#biketouring

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!