We spent about two weeks in Tehran in the end. Most of it was waiting for the Chinese embassy to open so we could make our visa application. We had happened to arrive in the city around the national holiday celebrating the prophet Mohammed’s birth so it was closed and then it was New Years and closed again and sure it only opened three times a week anyway.
At first we stayed in 7 Hostel, one of the first hostels to open up in Tehran about eight months previous. We met a bunch of interesting travellers and, of course, and Irishman here too. This was Redmond, he was over learning Farsi and with a great example of just how small Dublin can be, he went to the same school as me a couple of years below.
Getting around Tehran on the bikes wasn’t really an option, the city is so sprawling it wouldn’t be a very comfortable ride and takes ages to get anywhere. However, the public transport is great. We got to see a couple of the sights, the Bazaar, the old US Embassy, the Shahs palace but what we really enjoyed was meeting the young Tehranis who seemed to all know each other from hanging out in cafes smoking. They were all really friendly and a couple of them even took time out to show us around, take us to where they’d normally hang out and all the rest.

After three days we left the 7 Hostel and went to stay with Roham our Couchsurfing host. He was a quiet friendly guy with an apartment way in the north of the city, right by the mountains. Given our visa troubles we had to extend our stay and he was very easy going and let us crash a bit longer, he made what could have become a frustrating time go very smoothly. Roham worked as a music instructor and also as a purveyor of power tools at the bazaar.
One day we went to the Irish consulate to retrieve a letter of endorsement request by the Chinese embassy. This was a very smooth operation and I got a kick out of seeing the signs of home.

  
We also had to extend our visa which is a pretty simple process of you know where to go. We ended up at the old office the first time and that was closed now. If you happened across this and want to know about extending your Iran visa in Tehran check out this thread on caravanistan.com http://caravanistan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=717#top
In the end we couldn’t get out China visa, they wouldn’t issue one that would be valid for entry for ninety days, only one for a month which wouldn’t be enough time at all. Instead we are going to have to apply in Islamabad, Pakistan. 
Our last two days in Tehran we spent up in the Alborz skiing, as per our first plan. The snow had come down in thermite we had spent in the city and the resort had been open two days by the time we got there. We opted to go to Shemshak which is meant to have better skiing but fewer runs. We stayed at the hotel Shemshak which is right in the slopes. We were the only guests there.
The night we arrived a huge dump of snow came down. Fresh tracks all morning and long into the day, there were so few people around using the resort, never queued for a lift. There wasn’t any big gondola or anything, just three chairlifts and a button lift but we were both more than happy to take the same runs with the conditions being what they were.

  
At the end of the day we met an Iranian guy at the bottom of the run as we sat outside the hotel. He told us about the resort, the other foreigners he had met and taken here and the apparently raucous behind closed doors party’s that go on out of reach of the morality police. He even informed us that the Shemshak hotel was the hotel that the Shah stayed in back in the day and used to have a discotheque.
After two days we hitchhiked back down to Tehran, the city is only a one hour drive from Shemshak. Crashed with Roham for one more night then left the city. We made sure to pass by Bobby Sands street before we left, or Babi Sandz as they spell it. The story goes that after the revolution the Iranian government renamed the street the British embassy was located on from Winston Churchill street to Babi Sandz street. In response the Brits bricked up the entrance and broke down the wall on the adjourning street so they wouldn’t have to be faced with the shame of such an address.

   
 Of course it took ages to get out of the city and it we were still riding through urban sprawl by almost dark. We spotted what looked like a large walled off wooded area and soon arrived at a huge gateway guarded by army guys. They all seemed friendly so we asked if we could come into this, what seemed to be, a park to camp. They all laughed and waved us through saying ‘Yes, yes you can camp with Imam Khomeini’. We were a bit confused by this but it was almost dark so we went ahead.

  
It was a huge park with what was pretty much a highway running through it, though that was devoid of traffic. We couldn’t see to the end of it in any direction. Soon we noticed there were graves, and lots of them lining most of the walkways that we could see. We eventually came across a grassy area next to an old climbing frame that looked suitable. We set up the tent, then got out the guidebook to confirm a suspicion that had arisen. What we though was right, we were camping in the complex of the Shrine of Imam Khomeini and the cemetery for the martyrs of the Iran – Iraq war. Well, at least it was quiet.

  

Our plan was to ride first to the ski resort north of Tehran for a halfway break skiing in Shemshak and avoid going into Tehran until after this. Surprisingly wisely for us we decided to swing by the computer shop I went to last night so we could call up the resort. Just to make sure it was open, it had been clear and sunny since we left Tabriz and from where we were standing there didn’t look to be much snow on those mountains on the horizon.
When I retuned of the shop with Finn the guy that ran it was delighted to see us. He beckoned us over to his computer and pointed at the screen. “See!” He said “Ireland!” He had been looking up Ireland in Farsi on Wikipedia since I left.
It was lucky we called up the resort, nothing was open and so we had to abandon that plan and instead head straight for Tehran.

  
From Hastgerd we rode through countryside for bit less than an hour until we were in city. Karaj, a satellite city to Tehran I suppose, has pretty much merged with the capital so all day we were in city. 
The riding was almost entity on freeways so the traffic wasn’t an issue until we started to get to the center of Tehran. On our way in we had a whole load of cars and pedestrians wave and say hello, one guy even bought us a an energy drink each while we were stopped looking at the map. We had a dude in a van pull over in the merging island on a busy expressway to chat to us.

  
We got into a center of Tehran, the city is so huge it takes ages to get anywhere even with the expressways. I guess there is a City Center but there’s also a bunch of neighbourhoods and districts that break the city up too. It was certainly the biggest city we had been to since Istanbul, though cycling into it had been a lot calmer and easier.

  
As with most cities in Iran and Asia in general all of one type of good or service were grouped on the same street. So you’d have cooking appliance street, electronic apparatus street etc. We found ourselves stopped at cafe street. We sat in one for some time mooching wifi trying to find somewhere to stay.
Given our change of plans we couldn’t stay with a host on Couchsurfing or Warm Showers right away, but we found a nice hostel, 7 Hostel, to crash at in the end. It was a surprisingly long day of cycling in the end so we wound up heading straight to bed wrecked.

Taking the day off for Christmas had been a welcome break but it was time to get back on the bikes. We loaded up and started to head out of the city.

From outside Qazvin the urban sprawl started almost right away. Riding on the highway towards Tehran we passed by apartment blocks, factories, other complexes and towns of varying size almost constantly.  

 
The riding wasnt particularly pretty or eventful. We were able to make good time thanks to a strong tailwind, but the wide flat scrubland that lay either side of the road didn’t make for very interesting views. There on the horizon were the peaks of the Alborz mountains, at the foot of this range the northern limits of Tehran were supposed to reach.

 

 
  

But we were still a day away from Tehran so we rode through the traffic and the dust. Stopped for a quick lunch at a rest stop and then on to Hastgerd, or rather the outskirts of it. The countryside was so built up it was hard to find somewhere to camp and eventually we settled for a small group of trees between fields. 

  
I rode into Hastgerd to call up my dad on his birthday. Turned out it was a pretty big town and it took a while to find an Internet cafe. Eventually, after wandering around for quite a while and sunset come and gone I asked in a small computer shop if they knew somewhere to go. The kind guy that owned the place said there wasn’t any coffeenet nearby but I could use his wifi.
On the way back to camp I went to pick up come kebab and rice take away for dinner and ended up ordering six kebab meals instead of six individual kebabas. We weren’t hungry at dinner or breakfast anyway.

We spent Christmas Day in Qazvin but to our dismay most of the shops and restaurants in the city were closed. It was a Friday, Muslim day of rest, and Qazvin is apparently a reasonably religious city so most shops were closed. We were hoping to Skype home, but, all the coffeenets in town were closed so we just sort of wandered around for a bit.

We had a look at the old bazaar and went looking for the Armenian church but that had also closed down in recent years. Things started to look up in the afternoon, Finn found some movies on his hard drive so we had a relaxing afternoon getting a long overdue dose of western culture.

Heading out in the evening we ran into a local guy who was an English teacher. He wanted to have a bit of practice himself and offered to show us around a bit. This has happened so often now we sort of stopped appreciating just how hospitable the Iranians are. This was a lovely little pick me up for our kind of underwhelming Christmas thus far.

Christmas Eve! And a short ride today into Qazvin, only 60km and here we would stop for the rest of today and tomorrow, Christmas Day.

Sort of uninteresting ride into the city. Long flat busy roads next to lots of empty fields, not much to look at but good conditions for riding fast. And a tailwind to boot.

In a small satellite town outside Qazvin we got invited into a car dealership where we sat in a glass-walled office and drank tea with the owner and his friends. There was the usual token Kurd there, the friendly guy with the cheeky glint in the eyes as normal when we can’t communicate we end up just naming the places we’ve been before but that always seems to please people enough.

Next door to the car dealership was a kebab place where we went into eat. A very friendly guy ran this place on his own. He showed us photos of when he was in the army. We understood from some pretty impressive miming that these days he liked to just run his shop and practice karate.

On the cycle into the city we were stopped by a friendly local who gave us directions on how to get to the city center. We thanked him and followed his directions and he drove off. A few minutes later he returned, pulled up Ali g side and and handed us some oranges he had gone off to pick up! We the got his phone number ‘if you need any help call me in Qazvin’.

We found a decent cheap hotel, but for us a bed inside was five stars either way.

 

 

It had been one of the coldest nights, crispy and clear and frosty but thankfully without any wind or snow. Everything was frozen in the morning, all the water, the eggs we were going to have for breakfast even our shoes and socks.
But it was a sunny morning and we soon warmed up in the light. It was the 23rdkf December, the day before Christmas Eve. We had come up with a plan yesterday to ride to the next big town on the route, Qazvin, about 160km away and spend Christmas Day off there. With this prospect in mind we set off in high spirits singing Christmas  carols down the road.

Having reached the top of this long gradual ascent this morning we had a pretty pleasing morning ride along the flat summit in snow. Flanked by the mountains on either side it was one of the nicest morning rides we’ve had all winter.

 

We had a truck driver pull over and talk to us for a bit. He thought we were someone he knew from Lanzarote who also cycled, but he was happy to have met some new people. These little stops are always a fun highlight, a short little break in the cycling that brightens the ride.

We started descending now, as gradually as we had been ascending but cycling was a lot easier. We pulled into a small town called Sain Qaleh for lunch and had everyone nearby running up asking where we were from, welcoming us to Iran and a few jokers warning us to ‘be careful of terroris’ with cheeky grins spread over their faces.
Similar landscape on the other side of town, but the mountain peaks that had frames the road north and south started to drifted further apart and the flat basin spread out more and more. And of course the more we descended the less snow around us.

 

By the time we stopped at a small corner shop to buy morning breakfast the snow was pretty much gone, just flecking the mountaintops in the distance and hidden the north facing sides of hills and rocks. We had a fun interaction with the owner of the shop, a short, round smiley man who kept telling us just how much he loved Imam Khomeini. He gestured this to us by pulling a 100,000 rial note out of his pocket and kissing Khomeini’s portrait and then raising it to his forehead repeatedly.
We found somewhere to camp in one of the wide fields at the side of the road, in a small depression made by a creek that hadn’t frozen over yet.

 

We were riding downhill today for the most part, a long gradual decline that made for an easy day. No big cold passes to cross and the longer we descended the warmer we got. The road followed a river all the way, with a couple of tunnels here and there. We were framed on both sides by hills with a light dusting of snow that became lighter the more we descended.

It was a quiet road by and large, the old highway. It was ignored by most traffic which opted for the bigger freeway that ran in generally the same direction but about 50km South of us on the other side of the hills. 

At lunchtime we pulled into the town of Miyaneh. We stopped outside a kebab shop to have lunch. The owner came out, a young guy, making a phone all and indicating it was for us. Finn answered. In the other end was a guy named Amir, who was going to ride out on his bike to meet us.
Amir was an avid Warm Showers host. He had hosted hundreds of people that came riding through over last five year and a lot of people in town knew to call him if they saw bike tourists arrived. He was a really enthusiastic guy which I found pretty impressive especially after having looked after so many people. He had set up a tourist house, a small one room building in a park with toilets and a shower where bike tourers could stay for free. We weren’t planning on stopping in Miyaneh but Amir’s attitude was infectious so we figured we’d stay.
We took a break in the tourist house for a bit and then went out to look around town. Amir was a great guide, first leading us to a coffee net so we could get some emails out then to an ice cream place run by his friends. We had Persian ice cream and were informed by some local eating there that the Iranian ambassador to Ireland was from Miyaneh.

After we happened across by accident a nearly complete hall under construction that would be used for traditional Iranian wrestling or ‘vazesh-e pahlavani’. This is something we had not really heard of before and after having it explained and then demonstrated its still kind of hard to describe. From Wikipedia: ‘a traditional Iranian system of athletics originally used to train warriors. It combines martial arts, calisthenics, strength training and music.’ We stumbled upon the place as the finishing touches were being made to the ring (or octagon). An older guy who seemed to be in charge walked in and greeted us with big smiles. He explained some of the symbolism of the hall to us and then even demonstrated a few of the exercises, he couldn’t have been less than 60 and he was really giving it socks down on the mat.

It was a lucky encounter and a bit of surprise cultural exchange. We wandered back to the tourist house pretty pleased with our decision to stay in Miyahneh.