There are no pubs in Tehran so everyone hangs out in coffee shops .

Traffic in Tehran

Ski in ski out hotel north of Tehran. Apparently the Shah used stay here

The green party in Iran is the anti-government party. Here are some government smear posters against them.

Apperently they are afraid of jews shooting nucluer bullets at them

And america are playing them like pawns

Posters of the cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr executed by Saudi’s were all over Tehran.

American embassy in Tehran

A slightly bloodier poster. An in true iranian style the saudi embassy was stormed.

Military murial

The Azadi tower

More murials of the supreme leaders and some martyrs

Pictures of matyrs and the supreme leaders cover the country

The hijab laws extend to both men and women. Meaning men have to wear trousers. We observed the law until cycling in the desert got just too hot and we had to change on the side of the road.

Only two days after skiing north of Iran we were in the desert. and you can see the smog covering the city.

Long shadows after cycling late into the evening

Camping under an old persian bridge

Most Iranian sit cross legged on these raised platforms when eating

We got invited in to stay in what was becoming a tourist house and campsite

Large “friday mosques’ are being built in all cities

Mosque in Kashan

Dome in a historic house in Kashan

More domes

Finding this historic hotel at half price in off season was a deal too good to turn down

Great spot to read your book

Nice visiting a UNESCO heritage site sharing your name

Recently the iranian government has instituted a 6 euro (200,000 rial) entry price to most tourist locations. But if you can read farsi you can see beside the 200,000 rial price is 30,000 ( 1 euro) price for iranians. Pretty cheeky, but we often haggled a bargain out of them.

Originally each of these fountains shot up the same height, maintained purely by the natural pressure of the entering water.

Far away mountains seem nice and manageable

less so the closer you get

After cycling down this lovely road we stopped and realised i had taken a wrong turn and we would need to turn around and go the whole way back up. Whoops.

Clearing the road of debris

Mosque at Natanz, right beside the Nuclear enrichment site. The gaurds were very suspect of us passing the site until we said we were going to Natanz, after which they beamed with smiles and said it was lovely.

More crazy domes

Our campsite seemed pretty interesting to a police hilux that drove up to have a look at us

Chadors are the dress of choice outside cities

Shah mosque in Esfahan

When this school group walked in and saw hugo they swamped him all crowding around to get selfies. Very quickly the mullahs corralled them away from the infidels

Mullahs with selfie sticks

At the Friday mosque in Esfahan

There an elephant strangling someone in this painting

Iranian take their confection seriously

Richie smushing his first Ab Ghoust

Relaxing after an Icecream

We were pretty excited approaching Persoplis

The original gates all guest would have walked through

One of these would have been placed on top of each pillar and a rafter ran over it.

Even though the complex was burned to the ground by Alexander the great. It was later buried under sand preserving it excellently.

The new year consuming the previous

Guest from around the empire being lead to the King.

The Faravahar symbol of the zoroastrian religion, hugely important for iranian identity.

OUr best attept at an album cover

Bastani is iranian icecream and in the south they make it with gelatine and it’s one of the best things we’ve tried all trip

Tombs of Kings of the persian empire. I can’r remeber but Xerxes from 300 might be there.

The founder of the entire Persian empire Cyrus the Great’s tomb. We were asked by the tour guide who was Irelands Cyrus the great

A bridge in Esfahan

Inside a bridge in Esfahan

After our first day climbing Richie thought the climb would never end

But then it did

Cycling down hill to have a warmer campsite had us cycling into the night.

Kerman is our last stop on the bikes in Iran

Beware of camals

Police waved us over, not to check visas or anything but just to see whats going on and get some pictures with us.

Hot in the desert

Last pic of Hugo and his Daesh beard

I got caught in a swarm of chadored women very hard to get out of.

Can’t go to a persian garden without taking a picture of the dome

Persian gardens are a nice break from hectic Iranian cities

Richie, Julie and France at a Zorastrian fire temple

View from our hostel roof in Yazd

There’s a huge amount of littering all across Iran. These are what we call plastic bag farms, nearly ready for harvest

Spiderman making his morning coffee

We could cycle ooor we could throw rocks for another half an hour

How did this pine cone end up in the desert.

Luckily or unlucky we didn’t come across any

Nearly finished cycling for the day

We found this house in the middle of nowhere, thought there might be bathroom we could use

One of the worse bathrooms on the trip

All the camping spots are kind of the same in the desert.

When it rains it pours, punctures for all.

After patching this puncture I found out it went through to the other side and had cause a second puncture.

My bike is somewhere in there being repaired by the local electrician.

A shot of the villagers who came out to help me find my stolen light. This is about a third of the total charcters who made an apearence over the course of the afternoon. The secret police refused to have their pictures taken for obvious reasons.

You could pick up these huge mud bricks and throw them around. Throwing things around the desert is one of the best ways to stay sane.

Hey buddy

The camals were a bit camera shy

Pistachio bush or tree

Sun setting on our way into Kerman

The start of the armed escorts

After cycling out of the iranian border town we were stopped at the first checkpoint. After we spent the whole day in escorts only to get to the border too late, we were pretty forceful explaining we had to get to the border. It was all well humoured and after marching around yelling and waving our hand a truck arrived and took us on our way.

Iranian Border with Pakistan in the distance

After the myriad of iranian offices, customs buildings and security measures we walked across the border in to the desert. There was nothing. We were lead over to one small mud building processed to all the incoming and exiting traffic.