Steve's Cycling Blog

Awake shortly after 0700 which isn’t too bad I guess, though I’d have been quite happy for that to have been later.

One thing I’m really looking forward to when I get home is a decent breakfast, with things like toast, and coffee, and scrambled eggs, and bacon! I’ve had more than enough bread, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and cucumber to last a lifetime!

After breakfast and a bit of sitting round chatting I headed off to check out the sights of Tabriz – unfortunately our hotel isn’t terribly conveniently located for that so it began with a 4.5km walk just to get into the centre of the city – interesting enough, but somewhat longer then ideal.

First stop was the bazaar which is a World Heritage site, and definitely one of the more interesting we’ve seen with it’s mix of vaulted lanes and halls linking together numerous caravanserais, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After a stop for lunch – where the chap spoke a little English and was very keen to ensure that I got to see all the best things of Tabriz so showed me pictures from a diary and carefully wrote the names of all the places in Farsi for me so I could show a taxi driver where I wanted to go – I headed to the Blue Mosque, which is nothing like as blue as it used to be!

From there I started heading back to the hotel, passing the former town hall, a new mosque (which when complete will hold one million people) and the former Arq (fortress, from which people were allegedly executed by being thrown form the top!)

By now it was mid afternoon and getting pretty hot so I decided that rather than trek the 4.5km back to the hotel I’d take the bus which has its own dedicated lanes down the main road. I tried to buy a ticket, but it seems that everything’s done with an Oyster-like card, and with no language in common this was too hard for the man at the gate onto the bus platform, so he just waved me through 🙂

Getting on the correct entrance to the bus

Along the way today I’ve been trying to find some way to package my art purchase from Zanjan safely for transportation in my permanent bag, but I’ve been having a hard time finding anything. My initial idea was a plastic box, but anything big enough for the frame was too big for my bag, so for now it’s going in lots of layers of clothing and I’m going to try an find some timber to make a custom-sized box tomorrow as we head out though the more industrial parts of town.

We’ve only got two more riding days in Iran before we cross into Turkey – I’ve really enjoyed my time here – Iran was one of the countries I was most interested in visiting and it hasn’t disappointed!

The riding week ahead

Below are a few other images from my day in Tabriz, now it’s time to go and collect my clean laundry, have some dinner, and get my bags sorted for the week ahead.