Kharanaq and Chak Chak

I wake at 5 and again at 5:30. I haven't packed anything. By the time I'm leaving Yazd it's almost 6:30. There's already traffic. At 7:30 I turn off the main road and stop to eat the breakfast the hotel packed me last night. I take my time. It should be only 75k today and I've done 20 already.

More desert

It should be flat but it's not. It heats up. The road melts into the sky and I ride until the crest emerges from the liquid horizon. Then there's a short downhill and another long climb back into the liquid. I feel like Peter O'Toole. It helps. Except he just had to sit there and let the camel do all the work.

Coming the other way it would probably be the same. A long up and a short down. I hope I don't have to find out. There's nothing on my map out here.

There's not a lot of fire ants today. But when they bite I know it. There's definitely some rawness. The cycle shorts have a pad sewn into the crotch. This pair has a two-piece pad. Every so often the seam joining the two pieces rips me open. Tomorrow I'm wearing the other pair. Two days off the bike helped. But I need that week in Esfahan.

I've found the guest house at Kharanak by 11. Kharanak is a mudbrick ghost town on the edge of a desert plateau, at the border of Iran's two great deserts. To the east, the land falls away to the Dasht e Kavir (northern salt desert) and Dasht e Lut (southern sand desert), with nothing much else between here and the Afghan and Pakistani borders.

The guest house is one of the mud brick buildings. Simple and traditional. I get a room and sit out the heat of the day in the shaded courtyard. There's a young German couple here with a car. They've driven from Germany. They're the first non-Iranians I've spoken to in four weeks.

Guest house bedroom

Guesthouse courtyard

In the late afternoon I explore the old town. It's a maze of interconnected and crumbling mudbrick buildings. I climb eroded staircases onto the upper floors and roofs. Looking for vantage points. Careful not to fall through.


At the guest house there's no-one around. Ana and Andreas have gone out into the desert for sunset pictures. The guesthouse man went home after lunch. I write in the courtyard until it's too dark to see. Something tickles my ear. I turn. There's something big there. I jump. A camel has snuck up on me. I don't know how.

There's not much else to do so I pack for tomorrow and get ready for bed, waiting for the guest house man to come back for dinner. He doesn't. I go to bed hungry and pissed off. There's only the occasional clatter of crockery from outside as the camel nuzzles another cube from the sugar bowl. At least I'm going to get a long sleep.

I'm awake early and leave quickly. Out of the gate there's enough light to see a postcard stuck to the bike. The guesthouse man has asked the Germans to write it to me. It's asking me to leave money in the kitchen. A thousand tomans for the room and five hundred tomans for lunch. I've already left a thousand tomans in the kitchen. It was supposed to be a thousand for room and breakfast. Five hundred for lunch and dinner. No dinner. No breakfast. A thousand seems more than fair. I ride back into the desert.

The sun rises behind me and I feel fresh after a good sleep. The different shorts are working wonders. Imagining an irate guesthouse man on a motorbike gives me more impetus. I turn down a small side road with no sign. I think it will take me to Chak Chak. I don't have any of the hesitant pedalling that comes with uncertain direction. I go up past a couple of villages, then tip gently forward through the downhill side. The seal disappears, and the dirt road winds down through sand and gravel hills. I fly through it without regard for skinny road tyres.

Stoked on dirt road

The seal returns and I find a sign to Chak Chak. No English, but it's Chak Chak for sure. Side road, 4km. For the last kilometre I weave through groups of soldiers walking the road. These are the stragglers.

Chak Chak translates as Drip Drip. It's a Zoroastrian pilgrimage site. Sassanian princess Nikbanuh fled the Islamic invasion of 637 AD into the desert. Short of water she threw her staff at the cliff and water began to drip out.

The cliffside cluster of buildings and stairways looks like it was built in the sixties, and not cared for since. The Fire Temple is locked.

I drink tea with the two bus loads of soldiers while we wait for the grumpy stooped old caretaker to finish his breakfast. Everyone has to do 18 months of military service. Not women obviously. These are mostly 18 year old kids, a few are in their early 20's having finished university first. They seem to be joking and having a good time. Presumably happy that they're not the ones getting shot by drug smugglers and Baluchi seperatists in the eastern border regions. The leaders aren't in uniform and don't seem very soldierish. I don't like them. I can't put my finger on why. One of them wants me to stay at his house in Yazd. No thanks. He asks the others if I'm making taroff (refusing out of politeness). I tell him in Farsi that it's not taroff, I am going to Esfahan today. It shuts him up.

The temple opens, and I let the soldiers go in first. Once they're gone I have it to myself for a while. There's a tree growing out of the cliff, and nicely embossed brass doors. Other than that it's basically a drip coming out of a cliff.


The waiting around has left me with the heat to ride in, but it's not far, another 45k to Ardakan. It's bigger than I expect and I can't find the hotel. I ask two old guys sitting under a tree and they seem to have differing opinions on which direction it is. They call another guy riding past on a motorbike to show me the way.

Cleaned up, I head out to do some shopping. At one store they pass watermelons around the six shopkeepers and customers. Everyone has a tap and gives an opinion on which one I should buy.
When there's more or less a consensus, I go and line up at the bakery. The group at the window gets bigger and bigger, and occasionally a batch of flat loaves is passed out. I find out why everyone queues for bread. As soon as it's cool it's stale.