The border is straight forward but tedious. Especially the Turkmen side, where police, dressed in all sorts of clothes – from camouflage to cowboy hats – all hold different stamps and papers to be filled-in and paid for. When taking all my luggage through an x-ray machine, the officer behind the screen enjoys guessing all of my belongings to be something illegal: ‘A Kalashnikov? A syringe for drugs?’

The road through Turkmenistan is surprisingly green with, I guess, Soviet-inspired irrigation canals everywhere. No cotton though. All construction sites along the road seem to be in a stalemate. Roads, buildings, pipelines. No machines to be seen; no workers around. It feels rather dead except for the farming.

Sleep at a roadside restaurant with nice caretakers. Fish from an adjacent river for dinner.

Rain the whole day. And quite chilly, too. Freezing toes. Bright red poppy flowers in full bloom give some brightness to an otherwise dull scenery. In Sarakhs – the border-town between Iran and Turkmenistan – a new hotel gives me a discount price for a night’s comfort. 5 dollar instead of list-rate 30. Thanks a bunch!

Tomorrow, I’ll cross the border to Turkmenistan and leave Iran behind. I’ll remember the proudness and nationalism, the importance of being seen as different from the Arabs, the camping traditions around Nouruz (the Iranian new year), the chai, the food, the hair fashion (”No-no! Shave your beard, but not your hair!”, as host Mehdi said), the nose fashion (highest percentage of plastic surgeries per capita in the world, they say) but more than anything else the grand hospitality of the Iranian people. There are no words to describe their kindness.

Begin cycling again after more than a month off the saddle. Camp the night outside a police station in roadside village Marzdavan. Rain at night.

After eight hours of cycling, there is just enough time and energy left to think out a good dream to dream, and fall asleep. Simple. Fantastic.

After a long wait, I finally got my visa to Iran. A big thanks is appropriate to those who helped me to endure three weeks in glass, steel and concrete: Lee, Mathew, Angela, Mohsen and Fereshteh. I got ticket for the boat across the Persian Gulf for the next morning. My bags weighted in at 43 kg – lucky they didn’t include the bike and trailer (total 60 kg) with which I would have had to pay over weight. I arrived by late evening to busy Bandar Abbas and in company of a Dutch backpacker pitched tent by a police post between the sea and the bazaar.

The next day is a hot start after too many days in air-con Emirates. Fortunately the road winds uphill, and after just four days I find myself at above 2,000 meters. I’ve been invited to peoples’ homes for dinner and sleep three of the four nights, although one of them ended up with camping with the police due to the host being a heavy opium smoker (smells like old socks). That fourth night at Jebal (mountain) Barez, is spent in the house of local English teacher Mohammad with wife and kids. His invitation is proof not only of the world-famous Iranian hospitality, but also the people’s great curiosity and hunger for meeting new people and knowledge. Before I leave the next morning, he asks me one favor: to send him jokes in English by SMS!

Up to main-town Mashhad in the northeast of Iran (from where I’m now about to depart to Turkmenistan just 200 kilometers ahead) the road cut through an empty desert and else mostly desolate, bare mountains. But the people – and the police who drove me for about 150 kilometers due to fears of opium smugglers – made this desert more pleasant and interesting than any previous one that I’ve passed through. If not invited to someone’s home – invariably treated with great food and comfort – I camped by the police checkpoints. And when No Ruz (the Iranian New Year) celebration begun, I was just one of many campers as locals, too, headed out to enjoy the nature during their two-week long vacation. Iran: one of the most picnic- and camping friendly countries I’ve been to.

Through hospitalityclub now good friend Mehdi put me up in Mashhad and kept my bike safe while I went to Tehran for a nine-day vacation with my parents and for getting the Turkmenistan visa. The latter – transit for just five days – is now in my passport and I’m back in Mashhad. Ahead lies a 500 kilometer desert stretch of land to be crossed in those five days. Worse than that stress is to leave all the great friends I’ve found in Iran – most of them in Mashhad and Tehran where I’ve spent about ten days each. In Iran you are part of the family as a guest and, if you don’t think twice, you might find yourself with a family of your own, too! I have a lot to think of during those five days in Turkmenistan; a lot of friends that will occupy my mind. The down part of meeting someone is, of course, that you’ll have to say goodbye. My weakness.

By reaching Mashhad, I took a month off from the saddle to tour the Northwest and central parts of Iran – the latter together with my parents whom came over to visit me. Here is a collection of photos from some of those beautiful Iranian cities.

Pedal the last 100+ kilometers to the country’s second largest city, helped by a good wind in the back. Dirty industrial quarters line the road for the last 20 or so kilometers, before giving way to city proper.

Hospitalityclub-host Mehdi meets me in the suburb where he lives, and he takes me home to his flat where I’ll rest up the next few days.

I will go back and forth to Tehran by train for a ten day vacation with my parents before returning here by late April to resume cycling north.

Pass by a beautiful valley, where blooming apple trees attracted domestic No Ruz-tourists in numbers for pick nick. Fresh apples, dried apricots and nuts are sold along the roadside. Ali, a random man out with his wife, invites me to share their lunch pick nick.

Camp by police checkpoint, next to a Red Crescent caravan.

Say goodbye to my wonderful hosts in Bajestan after a morning walk with Yaser and Moslem around the nearby ‘Victory roundabout’ – one with a bit of grass and trees, and of course also the odd tent of a family celebrating Now Ruz. Three laps. The name ‘Victory’ refers to the Iran-Iraq war, and photo portraits of the town’s young men who died in the same war, put up on small billboards along the towns few boulevards, remind its citizens of that same struggle, too.
Camp the night next to a police checkpoint caravan in Mehene, just past Feazabad.

Daughter Ahsam is quick to invite me to her family home in small-town Bajestan when I ask for directions ahead. Her fellow sisters, one brother, Yaser, and their mother greets me, and lets me stay the day/night. I end up hanging out with Yaser the whole day. He and his best friends, brothers Moslem and Mohsen, take me on an unforgettable tour around town, and I wish I was 19 years old, too. Later, friend of family Mohammad from Tehran shows us to a nearby village, where his father stays and herd sheep. Beautiful!

No escort today. Boring desert cycling. Camp at a police checkpoint, next to a Red Crescent Youth Organization tent. The two teenagers who work in the latter take me for a motorbike tour through town in the evening. Nice!

After 50 kilometers of escort – the police in a car, following me from behind – the police get tired of my slow speed and decide that I have to join them in the pick-up. 85 kilometers by car. Reach town Deyhuk an hour later.

Camp the night at a roundabout, next to a police station. The mosque park on the other side of the road is packed with twenty or so camping families with tents, and by 15:15, they toast the No Ruz – Iranian New Year 1388 – by raising a glass of mineral water.

Just 20 kilometers outside Ravar, a police car with two officers wait for me by the roadside, their trunk already open. I instantly get it. I’d known beforehand of the fact that drug smugglers roam the area, and that they’ve occasionally kidnapped, but never harmed, foreigners. Because of this, the police wants to escort me part of the way. As one of the officers drives, the other one scans the desert horizon with a pair of antique-looking binoculars, looking for those smugglers. When I ask them to be let go to cycle again, they repeatedly say: ”Danger”.

After some 75 kilometers, I’m let go. Another police car stops me just an hour further north, but I’m allowed to continue by bike. The last 20 kilometers, I’m again escorted, but this time the police vehicle follows me behind instead of actually driving me. I end up camping at a police checkpoint. The village Nayband which is marked out on the map, turns out to be a police checkpoint with an adjacent prison (!!).

Along the road, Mehdi, his wife and her English-speaking sister Akram invite me to their home in Ravar. Arriving in the late afternoon, they treat me like a king with great food, snacks and drinks, and wonderful company throughout the evening. Sleep on mattress on the living room floor.

My plan was to cycle north through the Kaluts desert but plans change when parked at a police checkpoint a truck runs over the wheel of my trailer. It’s completely smashed. He gives me 20 dollars on the spot, and a ride to main-city Kerman some 120 kilometers further west. A new wheel is five bucks, and a night in a hotel is another five. My route changes to follow the more western desert road past Ravar and Ferdows. Today, I also experienced my first real rain since Slovakia, I think!

Climb to mountain village Jebal Barez at 1,800 meters, where through a brother-in-law I’m invited to English-teacher Mohammad’s house. After an afternoon visit back to Jiroft, to see the pre-No Ruz buzz, the drive back up to Jebal Barez at night is about the most scary ride I’ve been on. Iranians truly drive suicidal.

It’s so so pleasant to leave behind the heat of the Persian Gulf – each day climbing further in land and up into the mountains of Iran.