Stomach Problems
The night before, we ate some of the fresh cheese that we received from the family in Badianly as a good-bye present for dinner. It already smelled a bit weird, looked also a bit weird, but we thought, well, it can’t be too bad and since we did not have too many other things available, we still ate it.
Well, we regretted it very soon. Both Lucie and I got serious stomach and digestion problems with the accompanied symptoms. So my night was not very relaxing. And the next morning we were both feeling completely weak and postponed our departure from the farm until after lunch time. Then we decided to at least cycle the 17 km to yesterday’s target Ashkhaney. We were both very exhausted and from then on we took motorized transportation directly into Mashhad.
State of the art bus ride
We were glad to be able to ride on a bus and let petrol do the work for us today. But the bus ride was everything else than relaxing. First, the driver had a 15 minute dispute with a potential passenger instead of driving, then the AC or even the fan of the bus was not working and temperatures outside were at around 30°C.
We expected to be in this bus for 2.5 to 3 hours because Mashhad is 300 km away, but in the end we spend 6 hours in this bus. The reason is that at every smaller city, the bus stopped and was trying to acquire passengers for around 10-20 minutes. Because of that we only reached Mashhad at night, and Mashhad for sure is not a bike friendly city.
Overnight at a Warmshowers.org member
Luckily, we found a host on warmshowers.org, which is a platform similar to Couchsurfing, but for cyclists. Arash was very friendly and picked us up at the bus stop with the car and transported us including our bikes and luggage to his home, where I took a quick shower and more or less went to bed directly. I was still very weak from my stomach problems.
Detailed Track
Max elevation: 849 m
Min elevation: 741 m
Total climbing: 82 m
Total descent: -145 m
Total time: 01:15:02
