On account of the flat tyres two days ago and the light theft debacle yesterday we had a lot of ground to cover today. 130km or around that, if we wanted to get to Kerman tonight.
In the morning the riding was hard since we had a headwind the whole time. It seems to get particularly windy in the desert quite frequently. Although there wasn’t much in the way of scenery to distract us we did find something to break up the desert riding.
Camels! We’ve seen camels before, but not roaming around the desert on their own. It’s one of those ‘we cycled here’ moments, seeing them just existing in their natural habitat. Finn has been talking about getting a photo with a camel pretty much since we left so we pulled off the road and chased the camels around for a bit trying to photo them.

 

 
  
  
It took a while to photo the camels, they weren’t that eager to hang around. But, persistence paid off and we road away happy in the end. 30 km of featureless desert followed this, but like an oasis the town of Kabootarkan appeared over the horizon. 

  
In addition to lunch, what made Kabootarkan special was that the town was famous for its ice cream. The main road was lined with ice cream shops, it was all soft serve rose water flavoured ice cream and refreshing as anything. Not only that, but while waiting in Kabootarkan the wind shifted and we now had a tailwind blowing us to Kerman! Everything was looking up.
We flew along after lunch with the wind at our backs. Still had about 70 km to cover, but with the wind and the ground flat it wouldn’t be long before we reached the city. It always seems that a tailwind puts whatever scenery your riding through in a better light, and what to me before was a boring, featureless waste seemed now beautiful expanse of rock and sand, almost another planet, glowing in the evening sun.

  
  
It was dark by the time we arrived at Kerman. We were heading straight for the bus station with no plans to stay in the city that long. Missing the turn off for the station took us a bit further towards the centre than we would have liked but it worked out in the end. We stopped outside a bike shop to have a look in, I still needed a new chain.
Low and behold, not only did they stock Shimano components but a whole array of other bike parts and accessories. Turns out it was the main Shimano reseller in Iran here in Kerman which we learned after speaking to the owner Nima for some time. I got my chain and Richie a new front rack and panniers and we were away.

The bike shop was on the north side of Shariati Street, between the big roundabout and the interchange with Ferdowsi Boulevard, it’s called Puegot and Raleigh Cycles.

 

 
 Nima gave us directions to the bus station and we made it there with time to spare, the night bus to Zahedan wouldn’t leave for another hour and half. To kill time we went to get something to eat and ended up waiting so long for it we were barely finished by the time the bus arrived and we were whisked away to load up our bikes.
We were taking the bus for two reasons, first we and been told that East of Kerman to the border is ‘dangerous’. I’m not entirely sure how dangerous it really is although the area is technically part of the golden crescent. The more definitive reason though, was that we were running out of time to get into Pakistan. With only three more days of validly to enter there was no way we could make it by cycling.
With everything packed up we got on the bus. This was the last day of cycling in Iran. If everything goes smoothly we should in Pakistan in the next few days.

So we had to make it to Kerman as quickly as possible because the validity of our Pakistan visa was running out. The last day the visa would be valid for entry was the 4th of February. Once we got to Zahedan we should be ok because we could get to the border in a couple of bourse on a bus.
But we were still hundreds of kilometres from Zahaden and so were going to take a bus from Kerman to Zahedan too. We weren’t running out of time running out of time at an alarming rate, but we had to be aware of it.
Not much to say about the cycling today, Infact I don’t think I took a photo most of the day.
But something interesting did happen today. At lunch in a town called Ahmad Abad we met another cyclist! It was an older French guy coming the opposite direction. He had been riding for a couple of months around the Arabian peninsula and had just gone over the Persian gulf into Iran a couple of weeks ago. We joined him on his side of the road for lunch, sharing stories and talking about bike touring, it was great it had been ages since we had met a cyclists.

 

 
When we got back to the bikes though, something was wrong. Finns very powerful and pretty valuable front lights had been snapped off and stolen. What to do? Well it was a small enough town so we figured someone knew where it was and could get it back, it was just a question of who and how.
There was a police station 100 m down the road, Finn went over to tell them. Well, they were pretty useless in the end. After been dragged back to the bike, and the dragged to where the bike had been and shown the people who had seen it and told to ask them where it was (by Finn, through gestures) nothing was accomplished.
Meanwhile, all this ruckus had drawn a crowd. Shortly after Finn came back with the police a very out of place white SUV pulled up to the kerb where we were standing and four guys that were all too well dressed in this town got out and tried to ask us some questions, but they didn’t speak any English. What we could tell was that these were the guys who could actually do something, not the useless policeman.
Eventually one of the SUV guys got out a phone and called someone who spoke English and I tired to explain the problem, that my friends light was taken, that he wanted it back etc. after a couple of tries they got it and telling us to wait there piled into the SUV and sped off. 
Almost as soon as they left the town English teacher showed up to interpret what was going on and by now a sizeable crowd had gathered. We moved from the side of the road to the police station where the was a parking area with more space.
We hung around for about 20 minutes and then the white SUV came back with another car following it. One of the well dressed guys got and, lo and behold, held up Finns light.

‘Who are those guys?’ We asked our interpreter.

‘Oh, they are the secret police.’

I’m not entirely sure what secret police means, if it’s KGB or Mafia but either way they got the light back. Some kid had pulled it off, as we had guessed and they had bought him and his dad in. They asked if we wanted compensation. Of course not, we were just happy to have the light.

A friend of the interpreter fixed the wiring of light back to the Dynamo and an hour later we were away. Ali (the interpreter) gave us two big bags of pistachios (the local crop) and implored us not to think poorly of their town because of this. He translated messages from many of the onlookers to this effect and we told them all that of course we don’t. They seemed happy to hear it.

 

 
So after all that it was getting late and would be dark within the hour. We cycled to within 10km of Rafsanjan and pulled off into the pistachio fields to camp in another dried up pond.

  

We were sort of slow to get going today. In the morning we sat around, threw rocks and generally put off cycling for a good hour and a half. It wasn’t like we were facing any adverse conditions today, in fact it was going to be just like yesterday. But perhaps that was exactly the problem. 

 
When we finally did get going it was a lovely sunny ride in the wide open desert. Although there were to be more delays in our future. At camp last night we had been commenting on how long it had been since any of us got a flat tyre. Well, today I got one and Finn got one too, and then another one and at the end of the day Richie got a flat too so of course having to change all those delayed us again.

  
 

 
So we really didn’t make a lot of distance today, I think by the time we stopped we had only covered a bit over 60km. But it was ok, we still had time to reach Kerman in the next two days.
By the evening we had reached Anar and the land was being cultivated! This area is the pistachio capital of Iran and for miles and miles around the ground was being used to grow pistachios! 

 

 
In fact so numerous were the pistachio farms that for the first time in a long time, it was kind of hard to find somewhere to camp. We turned off the main road and cycled for a good ten minutes before we found somewhere to set up, a dried up pond bed next to a dirt road.

  
 

 

A lot of desert separates us from the next town of Kerman. A lot of flat dusty riding in our future. But though some cycle tourers find the desert riding to be a bit of a drag I guess being from Ireland the being in such a large, flat, dry, isolated place is completely new to us, so it’s kind of exciting in a way.
It also means that there isn’t so much to write about given that the days are generally long and flat through the same terrain as the day before and the day before that. The dessert out here was quite rocky and dusty with a couple of scrub plants here and there and rocky hills off about 15 kilometres either side of the road.

 

 
  
  
  

 We rode from the campsite outside Yazd up a short hill and then along the flat where we would spend pretty much the rest of the day. We would break up the day with a couple of stops just for a chat to eat if there was somewhere to get food but by and large it was uneventful.

  
These little breaks would often end up in throwing rocks at other rocks in an attempt to entertain ourselves. We spent about 30 minutes after lunch following the noble pursuit.

 

 
I think in general we were cycling uphill today but it was so so gradual it was hardly noticeable at all. The only way you could really tell was how close the hills on the horizon were. At one point they were a ways off and then at the end of the day we passed through some of them and the on the other side the desert continued again.

 

 
  
Right before camp we had the fortune to pass a big rest stop area where we bought dinner and breakfast and loaded up on water. We found a little dug out hole in the sand off away from the road where we camped tonight, the hole keeping is our of the incessant wind.

  
 

 
  

We were looking forward to getting into Yazd today, the place is another tourist hub and we had been recommended a nice, cheap place to stay similar to the great Khan- e Eshan we had stayed at in Kerman.
Before that though we had another day riding in the desert. 
Today the desert was sunny and windy and the road was flat and straight. A bit sandier today too, at least compared to the last few days of rocks and dry scrub bushes. We passed a big rest stop area at 11:30 and figured after yesterday’s debacle we should stop for an early lunch.
Just as we were about to set off again the wind picked up and and started to lift the sand up. It certainly wasn’t a full blown sandstorm but there was a lot of sand flying around, it was necessary to cover mouths and eyes to keep going.

 

 
It only lasts maybe 30 minutes, after that the air cleared and we could cycle unhindered again. The urban development around Yazd started maybe 40 km out from the centre, we passed a couple of towns busy loading and unloading trucks. Most of these hinterland towns tend to be focused on auto repair and you’ll find trucks in various states of repair all along the side of the road.

 

 
Yazd is quite spread out but the gooey touristy centre is pretty well concentrated in a couple of kilometres so it was a long time of riding in regular Iranian city before we saw anything of note.

 

 
We arrived at the city centre at around four. The place we wanted to stay was full, but they had a sister hotel close by, a place called the Orient hotel. And it was nicer, and cheaper and located at pretty much the same place. So everything was working out pretty well so far in Yazd. Plus their showers were great. There’s nothing quite like a good shower after a stint on the bike.

One of our more challenging rides of the trip today. If we thought we had been riding in the desert before today was a real test of our desert riding chops. We began finishing the ride towards Naein though we didn’t actually go into town, turning off just before.  

 
Richie had a run in with some Iranian funny guys feigning completely ignorance of English as a gestured wildly for a toilet at Naein. This was at a building just before the turn off from Naein that we stopped at in case there was nothing else for a while.
Turns out that this was good move, there was nothing else for 70km. Just straight road in the desert, completely desolate. The tailwind we experienced in the morning was more changed to a crosswind and then headwind as we rode South-East. The sun was out but still a winter sun so temperatures were bearable, I can’t imagine doing such a ride in the summer.

  
But man was the wind strong, there was nothing to block or slow it down it blew in off the mountains and buffeted us as we rode on. At some point rain falling on the mountains 20 km away had droplets picket up blown out to us.

 

 
  
We only had a bit of food left in our bags and we’re getting pretty hungry after 40 km of riding with nowhere to find food. We stopped and raided the last of our supplies in a turn off to keep us going. We could see as village on the horizon, but it was still 25 km off.
We reached this village, a place called Aqda and gobbled down a late lunch. We then rode around the village a bit looking for a shop. The place was surprisingly nice, a traditional sort of mud-plaster building settlement of the desert that had been recently renovated. Everything seemed to be closed now at three o’clock, but we found a small shop at last.

 

 
  
From then on the ride to Ardakan was a lot less desolate. And, joy of joys the wind shifted to a tailwind so we flew along the rest of the desert road for another 20 km and by half five found a suitable camp spot just outside Ardakan. Riding in the desert’s easy, I do it all the time.

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.