2278 to Tehran

I may have covered hard days on the bike in previous blogs, so perhaps I will skip over it this time. Suffice it to say: In Qom, every time I left the hotel for a felafel and returned, walking up the two floors to patch more tubes, my legs felt like stone. They weren't feeling much better on the 130km to Tehran. It was only a run of the mill hard day. Nothing exceptional.

I take the toll road. It is a good choice. There is a no motorcycle sign when the road starts. Not a no bicycle sign. No annoying motorcyclists wanting to chat when I'm suffering. That's good. Also, tolls mean no trucks, and none of the crappy local buses, so no huge clouds of filthy black diesel smoke. Less traffic altogether.

Imam Khomeini Airport, one of Tehran's two international airports, is 30km South of the city. From there on, there are billboards for Swiss watches. Fancy billboards. On curved pedestals clad in aluminium panels. With flood lighting. Who is buying all these Swiss watches? How many watches does each billboard need to sell to pay for itself?

There are police with speed lasers every 10 or 20km. When someone is too fast, they wave them to stop. 10km out of Tehran the policeman is waving. A car passes. He's still waving. There's no more cars in my mirror. I turn and look back. No cars. He's standing on the white line. He has white gloves. Right hand palm towards me, fingers up. Left hand palm towards me, fingers horizontal, pivoting from the wrist, up and down. I point a finger to my chest. He nods his peaked cap. By now I'm right on him, so I squeeze the brakes. My tyre stops just short of his polished toe.

I start. A salaam ashi. Chetori? We exchange politenesses. We run through the usual things in Farsi. From New Zealand. Tourist. Bandar-e-Lengeh, Shiraz, Yazd, Esfahan, Gom. Going to Tehran insh'allah. I am alone. Engineer. Single.

Then we start on other topics, which I'm less familiar with, so I do a lot of guessing. You can't ride a bicycle on this road. Motorbikes are not allowed. It is only for cars. I ride here on the shoulder. There are no cars here. It's good. Okay? Passport. Yes. Show me your passport. Okay. I get off the bike. I get him to hold it. Then I crouch at the trailer and painstakingly start undoing buckles. Buckle. It only takes one and he can't be bothered. Okay. Okay? You can go. Thank you. Goodbye.

The distances signposted are not to the centre of a destination. They are to the edge. So when I reach the distance where Tehran should be, the toll booths are lined up. There are queues. If there's one thing a bike is good for, it's skipping traffic queues. I ride footpaths through the park and rejoin the road on the freedom side of the toll booths. That's 10 cents the regime doesn't get out of me.

There are offramps and overpasses. Time for a city map. I stop and pull out my guidebook. This is way outside the scope. The signs indicate expressways with names that don't feature in the book. A ute pulls over, and the driver calls to me through the window. I tell him bazaar markazi - central market - he says a bunch of things and drives off.

I'm riding again when another car pulls me over to give me directions I don't understand. With the third car I realise they've been asking me for directions. They must be desperate.

There are mountains to the North, running East to West, so I have orientation. Then I see a tower. It's on my map. I still have no sense of scale, but I know roughly the direction I should be going in. I've been warned about the traffic in Tehran. But it's not that bad. Actually, the expressways are better cycling than roads in other cities. Sure, there's still a car parked on a blind corner, the driver out, fiddling with his wiper blade, even though there's no prospect of rain. And it's common practice to just stop in the lane while you're deciding whether to take the exit. Or reverse hundreds of metres to a missed exit. Or do a u-turn and drive off an on-ramp. So I'm one of the more minor hazards for drivers to avoid.

I follow my nose to about where I want to be. Off the expressway, it's just regular city traffic. The first hotel has no single rooms. They won't give me a double room at a single rate, or even a discount. I carry on to the cheap hotel area. I've been on the bike 10 hours. I've been in the city an hour and a half. My trailer has been nudged by cars twice. I wish I had that flag. I go into the first hotel I see.

They don't have single rooms available. We start to negotiate. This hotel is very good. It is Lonely Planet's "Our Pick." Stupid Lonely Planet. In each city they recommend a hotel in each price range as "Our Pick" and every tourist in town goes there. And they are the same as every other hotel. Actually, they're worse because with all the business they've hiked up the prices and they don't need to negotiate. I've been trying to avoid them since Shiraz. Now, not only do I stumble into one, but the hotelier uses it as a negotiating point. I don't care what Lonely Plant recommends. This hotel is exactly the same as every hotel in this street. Are you going to give me the room at a single price or not? I get a room.

The next day is my birthday. My main objective for the day is to eat nothing but cake. Fortunately, I'm reminded in time that fruit and icecream are also part of the cake foodgroup. I spend most of the day fulfilling the objective while watching BBC World and CNN.

Birthday lunch........ and dinner.