The Keenaskiwis

We’re not the best at sitting down and writing for the old blog, the longer we leave it the bigger the job and then the longer we leave it, grrrr, it really is long overdue so here goes, though we are a bit short on time so it might be a bit rough and ready!!

Last time we updated was way back in Bukhara, where we only had a day of riding to the Turkmen border and the dash to Iran. Not such an enjoyable day as it turns out, with the heat, the flies, the wind and then camping in the sand but that’s how it goes some days.

Turkmenistan was pretty cool, we had some great Kebabs, met some great locals and Mike even got to have a sit in a Kamaz!!! The ride was only 480 km, not the 550 km we were thinking so it turned out to be pretty easy, no wind either which was awesome!! The roads were a little random though, there seemed to be a lot of corners for a flat desert with no obstacles to avoid, our first day after 100 km of riding we were only 65 km from where we started, too much Vodie while building the roads??? It’s a pity we were on limited time as it would have been cool to get to Ashgabat for a look-see but it wasn’t to be with the 5 day visa.

So after the wee dash across Turkmenistan it was on to Iran. We spent an hour or so at the Iranian border post while they sorted out where New Zealand was, we weren’t sure what to make of the question “what is New Zealand’s second name?” though they seemed happy when we told them it was Aotearoa.

Once in Iran the first thing to do was to change some money, no one looked like a money changer at the border so we headed into town, a couple of km away. Turned out we couldn’t find a money changer there either and were told to try back at the border. Back we went to the border and just as we arrived a guy on a motorbike rode by and waved us over to a shop. He knew just what we wanted and after working out a rate Mike pulled out a US$100 note to show the guy how much we wanted to change. The guy duly took it, put it in is his pocket, kick started his bike and took off, leaving the two of us standing there looking at one another wondering how we just let that happen!! Anyway to cut a long story short he eventually came back with all our money, wow!!! probably wouldn’t happen at home, hahah!!

From the border it was a couple of hundred km to Mashhad, Iran’s holiest and second largest city. We had a few laughs along the way, we wrote in the last blog update that we were off the the flatness of Iran, turns out Iran is definitely not flat!!! The ride was pretty good, we met a couple of young guys that were riding their bikes to Mashhad for a game of football and an awesome group of guys headed the other way with a great team uniform.

The ride into Mashhad was pretty hectic with the maddest traffic we have encountered yet, lucky for us though we got guided in from about 10 km out by some super guys in a taxi, ahh the kindness of the Iranians!! We thought Mashhad was pretty busy when we were heading toward the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza to find a feed and only found out later that we’d turned up in the Holiest city on its holiest day(Imam Reza’s Birthday), big mistake!!!

Not too much to say about Mashhad, we stayed at a pretty cool home stay, had a good rest and tried many of Iran’s culinary delights, hard to pick a favourite but Abgusht and Maajun have got to be near the top, mmmmmmm!!

Leaving Mashhad we headed for Yazd, we weren’t expecting much apart from about 1000 km of pretty desert-ish riding, turns out we were wrong again. Within the first few days we’d met another load of awesome people, had lunch cooked for us by a couple of truckers and were given about 20 pomegranates in just 2 days.

We had a wee encounter with the police too which was kind of fun. We were apparently headed for a town they didn’t want us to see so they escorted us for the last 50 km of our day. We eventually decided we’d had enough riding for the day and retired to some bushes on the side of the road to camp. The police weren’t happy with this and after arguing with them until after dark we finally gave in and went to a town about 5 km back so they could keep an eye on us for the night. After taking us to the third house it was pretty apparent they were having trouble finding us a bed for the night so we took the opportunity to do a quick sprint to the highway, switch off our lights and disappear into the night, running from the police is kind of fun you know!! hahaha.

We thought after that little incident the police might be a bit of a problem the next day, as it turned out we were back to the old smile, wave and ride by which suited us down to the ground. We even managed to score lunch with some really cool EMS guys who invited us in to share their lunch and a few laughs of course.

Our next stop was in Boshrooyeh, it wasn’t planned and we’d only done about 20 km of riding that morning but what an awesome time. We rolled in to town about 9 am and only really stopped to get some fresh fruit and vege, but it turned out to be one of the greatest stops we had in Iran. We met the coach of the towns cycling team, Mr Abbas, and spent the morning having our own guided tour of the city sights before heading back to Mr Abbas’ house for lunch. Abbas and his brother “Uncle Reza” took us on another bit of a tour, first to Abbas’ workshop (which Mike was pretty jealous of), to the pistachio orchards, then the family gardens before heading home for dinner, but only after Abbas took Mike down to his Mosque for evening prayers, a very special experience for Mike! So after a wonderful dinner we took off down to Bastani(Not to be confused with ice-cream which shares the same name), this Bastani is a combo of a series of different exercises, for men only, though Jo was an honorary bloke as she often is so was allowed in.

It was a truly great experience, albeit pretty whirlwind and we loved the time we spent with Abbas and Uncle Reza learning some Persian and generally just having a laugh. If the friendliness of the town wasn’t enough the next morning upon leaving we were loaded up with all sorts of goodies for the next part of our journey. We have to say a big thanks to everyone in Boshrooyeh for making our stay so great!!!

From Boshrooyeh we took a couple of days to pedal on to Yazd where we spent a few days relaxing, drinking date milkshakes (we smashed about fifteen in four days) and meeting some other tourists. Yazd was pretty cool with its mud brick buildings and narrow alley ways but for us it was totally over shadowed by our wee stop in Boshrooyeh!!!

Esfahan is only about 300 km from Yazd and we’d been told that it was pretty flat, though we should have learnt by that stage that flat and Iran don’t really go together! We pretty much followed a main highway the whole way, climbed 1000 m on the second day and then cruised into the sprawling, busy city of Esfahan.

It was great to meet other tourists, including some more cycle tourists in Esfahan and a great Aussie bloke named Doug who gave us an impromptu tour of the mosques and Imam square which Esfahan is famous for. We only had a couple of days here before heading out of town towards Kurdistan and yet more mountains.

However we followed what seemed to be an increasing trend and only made it 30 km out of Esfahan before we found ourselves in another Iranian family home! It had been a slow exit from Esfahan as we collected bits and visited workshops to fix Jo’s rearview mirror (a small meeting with the road a few hundred kms back and it had come off second best). Anyway we had a great afternoon with the young, recently married couple, Amir and Azadeh. We met their friends, went to Grandmas for dinner and spent several hours learning about each others cultures. Mike also spent a significant amount of time bonding with the lads over motorcycles. The tricky moment came the next morning when we were trying to leave and Amir’s mum promised to make Abgusht (Mikes favourite Iranian food) if we stayed another night, unfortunatly though we really had to keep pedalling.

After Jo managed to drag Mike away we carried on towards Kermanshah, our next planned stop. Along the way we stopped for photos with a great bloke, Mr Mohammed and his wife who were on a motorcycle. They invited us to dinner in the next town but we were still a few to many kms away but we did manage to stop in for lunch (only) with his family the next day before carrying on toward Kermanshah.

Kermanshah was a great city, lots of friendly people, cool shops and markets and great food. We were quite excited after a long day’s ride into the city to find great falafel wraps for only fifty cents each. The shop keeper was pretty amused when we ordered two more! Then to top it of there was hot rice pudding for sale everywhere, awesome!!!

Next we were off into Kurdistan and towards the Iraqi border. It’s hard to believe that it’s possible but the Kurdish were even more friendly than the Persians. One day, just outside Paveh while fixing another flat tyre for Mike and having lunch, a very enthusiastic chap who wouldn’t take no for an answer took us back to his house “just for chai”. Once again before we knew it, we’d had a second lunch, showers, were learning Kurdish and Jo was even kitted out in full Kurdish dress! Pretty warm though as all Iranian homes seem to have the heating on full bore 24/7. Ahmad and Shootah were great hosts and not long after dinner the house was full with their family and friends, Shootah’s father even gave us a great demo of some traditional Kurdish music which was really awesome!!

The plan was to head to some remote mountain villages in Kurdistan, this meant that we were back on gravel roads with a few mean climbs so there were a couple of 30-40 km days. As we hoped this part of Iran was really beautiful and we loved every minute of it. Late one arvo after a 1000 m or so of climbing we came to a pass where we met a guy out on the road wanting to borrow a lighter, turns out that he and his family were having a bit of a BBQ and their matches weren’t working in the wind. We lent them ours and in return they fed us some of the greatest kebabs we’ve had, though it was perhaps the most rapid BBQ we have ever seen!!!

Back on the seal again we rolled along fast to Saqqez which was a really cool wee city, we stayed the night and have to say buying custard on the street for dessert was definitely one of the highlights. Anyway after that stop it was only a couple of days before we were in Orumiyeh.

Orumiyeh was one of those cities that we didn’t love, nothing major just not the great feel of many of the other places we’ve stayed, lots of staring too, ok we get it we’re different!!! hahaha. We did however meet a great couple of chaps when we arrived and got talking with them only to find out that they are in the same line of work as Mike. Anyway, we needed dinner so invited them out with us, they came along and after Mike lost the battle for paying when we ordered it only got worse when our food arrived and it turned out that these guys weren’t even going to have dinner, no matter how hard we tried they wouldn’t let us pay, super kind chaps they were.

With only 60 km to the Turkish border from Orumiyeh we were thinking we’d be there by lunch. Although Jo’s three flat tyres slowed us down a bit we were still there by about two in the arvo. The border was one of the most random we’ve been to with not a lot of order or signage, though we found our way through and soon had our stamp and free 90 days in Turkey, our first Visa free country, woohooo.

After our super easy entry into Turkey we were pretty surprised when we got to the first of many military check points and they wanted to look in our panniers. It only took one look in the pannier with loo paper, toiletries and other assorted junk for them to figure we weren’t running drugs and to send us on our way. The second check point we came to we had to fill out a form like we’d expected to fill out at the border but didn’t have to, which did leave us wondering about what they might expect at the third check point.

It seems Turkey is another country of chai drinkers and cups of chai and warm shops have already become pretty important to our mornings, it’s been quite chilly!! The other night saw us camping at about 2000 m, well wrapped in our sleeping bags and greeted in the morning by frozen drink bottles. It was only about 20 mins down the road from camp that we came across a military check point where we could catch our first cup of chai for the day, love the chai!!

Our first hotel stop was in Tatvan, a cool wee town on the south western shore of Lake Van. We had a day off riding and went for a trip up Nemrut Dagi, an inactive volcanic crater with beautiful lakes and a ski field on the outer rim. We were pretty lucky to head up to this beautiful spot as eastern Turkey has had a very dry November and would normally be covered in snow! Maybe the only time EVER that we’ll be happy about going to a ski field with no snow.

Unfortunately the dry weather finished on our way from Tatvan to Diyarbakir, the first rain we’ve seen in 2 ½ months, yay!! It looks like the next two to three months might be a bit on the cool side, watching the news tonight was a little worrying with all the snow in Turkey only a hundred km or so from here, fingers cross we can stay warm!!

The plan is to ride west from here through Turkey to the Aegean Coast and depending on the weather we’ll either follow Plan A and head through Eastern Europe or take Plan B and go via Greece and Italy, hopefully we don’t need a Plan C!!