We had our first and only climb of the route to Yazd today. Given how flat and repetitive the morning riding was we were kind of happy for it.
Not much to say about the morning ride, events of note during the ride: pulled in for a toilet break at a petrol station. A man at the petrol station gave us a small cake to eat. We passed through the villages of Sejzi and Kuhpayeh. We had lunch just outside Kuhpayeh.

  
I’m not going to have much else to talk about for today’s post so I guess I’ll talk about food. For lunch in Iran we tend to almost always eat Kubideh kebabs, which are minced mutton kebabs. They are pretty much the only food you can find outside the city and they are cheap and sort of tasty. It’s probably the hardest part about Iran, finding traditional Iranian cuisine. Almost all places just sell Kebab, unless you can find a tourist restaurant or get invited to someone’s home. The latter happens frequently enough so a lot of tourists to get to eat the tasty food Iran has to offer. As the tourism there grows I hope that more places open up offering the Persian cuisine because whenever we found somewhere that served it it was delicious.
Anyway, we began to climb shortly after lunch and it was a pretty easy climb, very long and gradual and not steep. Richie naturally found it a bit tougher since it was only his second day riding. I felt a bit bad whenever we had to tell him that, no this wasn’t the top yet but he got up without much difficulty in the end. We could see a bit of snow along the ridges of the peaks we were passing through, something we hadn’t spotted since Tehran.

 

 
  
  
On the other side was an equally long descent down to the town of Naein. With a strong tailwind pushing us this we speed down the mountain as the sun set. Stopped outside the town to set up camp.

  

We started off with a half day to get out of the city but still keep some time for sightseeing after getting the night bus back from Shiraz. The hostel very kindly let us rest for a bit in the courtyard in the morning. We had some post to send and I went looking for a bike shop unsuccessfully. 
Before we left we went down to the river to look at the famous bridges of Isfahan and have some lunch. We ended up meeting a couple of characters while eating; a friendly old guy in a big furry hat and a less old and less old guy who sort of smiled at us while making seemingly stream of consciousness statements to none of us in particular. The guy in the hat was a bit more interesting, he wanted us to guess his profession and then revealed he was a brain surgeon, which I didn’t really believe until he started showing photos of himself operating. 

  
Eventually Dr. Brain Surgeon left and it was just us and the other guy who didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon so we said goodbye and kind of ran away. We rode out of the city then.
It was Richies first day of cycling and is gave us a new lease on it too. The ride out of the city was mostly through the dispersed factories and farms and complexes of unknown function that ring most of the cities for miles and miles. Though toward the evening, before sundown, we got out into good isolated desert. About 30km out of town we pulled off the road and set up in one spot amongst the tracts of dry, flat, desert.

 

 
  
  
  
  

A mostly downhill day today to Isfahan, and if everything has gone according to plan, we should be able to meet up with Richie, Finn’s mate from back home who’s going to cycle with us from now on. Not that we weren’t getting on, but we were both looking forward to throwing someone new in the mix.
The mostly downhill day started with an uphill climb. We arrived at the top where a small town has grown up. And up here I guess they get a bit more rainfall or something because the town was built on the shores of what they generously described as a lake. Across the lake were the ruins of an old castle.

   

 Then the downhill started and before we knew it we were out of the hills and mountains back into the wide desert.

 

  
 The desert road led us, straight and flat, all the way to the outskirts of Isfahan. The road to the city after lunch was similarly straight and flat, though a bit busier. 
Once in the city we found somewhere to stay (couldn’t get in contact with the guy that was supposed to host us) and waited for Richie to arrive. He got in at about 8. Reunions and introductions and of course a cursory inspection of his bike followed.its was great to have him over at last after all the talk of it. Even better, he brought some Dairy Milk chocolate, a gift from Fins mum.

We had our first decent pass to climb over since leaving Tabriz today which we were strangely excited for. The long, flat, straight roads in the desert can become a bit mind numbing at times so a good climb seemed really appealing this morning.  

 An accidental but perfect piece of timing: today was the day Iran’s sanctions were lifted and the day we passed by one of its biggest nuclear enrichment facilities. It was on the road to Natanz, an apparently very pretty town at the foot of some mountains that was worth a stop at. 
The facility was right in the middle of nowhere along this stretch of road. We had heard it was somewhere around here and it sort of just emerged out of the ground all of a sudden, a tall earthen embankment that wrapped all along the huge facility. It was obvious this was the place, as soon as we passed by the main entrance a police car parked opposite beckoned us over. We were asked a couple of questions but they were actually pretty relaxed. After taking our visa info and warning us not to take any pictures they followed us down the road in the van until we were out of sight if the facility.

 

 
We then found ourselves at the foot of the climb. The road was set a bit into the hill with the rocky face on either side that drowned out the sound and wind so it felt quite calm all the way up. The town of Natanz was at the top.

   
 After a lunch at Natanz we went looking for the Jameh Mosque, a very beautiful mosque and worth a visit. We took a wrong turn and ended up halfway back down the hill we had just climbed, but freshly full we were happy enough climbing back up. We did get to the mosque eventually and it was, in fact, quite beautiful.

 

  
    
Out of Natanz we had a bit more climbing and a long descent. The ground was now a lot less flat, a lot more rolling and hilly. Also though still arid for the most part there was a bit more greenery, a few trees and some cultivated land here and there. 

  
The sun, as always, started to set so it was time to find somewhere to camp. We pulled off the road and up the hill to flat part of ground. As we were setting up a police van driving on the road we had just left, about 150m from where we were now, spotted us. They doubled back and looked for a way up to us, and I suppose when they realised there was no road the just off roaded up the dusty hill towards us. 

  

 
They couldn’t comprehend what we wanted to do. Eventually, after a lot of miming and showing them a few photos they got the gist. But then they were trying to warn us that it might snow. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a breath of wind in the air. It wasn’t going to snow. Finally they had a look at our visas and I guess got fed up with dealing with the idiot foreigners and left us to our own devices.
It didn’t snow that night.

  

Before we left Kashan this afternoon we wanted to visit the UNESCO listed Persian garden Fin Garden (fantastic name). It’s a bit out of town so we took the bus (driver let us on for free!) and on the way out there we met a guy who was starting up a hotel in town. It was his day off and he was heading out to relax in the garden. He knew the manager who he was going to meet there. 

 

 
At the garden the hotel owner got us in for Iranian entrance prices (a fraction of the tourist price) and then gave us a little intro to the garden before heading to enjoy his day off and meet his friend.
The gardens are a real little oasis, lush green trees providing much welcome shade and the flowing channels of water were cooling and soothing. We spent a good while just wandering around, though they weren’t that big. Infact I’d say them not being so big was a bit of a bonus for us after so many days out in the wide open desert.
We returned to the wide open desert soon though, after the garden we went back and picked up our bikes. We were out of Kashan by 3 and making good distance. By early evening we were cycling up and down stoney hills with open rock faces jutting out either side. We were riding on the first tertiary road since we’d come into Iran, and the lack of trucks was a relief.

    
 Enjoying the quiet riding so much we ended up cycling until it was almost dark and then pulled off the road along an old dirt track where we set up in an old quarry.

  

Mustafa returned in the morning with some bread and had breakfast with us before seeing us off. We were only maybe 30 or so kilometres from Kashan so we could ride in this morning and spend most of the day there. 

  
 A pleasant, generally downhill cycle in the cool of the morning followed to Kashan. Kashan is a relatively small city and so it was pretty easy to get into the city center compared to the likes of Tabriz and Tehran. We found Kashan to be very much to our liking, with tree lined streets and friendly people. 

   

 We tried to get a net connection for a while so we could get in touch with hosts we had messaged and see if they could put us up. It being Friday though meant that there wasn’t much open, and all the coffeenets were closed. Some computer repair shop was open and we were able to use their wifi though in the end. Unfortunately no one was available, but our guidebook recommended a nice old style guesthouse.
It was nearby and was very nice, a traditional style house with a central courtyard and the surrounding rooms a little bit under the ground which kept them nice and cool. We were only staying a night but had we more time I’d say I could easily spend a lot of time there.

 

  
 That evening we went out to look at some sights, there were old Persian houses (from the 18th century, not ancient Persia) that had been restored and we were hoping to look at a few of them. We got to one and found the entrance fee a bit expensive so only looked at one in the end.

 

  
   
While looking for somewhere for dinner we came across a guy from Afghanistan who was looking to practice his English. He was an interesting dude, some of his family had left Afghanistan and others had stayed behind (he said he had 17! siblings). Like a lot of people we spoke to he wanted to go to Germany. He helped us find somewhere to eat, given that on Friday everywhere is closed.
Went back to the guesthouse and crashed pretty soon after.

Camp was only 20 kilometres from the city of Qom, but we weren’t going to pass through it. Almost everyone we had talked to so far in Iran, tourists or locals, had told us not to bother visiting Qom. It’s a religious city, it has some famous shrine and most of the population and visitors are apparently pretty staunchly Muslim.  

  
 So we rode through the desert in the cool of the morning and took the ring road around Qom. A bit of a ruckus was kicked up riding past a couple of roundabouts and roads close to the city where people were just sort of hanging out. They’d see us ride by and someone would notice and shout ‘hello mister’ and soon everyone would be involved, whooping and hollering. It was kind of endearing really.
Outside of Qom some serious effort had been made to cultivate the arid countryside. Small irrigation channels provided a smattering of moisture in the fields and here and there patches of green broke up the sea of brown.

  
  
Lunch we found a nice place in a little oasis by the road. And then more desert riding for an hour or two. 

   
 Around half four we arrived at the town of Mobarak Abad which sort of gradually emerged out of the dust. We stopped at a junction to pull on our trousers (we can get away with shorts on the bike but need to cover up our legs walking around lest someone get offended) and while doing so a guy came out of a small walled off garden nearby and walked over to us. He invited us into his garden and said we could crash out there for the night in one of the old houses.
Well never the type to look a gift horse in the mouth we thanked him and agreed. His name was Mustafa and he was turning this old farm/garden grounds into a campsite for tourists. Work was just getting going it seemed but he’s a smart guy to get out in front of what I imagine will be pretty big tourist boom in Iran over the next few years.
We talked with Mustafa for a while and then he went home to his house in Qom. We unwound in the old house for a bit and then hit the hay, ready to ride the last few kilometres into Kashan the next morning. 

From camp in the park we set off this morning along the busy highway towards Kashan, the end point this morning. Before we left the groundskeepers who we were worried might reprimand us for camping on the park grass invited us over to their little shed for some tea. It was kind of a cold morning (not as bad as before Tehran) so good hot tea warmed us up well.
More urban sprawl riding today in the morning, the highway was busy with trucks. There were a few cars too but once we passed the turn-off for the motorway all that was left was trucks.
So we road through all this in the morning and stopped for lunch a bit early. It was actually lucky we did, as soon as we left the town at which we ate lunch we were out in the desert. 

  
We thought we’d been riding through desert before, on the approach to Tehran, but not like this. It was a total reversal from what we’d been through in the morning. From houses, factories and farms everywhere to just…nothing. Just rocky, dusty, arid plains for miles and miles. 

  
  
It got hot too. I can’t imagine doing this cycle in summer, it was mid January and still we were sweating. On one particularly long climb we at last gave up trying to wear trousers and swapped out for the sweet, cool relief of shorts. Air on my shins, what a joy! We’ve been riding in shorts since then and haven’t had a problem, even when talking to police, so I think maybe having to wear trousers isn’t all that strict, at least for male tourists.

 

 
The desert riding continued and so did the complete lack of any development. We had been climbing on and off all afternoon and at the top of a long descent we looked out, the land stretching for kilometres to the horizon and saw nothing. Only the strip of road snaking off and fading into the distance.

  
It was getting dark now and we were hoping to find a shop soon so we could buy dinner and breakfast. After a couple of false alarms, seeing neon in the distance that was just for a farm or factory or auto parts shop, we came at last, as the sun disappeared to the west, to a small shop. Relieved, we picked up the necessary supplies and a couple of ice creams and wheeled off a couple of meters down the road
We found an old broken bridge off the main road, I guess part of the old old road to Kashan and set up camp there.