To Yazd

During the three days of sitting around ruins I've come up with a new plan. I have 10 days to get to Esfahan to renew my visa. Instead of turning west and having a leisurely 300km through the mountains to Esfahan, I might just be able to make it via Yazd, if I have some big kilometer days. Otherwise, to go to Yazd would have meant doubling back. Nobody wants to double back.

I wake up at 5. It's dark in the tent. I'm not awake as I pack the trailer. I tried to have an early night but it didn't work. On the corner of the highway and turn off to Pasargadae, there's a restaurant. They didn't open until 8pm but they let me in early. From 8pm, buses stopped and everyone came in to eat. I ordered but nothing came. I just wanted to eat and sleep. I ordered again and still nothing happened. Bus loads of people ate. I didn't. I went to the kitchen. Finally I ate at 10:30. I'd arranged to camp here. There's a large canvas tent in the front corner of the grounds, and I set up my tent inside. The buses kept coming all night. I didn't get much sleep.

I'm slow to pack. When I finish there's no one around. The gates are padlocked. I walk around the grounds, crunching on gravel paths but nobody comes. I can't wait. I use a bench and lift the bike over the steel fence. The trailer is heavier, but it goes over too. Then I'm on the road.

It's cool before the sun, but it doesn't last long. Neither does the river valley. I start to climb up and out of the Zagros. The hill slopes are spring green. There are nomads grazing sheep.

Spring green in the mountains

Nomad camp

The different directions of the highway are usually seperated by 100 meters. Now they follow different sides of gulleys, around different sides of hills. The other direction has lower grades, is less winding, has deeper cuttings. My legs are in flames trying to keep in double digits. And there are fire ants. I noticed them a little bit yesterday, but today they are serious. Every nerve of the skin of my arse bones is being attacked by an aggravated fire ant. There's nowhere I can sit on the saddle that helps. These must be saddle sores. I was warned about saddle sores. The extent of the warning was that I would get them. Not what they are or what to do about them. I can't tell if there is a physical sore, or it's just the nerves going berserk. Not without special equipment. Or a very close friend. I have neither. I wonder if waxing would help? I don't have the equipment or the friend to find out. Walking into a beauty parlour and trying to explain it would probably get me arrested.

There's a town. I should be near the top. I stop and chew icecream, biscuits, toffees. Drink lemon beer. There's a big range of alcohol free beers here. Mostly they're pretty bad, but it keeps the breweries in business. The best ones are fruit flavoured. It's better if you think of them as a carbonated fruit beverage. They just happen to be brewed with malt and hops, and that adds some depth of flavour. Of course lemon is the best, but every now and then pomegranate, apple, pineapple are a good change.

Back on I keep grinding upwards. It gets steeper, and I see a summit. On one side there's an ambulance station, the other side a towtruck yard. It's a roller coaster, slowly clicking four hours up, up, up. Now I'm tipping over the edge. Into the drop. I lose my stomach. The speed limit is 60. I burst through it. Trucks are in low gears and I go wide to eat them up. One truck decides to pass another. I touch the brake lightly, trying to judge it. Lose as little speed as possible. Then I'm in behind the truck and sucked forward by it's draft. I make hard fists around the brake levers, and lean back in the seat to avoid a mouth full of tailgate. The truck drifts back right and I shoot past back up to full speed. 70. 75. I sit up in the seat, catching all the wind. The surface was perfect, but now i'm getting vibrated to hell. The surface has a pattern cut into it. For grip in the ice. There's a corner coming. It's fast, but I need to take some speed off. The trailer goes everywhere. The surface and braking it doesn't like. I wrestle it. The fishtails get bigger. I'm not going to hang on to it into the corner. I'm ready to be abraided into oblivion. I stick it through the corner and the grade shallows. At the top of a small rise I stop to check the trailer. I've lost my flag. I've just done 30km in 30 minutes. I won't be going back for it.

It's flat now. Slightly downhill. I stay in 30's and 40's. Devouring the kilometers. I turn right. Put my back to the mountains. It's quieter off the main road. Out into the desert.

It's been 160 km, 8 hours when I roll into Arbakuh. There's a hotel on the outskirts, but it looks expensive, so I keep going into town. The signs are confusing at a roundabout. I'm stopped. A guy on a motorbike wants me to come and eat at a restaurant across the road. I ask about a hotel. There's one in the restaurant. It doesn't look like it. I ride up the road, but I don't see anything so I go back to the restaurant and stop. The guy comes out. He's big with a rectangular head and thin mustache. His friend comes out too. He's also big and rectangular, with a rectangular head, rectangular glasses and rectangular gap between his front teeth. When they talk to me they're not trying to communicate. They don't simplify. They're idiots. They touch the bike. Fingerprint the mirror. One squeezes my arm. He thinks it's skinny. They're harmless. But buffoons. I can't be bothered with this. A couple of older guys come out of the restaurant and we all go inside. I sit with the older guys. I can't tell who works here to ask about a room. The older guys order me a kebab. The buffoons are at another table. We eat. One of the men reminds me of Manuel from Fawlty Towers. He is from Yazd. He is going back there now. I can put the bike in his ute and come with him. Thanks, I'll ride there tomorrow. Tomorrow he comes back to Arbakuh. He will see me on the road and I can stay at his house. One of his children speaks English. Okay. The hotel I saw is the only hotel.

I check in and sleep. On dusk I wake up and walk into town. I take pictures of a caravanserai. I walk for an hour but don't find internet. My legs feel fine. Nothing.

Arbakuh caravanserai

I leave early again, but the town is long. I was out of Shiraz in 15 minutes, but this town just keeps going. Out on the flat I hurt already. It's slow. In the teens. It's flat but turning the pedals is hard. There's a head wind. I turn ninety degrees and it's still a head wind. It's going to be a long day. The fire ants don't let up. Yesterday they came and went, but today they're non stop. This is only the flat. I still have to cross mountains to Yazd. It hurts. I have to keep moving here or I'll never make it. I've been going three hours when the green ute toots it's horn and comes to a stop. I stop, and Mahmood comes across the sandy median to me. I have his address, but the map is too coarse. I have no cell phone. What time will I get there. I don't know. Two o'clock. I'm an optimist. We will meet at Imam Hossein square at Three. Three and Four, to be safe.

Desert architecture

I reach Deh Shir. It's only 55 flat kilometres but it's taken three and a half hours. Now I go up. I've got nothing to keep the speed up with. I do 8. 7. This is walking speed. I can see the whole climb in front of me. It's better when you just have to get to this corner. Just have to get to this corner. It's not as long as I thought, but it's not over at the top. On top it undulates. I coast every down without changing gears. When I'm back to walking speed I start pedalling again. When there's a down with no more up I feel like I'm going to cry. From here it's down all the way to Yazd. I don't pedal unless I have to. I'm in a hard tuck. Aerodynamic. But there's instability in the trailer at 55. I experiment. Weight forward causes instability. Weight back is stable. Now my legs aren't on fire, just my bum.

Knackered already, and now I have to cross this

Looking back towards Arbakuh when I think I'm almost at the top. So wrong.

I reach Imam Hossein Square just before three. 160km, 9 hours. I put trousers over my cycle shorts, swap shirts and lie in the grass almost sleeping. At four I'm just starting to wonder how long I should wait when the green ute screeches to a stop. He was running late. He just did the 160 km in an hour and ten minutes so he wouldn't miss me. We fit the bike on the ute and go to his house.

I shower. I'm served cold drinks, lunch, tea, more food, more tea, by wife and daughters. Then Mahmood, eldest daughter Atefeh, who speaks English, and I go into Yazd to see some sights. We go to one of the historic homes, that is now a public garden and restaurant. Yazd is a desert city. Many of the old buildings have a badgir, a wind tower. It collects the breeze and directs it down into the house, usually over a pond for further cooling. It works incredibly well. It almost feels like air conditioning.

Atefeh, Fakhri, Mahmood and me

Badgir (wind tower) on the Governor's old residence

Now a public park and restaurant

Back at home for more tea, then we go out again, this time with mother Fakhri as well. We go to the edge of town and there are some low hills. The sun is going. The hills have round stone towers on them. The Towers of Silence. Such a good name. Yazd is where the biggest population of Zoroastrians still lives. Up until the 1960's these towers where where the bodies of the dead were laid out for the vultures. Half way up the steep path a wind comes. It's fierce. On a spur it's difficult to stand up. It's blowing sand off the desert. Stones blow off the path. And there are big rain drops. It's fantastic. Mahmood and I continue to the top in the desert windstorm, then skip back down the path to the car. I'm elated.

Towers of silence


In the morning there's a long breakfast. Cell phones go constantly. Mahmood goes to work, but the rest of the family sit and talk. There's two girls and two boys, The oldest three are in their twenties and at university. The youngest just finished school. I like them. They joke with each other. There's a lot of laughing. They're very kind.

I spend the next two days in Yazd. Getting lost in the mudbrick lanes of the old city. Seeing how the underground water channels and reservoirs feed the city. Visit the mosques. I visit the Ateshkadeh, an eternal flame supposedly kept burning by the Zoroastrians since around 470AD.

I sleep and eat in the old houses, built around courtyards, that are now converted to hotels and restaurants. I even manage a vegetarian day, dolmeh bodemjun (stuffed eggplant) for lunch and eggplant with dried kurds (like a baba ganoush) for dinner.

Jameh mosque

Tomb of the 12 Imams


Atashkadeh, eternal flame, burning continuously for over 1500 years they say

Restaurant/hotel courtyard in one of the traditional homes

Eggplant and dried kurds. Probably sounds better using the Farsi name. It's good. And, well, it's not meat on a stick.