’d seen our Swedish and Norwegian flags from the window of his living room.

Rahim and his wobbly bike with no air in the rear tire!

We were served coffee, fruit from his garden, lunch and also dinner later in the evening. In the afternoon he drove us to the top of the surrounding mountain overlooking the entire village with the best view possible. It was weird being at the top of a mountain as we usually cycle along the bottom of them.

We were also offered to spend the night in their apartment, which we said yes to despite having only cycled 45 km that day. This turned out to be a good decision, as later that night there was almost one lightning strike every second for two or three hours. So we spent the evening together chatting with some locals from the village who also had some connection to Norway. The following morning we departed early after being treated to breakfast. We continued in good spirits after having met such a funny and kind old man in the middle of nowhere.

Why build a small house when you can have an entire apartment complex?

We decided to have lunch in one or two cities further down the road, and chose a pizza restaurant for no real reason. As we entered, the interior of the place it looked oddly.. Swedish? For those who don’t know, it’s quite popular to have these specific types of tiles on the walls inside pizza restaurants in Sweden. And the restaurants name was.. Sorrento. There is like one pizzeria in every Swedish city that’s called Sorrento. Hmm. And this place even had their opening hours listed on the window, just like in Sweden, somewhat unheard of in Turkey. It turned out the owner had lived in Göteborg, Sweden for 7 years and had moved back to Turkey to open this restaurant. He kindly enough treated us with the pizza after hearing that we were Swedish and Norwegian. What are the odds?

Smells like Swedish pizza place!

After that we cycled in very flat, hot and open desert with nothing around us for maybe 60 kilometres. Central Turkey is more or less one big plateau which is at a constant 1000 meters. We tried to see Tuz Gölu from the southwest of it. It’s a gigantic salt lake in central Turkey. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible as you had to make a large detour north of the lake in order to see it.

We did get to see a lot of flat desert though!

Yet again there was no camp spots suitable for thunderstorms so we just went inside someones unfinished concrete house to hide for the night. With a panoramic view of the mountain range that lies to the side of Tuz Gölu we watched the dark thunderclouds roll in and enjoyed the shower of purple and pink lightning strikes bombard the mountains for many hours. We felt relatively safe in this concrete house and managed to capture some strikes, most of which just were one or two kilometres away from us. So we were glad that we didn’t take the detour around the lake as we likely would’ve been fried. It was super exciting watching the lightning strikes from a safe place for once, instead of being awakened by it inside your tent in the middle of the night – caught in the midst of it with nowhere to go.

Lethal beauty

The following morning we made it out of the house with just some minutes to spare as the owner returned in his tractor to continue construction on the house. Luckily we never leave any trace and it was as if we’d never been there, so we pedalled towards Cappadoccia which lay just a few days from Tuz Gölu. This was the first day we actually cycled willingly in a thunderstorm as it was daytime, of course it was in open farming fields. We later gave up as the lightning eventually struck uncomfortably close, and went to shelter at the nearest gas station were we would sip on five glasses of çay whilst waiting for the storm to pass.

Once it had cleared we continued in light drizzle, only to be stopped after 10 minutes by a policeman waving us over. He poked at Daniels rain jacket and said “problem”, beckoning us over to the gas station lokanta to drink tea to get warm, despite it being 24c in the air. Almost all gas stations have small adjoining restaurants/tea places called lokanta so it’s not very far between the glasses of çay. Maybe he didn’t know that rain jackets often have outer layers that get a little wet whilst the inner layers stay dry? It was still a funny situation to be stopped by a police just to be treated with tea. Only happens in Turkey…

Some days and mountains later we finally arrived to Cappadoccia and the nature reserve of Göreme. This place is a tourist trap but despite that its a really cool and unique place that deserves a visit if you can stand the touristy elements. We spent 3 nights here at a cheap hostel which had 3 newborn kitties living there, instantly making it 5/5 stars. We love cats. The hostel was actually nice too, and even had a swimming pool.

This picture kind of sums up Göreme
We cycled around in the valleys for 30 minutes before we gave up. Too much sand and hills for our tired legs. It’s a very unique place though!

We’d been cycling for two weeks without any real rest and lacked energy to walk around much, as we also had thought of updating the blog during our 2 rest days. So we decided to put the blogging on hold for a while as it was too stressful and energy consuming. This is why we haven’t posted much recently. We did however make the decision to fly in an air balloon during the sunrise. If one has the option to do it once in a life, Göreme is a good place to do it.

Getting warmed up!
Giant lightbulbs slowly lifting off the ground
Perfect conditions for flying means a lot of balloons in the sky!
Different perspective of Cappadoccia

There were a lot of Chinese tourists visiting this place, and it’s noticeable that there is also foreign Chinese investments. This includes Chinese restaurants with Chinese menus, Chinese staff and proper Chinese food (not all of them but a few). So we had some of our best food in Turkey here, as we both like Asian food! Eating various kebabs and rice at lokantas everyday for lunch gets very bland and boring so we were really happy that there was some different cuisine here.

Yay for asian food!

After a few short days here, relatively rested (still with sore butts though), we headed out of Cappadoccia and cycled towards the mountainous parts of eastern Turkey for our next stop – Erzurum. But we will continue the story in the next post!

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Turkey

Rolling hills of Turkey
July 29, 2019

On our last day of Bulgaria we woke up from the heat of the sun in the middle of a vineyard, with our inner tent covered in tiny driplets of condensation from the humid air around us. With only 25 km to the Turkish border we started cycling early so we’d arrive in Edirne at noon to be able to have lunch there. A couple of kilometres from the border we heard someone yelling loudly in Danish from a nearby mini market. We turned around and saw it was another long distance tourer, named Jasmine, having a rest here. He/She had been on many bicycle tours before and was now heading from Izmir back home to Denmark. We got some good advice on the upcoming roads, border and traffic situations. It’s always the same horror stories about the traffic in Istanbul, but it was to be expected. The people of Turkey is supposed to be very friendly though, something we’d later learn. It was fun meeting a fellow Scandinavian and conversation in a mixture of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

Later we cruised past a 6 kilometre long trailer truck queue, yet again glad to be on bikes and not waiting up to 24 hours for the toll station to let us through. With friendly smiles on the border guards, Daniel was let through in a few seconds. Border guards are usually happy and curious whenever they see people on gigantic bicycles passing through. We were however a little unaware that Norwegians need a visa for entering Turkey. With a brisk visit to the connecting office and our reserve 50€ bill everything was in order and Thea now had a 90 day visa in her passport. Next up was the laziest luggage control checkpoint ever. The guard poked one of Daniel’s panniers for inspection, so he opened it but he didn’t even look inside before moving on to Thea’s bike and doing the same. We assumed it was for him to look busy working for the surveillance cameras.

After that we rolled past the last checkpoint before finally entering country number 9, just in time for the noon prayer calls from the nearby minaret. Just one day ago the summer heat started hitting us hard and our water consumption had risen from about 1-2 water bottles per day to 5. On this day it was about 34c so our newly washed clothes from Georgis washing machine was yet again soaked in sweat and sunscreen.

On the highway towards Edirne we met another long distance cyclist, Guillaume, heading the opposite way of us. He was a Swiss guy who’d been living in India studying and decided to cycle back to his home country.

During his journey he had met another female cyclist from China, just before Iran, and they were cycling together ever since, but as they had different tempos she was a bit further behind. Later we learned from a motorist stopping with a hand written note saying she had gotten a puncture but was on her way. It was their way of communicating when they were apart. Pretty funny! It was really good to talk to someone who’d been out for so long so we could learn something and seek inspiration from the stories as we had been lacking motivation for some time now.

They’d been in remote parts of Turkey, and really enjoyed the solace of the uninhabited deserts of Iran. They also mentioned that they’d been spoiled by the hospitality in Iran as they were very often invited into peoples homes to sleep, but the closer they got to Europe the less they got invites so they had been forced to lower their expectations.

He thought we were fast when we told him about our average distances and that we had planned to cycle through Turkey in about 35 days. They had been in Turkey for almost three months! That got us thinking about our priorities a little. We could’ve stayed for longer talking to him as he was a super chill dude who definitively had experienced a lot on his journey. But with rumbling stomaches from not having eaten for a long time we had to say goodbye and cycle towards Edirne to eat something.

Edirne was the first major border city and as we rolled into it we were overwhelmed by all the cars, flashing shop signs and noise. Things were finally a bit different from what we’re accustomed to in Europe. After a quick ATM stop to get some pocket money we headed to the nearest döner shop to purchase three döners and two cokes for the total of 1.5€. Pretty decent! It’s wise to travel to small cities (though Edirne is somewhat big), since you’ll learn what the normal prices are for things as opposed to the tourist prices in for example Istanbul.

From here we chose the northern route towards Istanbul, with a pit stop in Saray. While in the middle of Bulgaria we had been contacted from a guy through Instagram, also a warmshowers member, inviting us to stay in Saray. Since it was en route we gladly accepted the invite. On our way towards his city we started cycling up and down the infamous rolling hills of Turkey, passing through endless farmlands. The road was often wide, and had the wide safety shoulder that is pretty standard in this country, so we felt safer cycling here as opposed to the previous countries. We were also actually glad that we had any kind of wind, even headwind, since it sometimes was up to 38c on the way to Istanbul.

On our second day of Turkey we were introduced to the concept of Turkish çay – or tea in common tongue. Everywhere they have these small salons along the roadside of every village, where men sit and drink tea, smoke and chat. We were invited by a Turkish man who stopped us for these tiny glass cups of tea. Ever since then we’ve been treated with tea at least once a day, almost every day, and we’ve made it a tradition to drink it every time we stop for a meal somewhere. It might sound strange to drink tea in the middle of the summer heat, but it’s quite nice. Not too much, not too little, two cubes of sugars and a moment to rest your mind sipping on some tea.

On the same day we were going to enter Saray we met Sam from New Zealand, just 10 minutes after we had started cycling that morning. It turned out we had been camping about one kilometre away from each-other the previous night, and were now heading the same direction. So we decided to cycle together that day towards Saray, where he later would split towards Istanbul. He was almost twice as fast as us with his rather light setup so we sure got an exercise that day – enviously and sluggishly chasing after him. We also realised on this day we needed to make some changes to the gearing on our bicycles as the hills were too tough on us, and Turkey is quite mountainous. We had learnt something from our tough times in Austria!

Can’t complain about the weight!

It was nice with some new company after having cycled just the two of us for so long. It hasn’t been too often we’ve had a chance to have proper long conversations in English so we talked a lot and reflected yet again over the life on a bicycle. We later met up in Istanbul for lunch before splitting paths again. He was heading the coastal route of Turkey and we were going towards central Turkey. We’ll surely meet him again as we have roughly the same time plan for Central Asia!

After leaving him we called our host Ömer in Saray to let him now we were just outside the city. He later came down the street to meet and greet us with a warm smile and showed us the way to his familys apartment. Little had we expected that he would be a 17 year old student with a passion for hosting bypassing cycle tourists and a genuine interest in learning about foreigners and their culture, as well as to practise his English as it isn’t taught especially much in public school.

Ömer let all his warmshowers guests use his own bedroom!

We were warmly greeted by his mother just outside the apartment and stored our bikes in their shed before carrying up all of our bags into the so called “warm showers room” in their apartment, which was actually Ömers own room which he let warmshowers guests use. We really felt welcomed with open arms.

After a showering we waited out of respect until sunset to eat as it was ramadan. His father would come home right before the dinner which Ömers mother had been preparing. We were completely spoiled and served a three course meal and later dessert with chai. Later they invited their aunt, uncle and cousin and Ömer would act as the translator between all of us. It was overwhelmingly fun and a great introduction to Turkish hospitality and our stay here exceeded all expectations. We thought we were just going to have a place to sleep for the night, so what a surprise! The visit made us very happy and reminded us that sometimes its not only about seeing beautiful places or cycling for long distances, but also to meet local people.

Happy after a big meal and long conversations!
Spoiled again with way too much food.

On our way towards Istanbul we had underestimated our cycling abilities and booked a hotel rather late. With almost 2-3 days to spare we relaxed quite a lot and had a detour to the Black Sea for a swim. We had been cycling since Croatia without any rest days but the distance to Istanbul was less than we had expected. The heat however was really pushing our limits as we previously had had a comfortable 20 degrees for a long time before Turkey. Luckily there were these mountain springs every now and then with ice cold water that we could drench ourselves in. There were quite a lot of wild dogs in Turkey like the previous countries, but all of them were too busy resting from the heat or just plainly ignored us. We were still on edge every time we passed one, having been traumatised by the Serbian and Bulgarian dogs. Later we learned they were often fed and were pretty much docile, begging for food instead of chasing cyclists.

Not all dogs are scary!
Farming field, hills and forests pretty much sums up the western part of Turkey.
Almost nobody was at the beach!

Just one day before Istanbul we noticed one spoke had broken in Daniels rear wheel which was now crooked and we had to ride carefully. Now we had some extra work to do in a bike shop, along with crankset switches for easier gears.

The road/highway into Istanbul city center was full of traffic and we often had to wait for open windows in order to pass the connecting roads. Finally inside the traffic was rather slow but still hectic. We’re glad we had our mirrors here yet again, and easily navigated to the hotel which we had booked a week ago.

Wide and safe shoulders in Turkey! They had built a new 6-lane highway next to the old highway, so it was more or less empty until we got closer to the city where the traffic quickly built up.

We had called the hotel in advance to check if we could store the bicycles inside before we booked it. No problem, they said. Long story short, they were arrogant and refused to store the bikes inside. We just took the bicycles into the room when they weren’t looking. A promise is a promise!

Later we searched for a good bicycle shop and finally found one that seemed to have a decent selection of components – bike & outdoor. So we took our bikes there just two days before the end of ramada, during which they were closing the shop for a short vacation. With a long list of work they said they would manage to do it before we left Istanbul so we were super happy with the service and work they did! Definitively go there if you need any service on your bike in Istanbul, they will go to great lenghts to help you.

Thanks for all the help on such short notice!

With 8 full rest days in Istanbul we tried exploring the city with the public transportation card, which is super convenient and cheap. It works with ferries, tram, metro and buses and each trip was 20-30 eurocent. We did get to see a few things, but Theas stomach wasn’t too well ever since we entered Turkey so we were a bit limited with what we could do. Most of the tourist attractions had hour long queues and there were also insane amounts of people due to Eid, the end of ramadan, so we did also rest a lot.

Galata tower
We spent a few evenings on our hotel roof lounge drinking çay.
Hagia Sophia Museum and the insane amounts of tourists. We did go inside, but not on this day!
Getting on the tram only took 11 attempts on this day. All of the carts were completely full to the brim. Eventually we just forced our way in by sqeezing like everyone else. On less chaotic days it did work well however!
We had a quick visit to the bazaar. A lot of copy paste shops and a lot of tourists. Worth a visit though!

We also did our Iran “e-visa” applications here. Thea was accepted after two days and Daniel was declined at the same time and had to go through a travel agency and pay 30€ extra in order to get the visa grant notice. This visa grant is needed in order to pick up/apply for the actual visa at the embassy of Iran in Erzurum.

Our hotel rooms for some reason always turn into this after a couple of days.

With Istanbul and nearby cities eastwards being gigantic and highly trafficked we opted to take the ferry to Asia instead of cycling the route eastwards. After a quick checkout at the hotel we rolled down to the ferry terminal and managed to board the boat to Yalova with only two minutes to spare.

A breezy cruise across the sea.

It took us 75 minutes to cross the lovely blue sea of Marmara where we excitedly would roll onto the Asian continent where we soon would be met by delicious fruit, heat stroke and tons of varying landscapes. But more on that in the next post!

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Turkey

New friends, potholes, and ill minded twigs
June 16, 2019

In the afternoon right after crossing into Bulgaria we stopped at a gas station to borrow their wifi and have ice cream. We realised we now have roaming again which we’d been without through all of Serbia. Sweet! Also, the snack selection in Bulgaria was much bigger than Serbia.

Thea was inside shopping the gas station whilst Daniel heard a shout from a man – Hei, er du norsk? He’d seen the flag on Thea’s bike and were interested in talking to us. His name was Georgi and it turned out he had actually lived with his family and worked in Norway, super close to where we previously lived and worked. What are the odds? They were super friendly and invited us to stay at their home in Dimitdrovgrad if we ever passed by later. It turned out that their city actually on our route so we kept that in mind.

Five minutes after they had left us, two Swedish cars rolled up to fill their gas tanks. They were two families who were driving from Sweden to Istanbul for vacation and again they also noticed our flags. It was fun to talk to Swedes in person again for the first time in ages. They had some spare waffle crackers from Sweden that we got to take with us, along with some delicious ripe peaches. I guess we look like hobos sometimes?

With very good moods after meeting them we set sail towards a camp spot for the night. Halfway up a climb, before the valley surrounding Sofia, Daniels bike came to an abrupt stop. There was a tiny tree branch that had gotten stuck between the derailleur and the cassette, bending the hanger along with the derailleur towards the spokes. It rendered the derailleur completely unusable and it had to be bent back by hand. Luckily the spokes seemed to have survived as they weren’t caught by the derailleur.

So with one barely functional derailleur Daniel had to continue with an unpleasant squeaky mechanical noise and crappy shifting. Shortly thereafter we at least found a beautiful camp spot on top of a hill. Now we had a task of finding a new derailleur. With Sofia being the only candidate to find quality bike parts, and being about 35 km away from it, we had to seek a little help from the internet. We eventually found a big bicycle shop online that had the exact same Deore 9-speed derailleur in their assortment so we put that on our map for the next day.

Since we were passing through a large city, we also decided that we would get a new camping stove before the possibility disappears, seeing as we’d had so much trouble with the old one. And Thea wanted a Kindle. So we had three errands to make in Sofia in one day, before heading out to camp somewhere outside the city. We also had to eat lunch and shop groceries. Turns out it wasn’t a very clever decision to try to do all these things in one day and at the same time find a way out of the city to camp.

With relative ease we found the bicycle store, but it turned out they didn’t have any of the products listed on their website, and they called around other shops to try to find the same derailleur which was on Daniels bike. 9-speed quality parts are slowly getting phased out and are hard to come by. They have since been replaced by 10 and 11 speed which are more common nowadays.

Without any luck we had to replace it with a lesser quality one that even they were unsure if it would last through our journey since some of the structural components were in composite material instead of metal. With no alternatives we agreed on that one and they switched it along with bending the hanger back to a usable state. The shifting isn’t as good as it was previously but at least it works. They were really helpful though.

Thea has also had some problems with the adjustment of her derailleur for some time but they didn’t manage to make it better, only worse. So we spent quite some time here before we had lunch, bought groceries and tried to get ahold of the Kindle in a nearby shopping mall. Of course they didn’t have it either, despite saying so on the website and having pre-ordered it with click & collect at the store. They told us to go to another shop that were to have it in stock. It was on the way out of the city, so that was fine.

So we tried to navigate to the next destination – an outdoor store that had the Primus stove. It lied in the heart of the city in a small back alley. At this point we learned Sofia is the worst city trying to navigate with a bicycle. It has three or four lane one-way main roads which are rather unsuited for cycling, and they are filled to the brim with cars. There are no cycle paths whatsoever, no signs, tons of construction blocking off segments and footpaths that we tried to follow. We got lost a couple of times and had to push our bikes up a steep gravel dirt track. Eventually we made our way there and they did actually have the stove! So now we have one that works properly!

Lastly we struggled our way to the final electronics shop. It was the same as with the last shop, they only had a used demo sample. This one was discharged and wouldn’t boot. They told Thea to wait for it to charge, so she did for 40 minutes before they offered a discount of 3% on a product that still wouldn’t work. After some complaints she gave up and bought the previous years Kindle model that they did have in stock and was sealed/new. At this point we had spent about six hours in Sofia, covered about 8 kilometers, and we hadn’t even gotten out of the city.

With summer heat and a lot of stress that we handled poorly we were a bit on edge all day long. It didn’t help that another thunderstorm had rolled in around us at dinner time, surrounding the entire valley along the mountain range as we were going to exit the city.

That’s a lot of rain and thunder near the mountains.

There’s no good roads to exit the city by bicycle here either, so we ended up taking the A1 highway. It wasn’t really that bad once we had come outside the city, since there was a 3 meter wide safety shoulder. We eventually managed to get on the smaller road 8 where we found an abandoned concrete building near a catholic shrine where we took shelter for the night and avoided the thunder.

Nice and dry the morning after.

The following days we were lucky to cycle just outside the borders of thunder and rain showers. Bulgaria is, just like Serbia, full of crazy dogs so we had a few scary encounters every now and then. At least it keeps your mind awake. After a short climb in the center mountain range we got to descend for 800 meters towards eastern Bulgaria, where we helped a tiny turtle cross the road.

Shy guy.
Second camp spot in a row that had a roof. This one newly built, next to a football field.
The new stove so far works great. It rained later that night, but as we had a roof over ourselves we didn’t need the outer tent.

Some day before we passed by Dimitdrovgrad we contacted Georgi whom we met at the border and told him we would love to visit him for one night. It was alright with him and we agreed on a place and a time estimate to meet in the city.

On the day we were close to the city we sent a message to him saying that we were nearby. He then came with his car to meet us and gave us the address to his business, a tile store, where we could safely store the bikes. He also told us that he’d booked a hotel treating us to it. We were very surprised about this, but he told us we could relax more at the hotel, since it was crowded in their apartment with three cousins of their children visiting. They were headed to a children’s birthday party that night and we were a bit too tired for that after 12 days of no rest, so we politely declined and instead scheduled a meeting for the next morning to have breakfast and lunch with his family.

Dimitdrovgrad was a nice and quiet city, perfect to relax one night. We had a short stroll i the evening and ate at the restaurant recommended by Georgi.

We slept well here with air condition and got to shower for the first time in twelve days since Osijek in Croatia so it was an appreciated gift. The following morning we checked out and carried our bags to their home just five minutes away. Here we were greeted by Georgi, his wife Svetlana and their two kids plus their three cousins. We had a long breakfast and chatted for hours about their life in Norway and the cultural differences between our countries. It was very interesting and funny to discuss. We also got some insight into Bulgaria as a country, corruption, and sometimes the lack of trust people have for each other here. Whilst we were chatting we got to borrow their laundry machine so we could have fresh clothes again.

The kids made us beaded flags as a gift while the adults were conversating. So sweet of them!

They are very funny and generous people who are still young in their mind and have good values. They made us feel completely comfortable and part of their family. They also taught us how to be polite in Bulgaria when you want something that someone offers – food for example. Decline at least twice, hesitate once then accept it. So when they asked us if we wanted another espresso we instinctively said yes.. (who can say no to coffee?) but immediately we remembered what they’d told us and changed our answers to no.

All but the tiniest of cousins missing in the photo. She was a little too shy.

At noon we went out to have lunch at a restaurant which of course they insisted on treating us to. They told us to try the Shopska salad for starters, which consists of tomatoes, cucumber, onions, paprika and grated cheese – simple yet delicious. This restaurant had a lot of weird stuff on the menu and Georgi had lamb brain. We stuck to the less intricate roasted pork neck so they didn’t have to translate the entire menu for us.

Maybe it’s tasty?
Thank you very much for the lunch, it was delicious and filling!

Then we headed back to their apartment and had a final coffee before packing our bags and driving back to their business to take out and load our bicycles for travel. They asked what route we were taking towards the border of Turkey and as it turned out, they told us that road we had picked was under construction for many kilometres. They even drove us there with the car first to check with us if we still wanted to go there. You guys are among the most relaxed and kind people we’ve met along our journey and it was a pleasure to get to know you.

With rough gravel and gigantic rocks lying around we opted out of cycling the planned route. So we said our good byes to our newly found friends and decided to take a longer route, the only alternative to the main highway which we were tired of by now since we’d followed it through almost all of the country and its highly trafficked. The road we now followed was a small introduction of what was to come in western Turkey – rolling hills. It was very beautiful and no cars at all. We pitched our tent and had our final night in Bulgaria right before the border and were excited to experience something different compared to Europe.

The following days we met a lot of friendly people, a few long distance tourers and were also introduced to Turkish hospitality, but more on that in the next post.

Until next time!

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