Nomad Country

It's a long time since I was on the bike. I've missed it. Sitting down there, lonely in the hotel courtyard. I spent the day after I renewed my visa giving it its 30 day service. It's rearing to go.

We don't leave town early. I see the palace I've been too late for three times in the morning. Then pack slowly and ride back to Jolfa, the Armenian Quarter after 12. I have two important stops there. First bike store. Then restaurant.

The bike store is a long shot. I've already tried twice. The first time I walked past I saw the flag. I went in. It's the same type as the flag I lost from the trailer. Only it's even better. It's white and it says Giggle in pink and purple bubble letters on both sides. The guy wouldn't sell it to me and I couldn't understand why.

I go back later, I have to wait for the shop to reopen after the afternoon siesta. I want to buy the flag. I can't understand his reply. You don't sell the flag? No, I don't sell it. For a million Toman you don't sell the flag. More long explanation I don't understand. Grrrrrr!

This time it's not open. I give up. I go to the restaurant for another mountain of Bogali Pulau. Rice with dill and broad beans. No meat. It's $1.80. It's really good.

Now it's after 3 and I follow the river out of town. River bed I should say. No busy roads. First I'm going through parks, then it turns into vegetable plots and orchards. Up ahead I see the Ateshkadeh, the Zoroastrian fire temple, on top of a hill. It's one of the attractions I haven't seen yet. When The hill comes adjacent I turn away from the river, and pass several old pigeon towers. Before agrichemicals, these towers housed , I don't know, millions probably, of pigeons, whose manure was collected for fertiliser. Now they are empty.

Ateshkadeh, further up river.

Abandoned pigeon tower

Before climbing the hill to the Ateshkadeh for the evening views, I visit the Shaking Minarets 2km down the road. This unspectacular 14th Century tomb is world famous in Iran, and is probably one of the most over-rated tourist attractions on the planet. Every hour, an attendant climbs into the top of one of the minarets, and with feet and hands planted against the window frames, starts to rock the minaret backwards and forwards. The bells suspended from the wooden frame start to ring. When the minaret really gets going, the other minaret begins to wobble too, and it's bells ring slightly. It's underwhelming.

The Ateshkadeh is much better. A steep climb up the bald dusty rock gives cool breezes and views of Esfahan sprawling in every direction. The sprawl carries on to include Najaf Abad, 30km west. The light starts to fade on top of the Atashkadeh. I need to get out of town before it gets too dark.

Shaking minarets

View of Esfahan from the Ateshkadeh

I ride west on the main road and it's on dark as I get to Najaf Abad. I go down main street instead of the bypass looking for something to eat. By the time I've eaten it's fully dark. Now I want to just get out of town to find a spot to camp.

Not a lot of tourists come through here. I'm followed by boys on motorbikes asking questions. Some of them are very persistent. Where am I going? It's worse when I don't really know where I'm going. They have zero English. It seems like I'm invited to eat or sleep. But I'm wary of invitations from big groups of boys in big towns in the dark. Eventually I leave them behind, and exhausted from it, I find my way through the town to the highway. I find a dusty spot to camp, hidden from the highway behind a steel water tower lying on it's side.

I'm away when the light comes at half past five. I stay off the highway, riding the dirt roads that parallel it until they run out. After 20 kilometres there's a town. I stock up on bread, biscuits, water, tuna. I have nuts already. 20 more kilometres there's a village and I turn north. It's 35 kilometres of sealed road to Dehaq, then who knows after that. The map says there's tracks going North, but it's accuracy has not been too reliable. Still, yesterday I didn't have the map out. Somehow I like having a map better, even when it's wrong.

I stop for morning tea in the shady plantations of a village. A couple of boys spot me and come to talk. It doesn't take long to exhaust our mutual language and they leave. I'm still there when they come back with another friend. This time I leave. The temperatures are still pleasant. There's hardly any traffic. It's great riding.

Morning tea spot

When I get to Dehaq the streets are quiet. Today is the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death. Black flags hang from the lamp posts as I arrive. Dehaq is a big town but at 12:30 it's deserted. I roll through without seeing anyone and find a spot onder some trees for lunch and a siesta. I get going again around 3.

A few kilometres out of town is a power station. The road disappears. A guard comes out to see me. A dirt track goes around the power station, and I ask him if it goes to Hasan, the town shown on the map. He doesn't know the name. He says the road is closed. I ask about the other towns. He doesn't know them. Delijan? It's a bigger size dot on the main Esfahan-Tehran highway 100km North. He points back to Dehak, then I turn off there. to the highway. I'm not going back. I persist with the dirt road. Closed, why? Ashphalt nist. Motor nist. People nist. It sounds perfect. I refill my water bottles, and head up the dirt track as the guards shakes his head.

It has to go somewhere, there's powerlines. Five minutes later the powerlines end at a tin shed in a barbed wired compound. A pumping station probably. Then there's just a dirt road heading straight North.

I cross the flat then up over a line of hills and down into another flat mountain basin. It's great riding. I love being on the bike and out on my own. At the next hill crossing the road goes straight up a gully. A few gullies over there are sheep bells and shepherds whistles as three horsemen herd a flock up through the rocks.

On the top, the sheep are wandering across the road. I wait for a while, but it could be a long time before the nomads come past, so I carry on down into the next basin.


A tiny dust plume ahead shows a vehicle coming this way. By the time I can tell it's a car, I've decided I don't want a human interaction spoiling my solitude. I pull off the road and behind a mound to have a drink while the car passes.

I'm still in the same basin when I decide it's time to stop. It's 6:30 so it's been a long day. But it hasn't felt like it. I take the bike off the road and set up camp behind a mound. Occasionally sounds of nomads drift in on the wind. A sheep bell. A whistle. A voice. I scour the slopes but I can't see anything. The sky is the clearest it could be. The stars are the brighter than I've ever seen. It's high and dry and dark. Later the full moon comes up. It's a beautiful night.


In the morning a wisp of smoke rising out of a fold in the valley reveals the nomad camp. Completely hidden. I'm ready to go at 5:30 but the front tyre is flat. I've ridden through a storm of glass. It takes until 7:30 to pick the glass splinters out of the tyres with the tip of my pocket knife. I ride up the next lot of hills and see the valley below. First there's a big fenced compound square in the middle of the road. Something to do with the radar station on top of the ridge. I don't want to find out. Then further ahead is the next village and the East-West road junction.

I come down the hill, and off the road before I get to the compound. It's early enough that there could be nobody around but I don't want to risk it. The compound is on top of a small hill. I stay far enough below the brow to be out of sight. When I'm past I come back to the dirt road and carry on down into the basin. The East-West road is sealed. I cross it and continue North on the dirt. The junction is to the side of the village, so I pass around the back, seeing only a couple of shepherds. My back wheel is flat. I missed a piece of glass. Now there are also a few thorns from the brief offroad as well. Now It's 9:30 and I've come about 5km, but it's not frustrating. It just seems like a thing to do. Part of it.

I carry on, climbing now, around the side of the hills. I can see the Tehran highway in the valley below, but I avoid it as long as I can. There's wobbling from the trailer. The tyre is flat. I hadn't even checked it. Totally neglected the little workhorse. I pick the glass out of the tyre and repair the tube.

It's hot now, and soon I'll be out of dirt road, so I stop for lunch and a siesta in a mud walled orchard. There's rose bushes and nut trees. I can't really sleep with the flies and the ants, but it's a good rest.

I start riding again around 3 and I'm quickly back on the highway, running through a narrow valley. It's fast on the seal and I race into Delijan. I refill my water bottles eat a couple of icecreams and get through the town. Out the other side I'm back on dirt roads. The map shows a track through the mountains to Qom, passing through a place called Neaufle-le-Chateau which sounds too good to miss.

The wheat fields are crisscrossed with dirt tracks. There's no single obvious track. So I zig zag my way North and up. The other tracks fade and I might have the right one. It traverses the side of a lone mountain. I stop before it turns back down to the valley. I look for clues. I take some photos. There are great storm clouds.

Nothing like a candid snap to capture the mood of the moment.


A car passes in the distance. Quick enough to be a reasonable road, but still dirt says the dust cloud. I watch where it disappears into a fold in the mountains. That's the clue I needed. But it's going to be cross country to get to that dirt road. Most of the stream beds and gullies run east west, but there's a bulldozed creek bed that will take me to the road. Just have to cross a few gullies to get there. I head down into the gullies. Up one. Down one. Up another. Down another. It's too loose and steep to ride. I'm pushing the bike. The place is mad with crickets. All sizes. All colours. Leaping everywhere.

I'm at the bottom of one gully and I hear motorbikes. They come to a stop on the track. The same place I stopped. They'll definitely see me. I'm red and flouro yellow. They're looking. Then the motors are revving and they are coming down. I push the bike up into the creek bed. I can't outrun them, but if I can just get far enough maybe they won't find me. I jump on and try to ride but it's loose stones. I get off, and push the bike again, breathing hard. Then I hear the engines. they're in the creek bed. I push the bike up the side. At least I'll have high ground. No sign of the road.

The first motorbike comes around the corner of the creek bed and rides up next to me. He says hello and asks where I'm from. He has dark stubble all the way up to his hard eyes. Strong shoulders. We start talking. He wonders what the heck I'm doing out here. I tell him my friends are waiting for me at the road, I decided to come the long way. I'm still sizing things up when the next guy comes running around the corner with a watermelon under one arm and a thermos of tea under the other. Followed by the second motorbike. It's hard to be concerned about a group of guys out on a picnic.

I stay for tea and watermelon. The first guy, Essy, speaks a bit of English. They're members of NA. Narcotics Anonymous. It's starting to get dark. I take my leave and keep heading for the road.
Mohammad Reza, Essy and Mahman, chased me cross country to share their picnic. That's hospitality.

It's 8:30 when I get to the track. I drop back down into the gully and put up the tent.It's been another long day. A good day. The storm clouds look like rain but I doubt it.

It does spit a few drops in the night, but not enough to get through the tent. Can't have been much then.

I sleep till 7:30. Take my time packing up. I'm on the road at 9. Sitting on the road. Tyres are flat. All of them. A few thousand years of grazing has left this vegetation well armed with thorns. The tyres are filled with them. It takes me until 12 to ease out all of the prickles. I'm all out of spare tubes, and getting low on patches. The tyres are destroyed.

The place I sit all morning picking out thorns and patching tubes. The hill at the back was where the last track was. I went cross country in between. Looks flat. That's how it looked from the hill too.

Finally I get going. After a kilometer the back tyre is flat. I pump it up again and hope it will stay up. I watch it all the time and it keeps air. I take the road up into the fold of the mountains but there's no pass. No way through.

It's hot again. I follow the road along the base of the mountains. A lot of up and down on steep loose dust and stone tracks. I'm walking on the up hills. On the downs I'm braking, trying to protect the tyres. One of the ups is so steep I take one step, plant my feet and pull the bike up towards me, then take another step. I gain a foot at a time. This is when I start cramping. 1pm. I haven't been mixing salt and sugar into my water. I got lazy. Now I suffer for it. My forearm cramps when I hold the seat. My hip flexor cramps as I pull the bike up. The last two days have been pure fun. Funtime's over. I reach the top and roll down. Walking up the next rise both quads are cramping. I continue up and down until one up reveals a village on the other side. I go down into the village and up the other side, again pulling the bike up loose dirt tracks one step at a time.

Surprise village

Then I have a choice. The road left will take me to the ridge then probably down to the highway. Surrender. The road right will take me down into a valley, with a stream, and it looks like the road might go through a pass at the head of the valley. I go down. I've started coming up towards the head of the valley when a car comes. The road is a dead end. There is a factory in 1km, then finished. Nothing. They suggest I wash my face in the stream. My hands are black with bike grime. My face probably is too. I take their advice and stop for lunch. It's the last of my food. I'm on my last bottle of water. It's 3 already, so I can't stop for too long.

Going back up the hill I just came down is demoralising. I'm walking. Then I'm past the fork and ride to the top of the ridge. I give the back tyre more air and head down. It's sealed. In 20 minutes I'm back on the highway. 24 hours of cross country wiped out in 20 minutes.

Now I slog it out to Qom. The road follows a river downstream. Should be easy. Of course not. The back tyre goes flat. I put the spare tyre on but there's too much traffic noise. I can't hear a leak. So I just put the same tube back in unpatched. From here there's a ridge ahead. Clouds of dust blow across the road. I climb slow. Then it undulates. Then it climbs again, long and slow. I'm shifting from side to side in the saddle to change the degree to which each calf is cramping.

Now there's a long slow downhill, but there's a headwind. Then the seal disintegrates and I'm dodging potholes and cracks. It's slow and painful. I'm pumping the tyre every hour. At 8 I'm on the edge of the city. It's bigger than I expect. There's neon everywhere. It takes until 9:30 to get into a hotel.

Three 12 hour plus days in a row. The first two were because I was having so much fun. The third one wasn't. Time for a rest day.