DAY 14: "A 46-degree merge ideas." Persepolis - Shiraz - BUSEHR - BORAZJAN. 500 Kms.
I came to his door old Shiraz (Darvazeh Ghor) or door of the Koran.
I went to the Eram Garden (Bagh e Eram), ie the Gardens of Paradise. Eram
Plaza.
Eram Gardens.
remember that once inside I thought it was simply a botanical garden with some shrubs, some flowers, some nice fountains and gardens where a bunch of octogenarians did gymnastics on the orders of the instructor. But I realized that an Iranian accustomed to the arid and dry desert botanical garden was really a paradise, like a theme park, shade, plants, water and flowers
Palace included in its day probably a kind of harem, and I was surprised to see on the facade of building a mosaic of human figures, princesses bathing or something. This is because a Although Islam is interpreted in the prohibition of figurative representation as I said, outside the holy sites and in the private sphere (as was this Palace) at some times yes that was tolerated (eg Umayyad dynasty). Proof of this are the figures of the Patio de los Leones at the Alhambra in Granada.
After a while I went to the walls of Shiraz. (Citadel of Karim Khan Zand)
Shohada Square Tower
worked
Detail decoration.
I was surprised that the streets were fairly empty and shops were closed until I realized it was Friday, the Islamic day of rest, so I could not find an internet cafe. Asking around I stand in front of a shop / factory in tents, and the owner tells me super excited that he has internet and I almost dismounted the bike to enter padentro. Cup of chai and I kid you leave the PC in the store while the man sews me questions and told me that his son is studying at a university in England. But as the Internet that would pedal and no advance or the three, tells me he knows a cyber, I mounted behind the bike (remember that I have no back seat and put the top case to fit front tires so when we were both stuck up like lice in sewing), and tells me where to go. The notes give me a lap ahead of the entire tourist family that greeted the launch with screams (next to my ear) to hear all of the neighborhood, brothers, nephews, uncles, sons, each had their own trade for making tents, and all in the same neighborhood in direct competition.
This is quite normal in all Islamic countries. The trade is still practiced as it was here in the Middle Ages. In our cities there are many streets with the name "weavers", "tanner", "tinkers", "blacksmiths" etc. "street course because at that concentrated all artisans or traders of the same type. For in these countries are doing the same. If you want to buy a suitcase, you'll pack up the street and you'll find forty shops devoted to it, all the same. If you want a hardware store, the street hardware stores. Everything works well except maybe the food and ice-cream and drinks. It is certainly a way to encourage competition and price war to benefit consumers, but instead is a bummer to have you to guide each neighborhood to find everything you need. It is noted that the value of time is not the same as in the West ....
same happens for example in Turkey with repairers (Oto Servis) that accumulate all on the outskirts of the city and tell later.
stick around with the bike and all cibers we found were closed, and the man comes to telephone around the world. At the end brings me, I think, to his home, but once inside it is not his house but the neighbor who has a broadband connection. Total the neighbor, the wife, two sons and the notes, all looking at me while I plug in chafardeando email.
university's oldest son tells me that one lap and we do. Down after the bike with a smile from ear to ear. After a while the man then it brings me to his house, very luxurious (with raised and all who was vacuuming), and introduces me to his wife and took something. I try not to seem anxious to leave, but that total is to write two emilios sad I lost almost two hours ...
In line with this I will say that when you submit to an Iranian woman and Iran will not hand alarguéis because you going to take and the situation is a bit violent. Simply greets apparently without any contact. Tested in person.
I planted at the mausoleum of the poet Hafez (Hafezieh), one of the most visited country in the Musalla Gardens.
Plaza in Shiraz
visit the mausoleum of Shah and Cheragh, an important Shiite pilgrimage.
Next to it is the bazaar.
Mausoleum from the inside.
Yard ablutions.
View of the dome.
Impressive decor.
usual state of my bike every time he came back for her ... them apart just enough to answer questions as you can, open the suitcase, put on gloves and helmet and boots, all with 50 eyes escudriñándote. A bit overwhelming at times.
And without further ado I head Busehr, toward the Persian Gulf.
typical problem that occurs several times each day. I've grasped that there is a square and two directions to follow, but no fucking idea where I go! 50% of success then.
Multiple memories of the martyrs. It is curious that the more important you have a beard ...
Two couples going to the coast. The girls, though covered, they sit astride and caught the couple with no other problem than take the case.
The temperature is rising and rising higher as you go southward, and passing the 46 degrees are melting me to ideas. In these countries, between 12 noon and 6 pm everyone is hiding in his house, and when the temperature drops out in rout to occupy the streets looking for fresh air. First
finds a stream and stopping to cool off and soak the shirt, but after a while returns to be absolutely dry.
Then
find me a river and not think twice, inside!
I have dirty pants on fire and I decide it is a good time to wash.
A 46 degrees!
Spectators.
As a gustito ...
Hoping to reach the sea but I follow the road about a hundred miles later it seems that all clothing is on fire, so they meet again the river and this time I do not even undress, I remove the jacket and I get into the river with the boots, pants and shirt, full-Splash!
stop several times to cool (with hot water and 2-liter drums I have in the bags) even the seat is on fire. Al final, "achicharraíto" it reach the Persian Gulf.
The gateway to Busehr, if you look, there are two large murals with Hezbollah armed symbol "party of god", Lebanese Shiite political party funded by Iran and Syria whose militias have been officially declared a terrorist organization by United States among others. So be warned of what is and should be be careful with that comment as I do here, lest you have an encounter with a radical Islamist card ...
Detail.
This time the thing is easy, if I'm right I have only a 20% chance of being wrong (!)
again to 50% ...
However we got to the Persian Gulf.
Busehr has made news in recent months because it is where Iran has built nuclear reactor has provoked the conflict with U.S. intentions to use the alleged military purposes. Among the lineup of Hezbollah and the nuclear issue I thought it would be more internal controls or I'm going to take a Yankee spy, but the truth is that Busehr is a small city based on its port facilities, with no appeal and with small populations (except out of the university), and there was almost no local police. For not never met a sad hotel, but neither looked carefully. What interested me was touring the Persian Gulf coast, which at low tide offers a good place to practice sports or simply walking on the wet sand.
I went to a beach that has a nearby park where families go to spend the afternoon and I could give my well-deserved dip in the Persian Gulf. Refreshingly clear that little, because we were then to 45 degrees and the sea water was very hot.
afternoon I decided to let the lawn of the park and the sea water and the temperature was expected to decline, as it had to backtrack and was not willing to go out there again with the sun high in the middle of summer heat wave.
About
9 in the evening made his way back, but at 10 the temperature had dropped only 3 degrees and followed to 42, with an incredible embarrassment and night. Apparently this field stores the heat for long.
I decided it would stop a couple or three hours off the road for the thermometer to give a breath, and was going to drive at night until you reach the mountains. I looked for a site with a good lamp for fun arranging the bags and looking at maps, and found about a kind of factory that was a guard at the entrance barrier.
Soon a car passes by, then reverses and goes to me. They were a father and son child, the family apparently owns the factory, and they invite me, I think, to a glass of cool water. I accept and enter the factory. Communication with them and the two goalkeepers is pretty difficult, although one of them spent time working in Italy. The glass of water they gave me too, but in fact it was I had been invited to spend time in the "cool room", ie the fourth goal off the air conditioning and carpeting on the floor where so they will not recover from a heat stroke. I also explain that is not a factory, but a slaughter of animals, especially chickens. The things got exciting! Offered show me the inside but politely declined because I did not want to enter only in an unknown location in which professionally engaged to kill ....
Spend time and when I say I'm going to drive at night tell me they do not, there is much loose uncle dangerous driving, sleep for a while and I leave at dawn and that if I want I can stay to sleep at cool room that the goalkeeper. I agree it was still doing heat pyx and I foresee that if I drive all night stand is going to cost me awake and will also be much easier to get lost in the county small road that I expected.
Therein in the distance comes a guy dressed in white butcher "full option" waterproof boots, hat, etc., and with splashes of fresh blood. Luck was not carrying anything in his hands, but I go out there screaming like the movie "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ".... The man, round face and slanted eyes denoting be further to the east of these lands, spoke some English and told me that order. 1 - That was an Afghan. 2 - That he had a "room" inside the slaughterhouse. 3 - What if I wanted to go to the "room" to make "mush mush". The first thing that went through my head so I better keep quiet, but an adventure is an adventure, and I thought it that he had to work all night and I could sleep in his room. So I put the bike inside the building and follow him prometiéndomelas happy. But the figure was sharing the room with four Afghans (glups!). Total teach me the floor full of carpet and I say "welcome to the yard" and sleep wherever you want (because your ass so close to the wall as possible, I thought ...)
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Hey, hey, he runs the air!
Then as a tele-afghanistan saw with "paranoid", it seems that another had gone to cooking, or whether they are all with the food and invite me to dinner, ie rolling pieces dry cake of bread and a stew of liver (food that can not stand). I did my best not to look bad with the hosts and I pushed some fajitas with so little skill that several red scrofula suffered finished decorating my pants.
.
A comerrrrrr!
5
Where to eat, eat 6.
in Rome, do as the Romans.
With motorcycle parked a few meters, when the ear board and despite the heat I got a sweat on the sleeping bag, at least to offer some resistance if kept some five Afghans of evil intentions ...
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DAY 15: "The water that falls from the sky" Borazjan - Nurabad - Yasuj - MARGON - SEMIROM - QOMSHE - Isfahan. 700 kms.
As we agreed with the doorman at the entrance, at 5 in the morning I got up and left the factory, leaving at 5 Afghan sleeping peacefully on the floor of the room. Finally the temperature had dropped and about 10 degrees, and pass the desert to 36 degrees was much more bearable.
I also went to the mountains to Yasuj, some marked by small road and not even come in a few planes. If not for the GPS yet today would be around for the people. One of the things that bothers is when a road passes through a population, as it represents the whole world knows (except you, of course), through which one must follow, although the town has many unmarked intersections. Usually applied the unwritten rule that the bigger the street that corresponds with the road, but that rule goes wrong many times, and when you see the direction away from what should be, must be reversed. Specifically to cross Yasuj must take numerous detours and unmarked crossings, and inevitably going to ask people and the police that you are encountering.
De Where I come from ... and where I go!
slaughterhouse goalkeeper strongly advised me in Margoon cascades of which I was unaware, or whether they asked for them. One time I stopped to ask around me formed a circle of onlookers important, so that before the mess was made for a police car and finally decided to escort me around town and see me to turn off that is several kilometers. Damn the grace that I did because it could not stand to eat as planned, but they could make the ugly .... The
such helmets meant a detour of 130 km that were not foreseen, but the scenery was beautiful, and as I knew immediately that it was worth confide the goalkeeper. Es-pec-ta-cu-la-tion, not so much flow, or by height, but especially for being the first waterfalls "interactive" I know. In a country where as I said any fountain is a blessing, a waterfall that pours a curtain of water on visitors is a godsend. If they had been in Europe would be full of hurdles, rope marks, prohibitions, guards, etc. In Iran, there you go, you get your feet in the puddles, you approach the waterfall trying not to slip, if you like rock climbing in search of a vantage point and at the end you get just below the water you hit your head. Nobody will tell you absolutely nothing and are worried about esmorrarte pabajo stones.
Certainly as cars paid my entry did not charge me, as has happened on other occasions throughout the trip.
The rest of the day I invested in the road that crossed extraordinary landscapes. I was the star of "distant horizons, but although I took a few pictures really can not reflect even half of what I was seeing all day.
A good shade to rest was the opportunity he was looking to change the rear brake pads.
carrying Qashqai pastoralists herds. It is clear that goats are more than sheep.
A road well paved and well marked, landscapes to hallucinate and the whole valley to myself, what more could you want?
By late afternoon I got back to Isfahan and entering as a veteran and found room in the hotel (Naghshe Jahan) on how well they treated me a few days. Took the opportunity to do laundry and hang around the room (always carry a clothesline and tweezers ...).
After the shower really needed (after my swim in the sea and the night of the Afghan people sweating in the bag), I walked and walked inevitably Isfahan again Emam Square. The show, late night, it was extraordinary. The square had been taken by a crowd of families in their picnic blankets on the lawn, dining in the light of stars and colored lights, which together with the decorative fountains embellishing even more impressive picture of the enclosure. Did I mention that I like Iran?
I went to one of the stalls of ice cream, I asked one of whatever it was (blindly), and with him I also sat on the grass to pass the time. Delighting in the view of the square, the fountains, colored lights, and listening to children play, and women laugh, and giving lick my ice cream while the moon hung over the mosque was lit, for a moment I isfaharí felt like a more in a moment that was very exciting for me. He was finishing my stay in Iran, and felt inside when I left the square and never see her again. Thus after a while I closed my eyes and trying to impregnate my retina, I turned and hurried back to the hotel without looking as far back as he felt that he understood what the poet who had been sentenced "Isfahan ... half the world."
route to the hotel was looking for a snack to eat something but almost everything was plated. I found one that is almost closed, but language problems that often go, instead of a sandwich or a chicken shawarma (I actually asked for "something with chicken"), the plastic bag I ended up with half a chicken al'ast (!) that I ate in the solitude of my hotel room with covered emergency levaba luckily in my saddlebags.
The bike fell asleep again in the hotel lobby to the perplexity of the other guests.
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DAY 16: "In the lion's den." Isfahan - Khoramabad - KERMANSHAH - Hamad. 800 Kms
The day had his joke. Flowing through the backroads on my way to double jeopardy, on the one hand too close to the border with Iraq that is at war, and another visit the city of Kermanshah, Kurdistan's official center politically unstable with several terrorist attacks kidnappings of Westerners.
The day was also very hot again, and at times appeared again 45 degrees on the thermometer on the bike.
After passing through Khoramabad, I came to Kermanshah (Bakhtaran), 200 km from Iraq, and went to the site of Taq e Bostan, to see some famous reliefs on the tomb of Ardeshir II, but although they are not bad quality is a small and little more has to offer (inevitably compared to Persepolis).
Door / roundabout at the entrance to Kermanshah.
Taq e Bostan.
Good relief of Josrov Parviz Sassanid king Shabdiz riding his horse.
User perspective for most ultra-trip.
Drenched in sweat I went to Hamadan and I found the tomb of Avicenna (Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina), renowned physician and philosopher whose treaties have extended to the West.
Another famous graves is that of poet Baba Taher.
I managed not without some effort to find the square lies the so-called "Lion Stone Ecabtana" (they know by Sang and Shir). It is a stone worn and shape of a lion erected in honor of Hephaestion, friend, fellow soldier and lover of Alexander. Believe local rubbing with oil is partner.
Mosque under construction
noticed that many families were preparing to occupy the park adjacent to the tomb of Baba Taher to spend the night in tents and decided to do the same, although I waited to put up a tent until he had almost dark to avoid trouble with the police that I was in Tehran. Meanwhile I lay down on the fresh grass as one and not long before several people offer me tea and food until around me formed a family circle and curious Iranian hospital. Here is the picture of that moment. The charming little I have in arms is called Mariah, and apparently also was curious to see abroad.
way, suffice it to say that in a week I was in Iran, despite all the tourist sites I visited, I do not remember having found no Westerner can for the first time in my life. In my photos of Iran there is no Japanese camera and the Americans with cowboy hat, and German brewers, even Russians who now proliferate everywhere.
. Another Iranian
wild camping next to the Panther, now in a position of Hamadan.
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DAY 17: "Bouncing Iran." Hamadan - Soltaniyeh-ZANJAN - TABRIZ. 650 km.
A day without a lot of history, simply exit travel to Turkey.
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I went through the small town of Soltaniyeh to see the huge octagonal cathedral World Heritage Site (Oljaitu Mausoleum, in the year 1,300). This temple, probably the largest in the world in his time, is considered the architectural precursor of "Taj Mahal" Indian. Is currently under reconstruction.
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This is the Mausoleum of Soltaniyeh.
in Zanjan and stopped beating on the square Enquelab breakfast and browse through the streets, which is what I enjoy most about your trip. Took the opportunity to shake off some Iranian currency as it was clearly going to change for dollars left over and I was going to come better for the Middle East. None of the banks offering such a service. However a friendly bank accompanied me to a currency exchange office.
. Plaza
Enqelab and bottom-Ullah Rasull mosque.
Seyed Ebrahim Mausoleum Imamzadeh
Baths Beautiful building.
tires to separate the case and avoid the gases accumulate, used used cans of energy drink. Water bottles and garbage bag (do not think it is easy to find a container ...) are also housed in the tires.
Another convoy of the police, but this time the Mercedes is of cardboard. This trick is used in many countries because it does not matter scare you.
Already in Tabriz, the first thing I found was the University Mosque.
Then visit the "Blue Mosque" (Mashie and Kabud), which is under construction. Blue and has no almost nothing and less spectacular, but in his day was called the "Turquoise of Islam", one of the most beautiful in the world, and even one chapter of the "Thousand and One Nights" takes place here.
I had a good time at the Bazaar and then I found the so-called Mausoleum of Poets "(al-shoara Maqbarat, nice word!).
Then I had here a traffic accident. Most streets in Iran are one-way or in the central part have a piece of medium-high sidewalk that makes you impossible to cross. For this reason many times (even in many motorways) are vehicles that circulate counter-rotating on the shoulder (to avoid detours) with the corresponding shock you take.
The fact is that inside the city needed to go back and then a few meters across, all counter-rotating, and that's something to do motoretas all the time. Everyone knows that "in Rome do as the Romans do", so I prepared to make an introduction for it was forbidden and watch for cars coming towards me. When it was time I rushed to the crossing, but unbeknownst to me is that another kid with another bike I wanted to do the same thing at the same time and the same physical space. The result was that I heard something shocked me when I turned sideways and saw the boy and his bike on the ground after colliding with my mega-cow that almost did not notice (a Scratchcards 2 cm in the defense and I that I was up without finding out about). While traffic piled up and began to whistle, I waited for the boy put his feet, shook his hand as a sign that all was right by me and disappeared there. And
afternoon I went to the Shah-Goli Goli or Park. A park with a lake, boats and other families in enjoying a good shade, and that is enabled camping area, with services, police, food stalls, etc. Once again the bikes can go for several pedestrian access at the box office without paying the entrance to the enclosure. I waited a while back that almost nightfall, and then rode my shop next to my bike to spend my last night in Iran.
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