Late start
After a long night in Aspas with around 20 family members, we only started at around 10:40 that day. The first goal was to reach Erhlid for lunch where we were already invited by the brother of Ahmad, our host from the last night. To warm up, we had to climb a few hundred meters over a pass before descending into another wide high plateau.
After the first descent, strong tail wind started to accompany us, and it turned out it will do so until the end of the day. That’s of course a biker’s dream, and on flat parts we were without big efforts able to drive between 30-40 km/h.
Tunnel or not…
After the first high plateau, there was a tunnel through the mountains so we did not have to climb another pass. At least, that’s what we thought… Police wouldn’t let us through the tunnel because they say it’s too dangerous. I guess they were right, but it was still frustrating at first. So there were two possibilities: trying to hitchhike or actually going over the pass. We chose the second option. It turned out to be a good decision, because the view from the top of the pass was simply awesome.
High speed descent to Eqlid
The reward for the steep ascent was a 15 km descent by around 500m of altitude. Still accompanied by the strong wind, we barely had to pedal and reached our lunch destination much sooner than expected.
Out into the desert
After Eqlid, we continued cycling for another 2.5 hours until sunset because the strong tail wind was too good to miss. We left the mountains for good and entered the dry desert. We made a lot of progress and reached Abarkouh, a city in the middle of the desert, by dusk. It is a transit city and we did not feel like looking for hosts tonight, so we went at the city limit and chose a place behind some rocks for camping.
Detailed Track
Max elevation: 2782 m
Min elevation: 1564 m
Total climbing: 1084 m
Total descent: -1670 m
Total time: 09:02:41
