6522 km Hello from Zanjan

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while, but finally we have an opportunity to give you all a new update! We stayed another day in Erzurum and guess what, we met up with Nick and Maartje for the third time on this trip. It was very nice to see them again and exchange our experiences about Turkey before we were all heading in the direction of Iran. When we finally did leave Erzurum, the way to the border was like the many kilometers travelled before. Lots of mountains. Going up, going down a little, while looking at a never changing landscape of dry mountains with hardly any vegetation on it. Villagers are getting scarcer and it requires a bit more planning now to stock up with the right quantities of food and drink. Also it gets a bit harder to find sleeping accommodation. Though we haven't used our tent that much in the last weeks it feels good that we always have the option to just drop that somewhere in between places. In case we don't make it to our preset goals.

Our experiences in eastern turkey were a little less pleasant then the first part we had seen (though not negative in any sort of way). We have been getting some looks from people who seem to have some issues with the cycling shorts we wear. Or even when covered up, like we do when heading into towns, it seems people are a bit negative. It's seems some have general issues with foreigners and seem to dislike us for no apparent reason. Kids here, seem to think it's incredibly funny to try and steal something of your bike and we even got stones thrown towards us two times as well. All not major issues though and surely not enough to spoil the very good impression of Turkey we have in general.

That good impression was topped of with the last two days cycling with the fantastic view of Turkish biggest mountain, mount Ararat, in sight. The top is covered in snow making it a very nice, Kilimanjaro like, view. We had a good look, but like many before, could not find Noah's Arc on there ;) We shot some real nice pictures as well but these will probably have to wait, since uploading is a bit hard from here. After mount Ararat it was only half a day more to the border. We had been cycling at great pace breaking our daily record with a 185 km from Ezurum til Agri.

We expected to meet some major trouble at the border and had been reading some stories from people that it would take lots of time. In fact we were pleasantly surprised to see we got waved through most of the 7! checkpoints and after a few simple questions and a visit to the bank we could move on. Not without gaining some serious weight though. On the border we had to change our Euro notes to Iranian Rials. Its impossible to get those anywhere outside of Iran and since our bankcards and credit cards are useless in Iranian ATM's, cash. We exchanged about 400 euro at the border and got a few kilo's of Iranian money in return. In total about 6.5 million Rial in 10.000 notes. A few amazed bank clerks later we were off cruising into Iran with our bags filled. Into the province of West Azerbaijan to be exact.

The first town of any note was Maku, where we spent the first night. We have to admit we felt a little anxious that things would probably be a bit more strict from now on. But when we crossed the border, the opposite happened. We noticed we actually got more and more relaxed at the sight of many Iranians welcoming us in Iran, giving us food and smiling and waving at us like there's no tomorrow. We also noticed there were quite some people eating despite the Ramazan. People are actually way more relaxed here then in the East of Turkey and many people don't even do Ramazan here. Also it seems a lot more people speak some English here compared to Turkey. In west Azerbaijan most Iranians are Turks, so they speak Turkish as well as Farsi (Persian) which is the dominant language in Iran. So for now we can still use some of the Turkish we had learned. It was a nice welcome in Iran the town of Maku.

The next day we broke our record yet again, making a nice 189km to Marand in a single day. Tabriz was getting in our reach already. When we arrived there, we decided it was a good moment to take some rest, get to see the town and get some things arranged. First we needed a new "bible" and head into town in search for a new lonely planet. Luckily there is always locals here eager to help a lonely wandering tourist and we got a nice escort to a large bookshop that actually had a copy. In the bookshop we met Ali and many other people we got to spend quite some time with. We had two evening meals together and especially Ali helped us a lot in arranging a ticket to Bombay for us. After all we are only allowed a limited number of days in Iran and we had planned not to cycle into Pakistan because of the volatile situation there. After 1.5 days we finally managed to get a ticked booked. It seems these things take a bit more time and tea to get arranged. But in the end we are very happy to have a ticket. We will be flying to Bombay on the 19th of October. This means we have almost the full 30 days for Iran (29) and we look forward to spending those days here.

After Tabriz we headed of for a place called Kandovan, quite near Tabriz. In Kandovan the houses are carved out of soft rock, making it the "Capadocia" of Iran. Since we missed this major sight in Turkey we decided to have a look here. It was a bit of a climb to get there but in the end definitely worth the trouble. Again some nice pictures were shot and the next day it was "easy street" of the mountain and picking up the route further east.

Near Maraqeh we met another cyclist. The 2nd one we met since Hungary (not counting locals going shopping of course ;) His name is Stellan Johansson and had actually also not seen any Westerner since Georgia. He had a stunning 36000 behind him already and even crossed the Sahara dessert on bike making us look like total amateurs :) More info for the internetjunkies can be found at his site www.sandstorm.se

By now we have reached the town of Zanjam. We don't plan to go into Tehran for now since we heard there really is not that much to see there. Another thing is that we don't look forward to cycling into a 14 million people town covered in smog and filled with drivers that makes Istanbul traffic look like a walk in the park. Maybe if we have time left after Esfahan we can decide if we want to give that a go or not.

For now our next goal is the city of Qom. Iran's 2nd religious city, where many people still wear the mullah and women are covered even more then in the rest of Iran. After that we move on to the 2nd big milestone of this trip Esfahan. Esfahan is fairly touristic we've heard (for Iranian standards that is) so I'm sure we will be able to send you another update from there. Its about 600 km from here, so give us a week for that will ya :)

Hope you have not fallen asleep after again a longer piece of text then planned... ;)

We'll keep you folks posted!

Erik and Tjeerd

p.s we did manage to get some pics on the web in the end, they can be found at:

http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa310/erikopdefiets/06%20Erzurum%20-%20Iran/

http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa310/erikopdefiets/07%20Iran%20-%20Zanjan/