Heading out of Zanjan...Police intruiged by our bikes...
Farming is more intensive in northern Iran...
The roads are always the same....flat and straight for miles on end....
Self potrait
You could stick a fine hurling pitch in that!!!!
We cycled parallel to this railway line for most of the day...
Choo Choo....It's The Orange Blossom Special....
Good ould Rusty....
A collapsed bridge 25km from Miyameh..
Pretty class feature right at the edge too!!!
Paul entering the abyss (well..... just a road tunnel!!)
....and out again....(Paul listening to coffee break Spanish today)
Lots of these type of settlements along the way....
Bessie.....thinks that being all alone in this fresh pasture must be somebody's form of a sick joke!!!....
Roads are carved through the likes of this rock all the way along....
Entering Miyameh....Patriotism all the way
Show us a ray of light.....(We need to find lodgings for the night)
Enter our very own Robert De Niro....(aka Meidi)...."The Fixer"
too good to be true.....
Meidi not only sorted us out in the local sports complex (complete with tv and hot showers), but arrranged for us to have dinner (albeit kebabs) at 8pm....What a man!!!!.....So with a whole sports complex to ourselves and full stomachs, we hit the scratcher knowing that a push off 130km or so would take us into Tabriz (last big city in Iran before the Turkish border)...
Day 103: Miyameh - 25 km outside Tabriz (114km) - Distance travelled so far 5823km "The 85km climb and The Stay at an Iranian Red Cresent Centre (aka "Red Moon") "
Waking up this morning was extremely pleasurable....It was yet another successful nights rest/stay at the most peaceful of environments. These sports complex's are dynamite altogether!!!........One great trait which the Iranians possess in abundance is "privacy"...."They know when enough is enough" and to leave one another in peace....They like to help, but once that task is finished, they simply say goodbye....
You may remember, how exhausting it was for us in Nepal and India that whenever we stopped, that a whole host of people would flock around us sometimes staring at us for hours....We thus found it so difficult to catch a minutes peace towards the end of our days' cycle...
True is, it is indeed the "nature of the beast" - and is what we signed up for...... Possessing the "yeti- like" beards probably doesn't help our cause either, but I suppose the point is, that we are beginning to enjoy our personal freedom a little more again.....It feels great!!!......
Meandering Iranian roads...Scenery is pretty class at the moment
....and damn proud of it too
The hills have eyes
Believe it or not, the hills are never too devoid of activity around these parts. You will always spot a farmer, a hill walker or even a family of picnic'ers stumbling along some part of the hill/mountain...
Most small cities up here have a Ferris wheel....Miyameh was no exception
'
The remains of an old town settlement.....potentially a good camping spot we reckoned
Pausing after one very steep ascent (We did a total of 84km of this to be exact)
The Sahandkuh Mt Range (It's where Tabriz'ins hit the slopes)
Reflecting on a galiant effort....Nearly there
We reach a town about 25-28km outside Tabriz and reckon that reaching it (when fresher) in the morning would be far better than pushing ourselves too much....250km in two days is a pretty good return having regard to the climbs and winds etc.....
We are offered great lodgings in a place named Shibli, just outside Bostanbad....The place is akin to a search and rescue centre....The boys give us a big room, blankets, tea and home cooked rissotto, which lets just say....needed to be falsley consumed to cause minimal offence to a most pleasent and hospitalble head chef.......(pretty harsh stuff!!!)
We play some volleyball with the whole rescue team and then retire for the evening.....Another great evening for the us all.....
Mike panned out in the luxurious surrounds of The Red Cresent
We arose in the morning (not too early, about 10am) to complete a leisurely 25 odd kilometers to Tabriz. There is a 2km steep ascent to start out with, but the remainder is pretty much a free-role in Tabriz city. The city is v-big and accomodation is great to find....We book into a place called Mamoodi in the centre of town.
Tabriz will offer us alot and we plan to stay here till Monday at least....so its bike repair, some premiership football, laundry, showers and correspondance it is...Lots to do on our days off us bhoys.....but we do know that Turkey is only a stones throw and that we are still on the road....
Cheers again for all the support over the last month....It has been of tremendous importance to us...
Slan
The lads.
