Unlike us, Iranians don’t rise early! I decided that I was going to stay in town this morning until I could change money and make my purchase before setting off to ride today’s stage. Fari has located a money exchange…
And back again (stage 91)
We’ve spent the last four days criss-crossing back and forth over the range of hills which separates the inland valleys from the Caspian Sea and today was no exception, though by the end of the day we’ve come far enough…
Windy as **** (stage 89)
Today we’ve had every sort of wind imaginable; head, tail, howling, gusty, side, gusty-side, and far too much gusty-howling-head! It blew pretty much all through the night and although there was lots of thunder and lightening only a sprinkle of…
Not really feeling the cycling love (stage 88)
Sadly last night’s sleep was somewhat interrupted by power issues in the hotel which meant that the air-conditioning kept turning on and off as the power came and went, and for a while it also got pretty hot in our…
Off to the national park (stage 86)
…Goleston National Park includes partly cultivated steppe and contrastingly thick mountain forests of 500-year-old trees… Lonely Planet, Iran All of which sounds really interesting but so far all we’ve seen are brown hills that look like Central Otago though we’ve…
Back to the hills (stage 84)
After our late night last night we were supposed to be having a sleep in and a late breakfast, but people were up and shuffling (crashing) round from 0600, so that didn’t really work out. The one thing it was…
Let’s go to Iran shall we? (stage 83 – kind of)
Yip – it was damn early at 0530! And the ‘hurry up and wait’ began almost straight away with us all having our bags down by 0550 but then no rider’s meeting at 0600 and no bus ready at 0700.…
Off to Ashgabat (stage 82)
Another crappy night’s sleep – last night it wasn’t so much about the distractions as just not being able to get to sleep – I was still awake at 2330 so went for a wander out to the road in…
Blowing in the wind (stage 81)
Not a great nights sleep was had – too many dogs barking, trucks arriving and general movement on the road to make for anything particularly restful. It also got surprisingly cool, to the point that I needed a second layer…
Racing across the desert (stage 80)
My roomie was up just before 0500 so with plenty of time to spare I took a shower this morning, mostly just to enjoy again the best showering experience of the trip – the water pressure is amazing! Rider’s meeting…