After a good night in Abravan we left today at a more decent hour in hope of good wind. However, even though the traffic and the road conditions were slightly better than yesterday, the head wind was already strong in the morning, and my stomach was still causing some problems to me, so it was out of the question that we would cycle the remaining 140 km to Sarakhs in one day. So we decided to cycle to Shurak Maleki, a small town 30 km after Abravan and take a train from there to Sarakhs.

Waiting for the train

When we arrived in Shurak Maleki, we saw a train leave right in front of us. I somehow had the feeling that this is a bad sign, I did not expect many daily connections on this route. Nevertheless, we went to the train station (which was placed around 1 km away from the town limits) and asked an employee when the next train would leave. He said in 3 hours, so we decided to take some rest and wait. He invited us into the building to drink tea with him (and watch a movie). But after a bit more than an hour, he suddenly decided that we have to go out of the building, and that there will be no train and we should take a bus. Any subsequent attempts to figure out if there was really a train or not today to Sarakhs were without success. So we decided to go back on the highway and try to hitchhike.

Riding a truck

Hitchhiking was easy. The very first truck that approached us stopped on our request. We loaded our bikes, entered the truck and after a very interesting ride through nice mountains we descended to Sarakhs, the border city where we will cross to Turkmenistan tomorrow. Somehow it was a pity we could not cycle at least part of the route because of the wonderful scenery, but because our Visa for Turkmenistan is fixed on the 18th of April, we had to reach Sarakhs today.

Arrival in Sarakhs

As soon as we loaded off our bikes from the truck, a local stopped and invited us to his home for dinner and the night. That went quick. We were already a bit worried where we would camp for the night, because border cities are supposed to be less safe. After we went to his home, the usual program started with dinner, getting to know each other, and now, finally going to sleep.

Next days in Turkmenistan

The next two days we will most likely not cycle because we get a ride to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, where we visit some friends and hope to get to know a bit better the Turkmen people that actually still live in Turkmenistan (compared to the Turkmen people in Golestan). For that reason, the live tracking will most likely only be enabled again on Thursday. And even though the Internet in Iran was far from good, I expect the Internet in Turkmenistan to be even more restricted, so blog posts might follow with some delay.

Detailed Track (Cycling)

This is our second last day in Iran. Today and tomorrow we have to travel around 200 km east to the Turkmen border at Sarakhs, which should be doable with reasonable wind and weather conditions. But first we needed to cross the whole city of Mashhad, because Aresh’s home is on the western side of the city and the road to Sarakhs leaves on the East. This means around 20 km of cycling on highways and roads with heavy traffic.

Leaving on highways at noon

Last night we stayed up a bit longer to spend more time with our friendly hosts, so we delayed our departure until noon. At first we were afraid the heat would be too much at noon, but temperatures today were quite comfortable. From the small street we had to find our way to a boulevard, which then ended up in a highway with 3 to 4 lanes. Even though this is not so pleasant for cycling, it is still not the worst choice because if there are several lanes, trucks and cars have enough space to pass and hence we are not squeezed between the vehicles and the side of the road. After roughly 1 ½ hours we finally left Mashhad and reached the road towards Sarakhs.

Harassments to Lucie

So far there was only one incident since Shiraz when Lucie got harassed by some teenage men, but he got beaten up by some locals. Today was the second time. When cycling through the suburbs of Mashhad, some teenagers tried to make Lucie stop cycling and one of them kicked with his foot at her bike. Luckily nothing more serious happened, also thanks to some more grown-up locals who were ashamed of the behavior of their own youth (although, for me it is hard to say if those guys were immigrants from Afghanistan or Pakistan or actually Iranians). It’s a pity that a small number of men need to take such actions which harm the reputation of a whole country. Because everywhere else where we have been, Lucie has been treated with respect and nobody even thought of harassing her.

Highway towards Sarakhs

The road towards Sarakhs is more or less the least desirable for a cyclist. No beautiful scenery, tons of transit traffic with lots of trucks on one narrow lane per direction, dust, sand, and exhaust gases accumulating on our faces. We had quite a few vehicles passing with around 30 cm distance to us at full speed. Not very exciting for us cyclists. In the end I started riding next to the road in the gravel whenever I saw that there is traffic from both sides as dangerous manoeuvers are quite likely.

Romantic stop at Gas Station?

After 4 hours of head wind we stopped at a gas station to get some rest. Not much later, an employee of the gas station started talking to us, offered us tea and even took a carpet out of the local mosque so that we don’t have to sit on the stone at the gas station.

The employee seemed to like Lucie a lot. When I went to the bathroom for some minutes, he gently invited her in my absence to have an erotic adventure with him and his friends in the nearby mosque in the evening! Basically breaking all possible rules of Islam. It seems that despite all the repression here, some people are not that religious after all in Iran.

Another night at a local family in Abravan

Needless to say that Lucie kindly denied and we went on cycling until we reached a village named Abravan. There we found a family which lets us stay in their house overnight. 5 minutes after we arrived at their home and were shown around in the house, everybody left because they had some affairs to take care of in Mashhad. So basically we were alone in their home for a few hours. We could help ourselves with the food and drinks. I really admire how much the locals trust us.

Detailed Track

From the religious point of view, Mashhad is the most important city in Iran. During Iran’s public holidays such as Noruz (New Year, comparable to Christmas), hundreds of thousands if not millions of pilgrims travel to this city, and this not only from Iran, but from all Shiite countries. Therefore the city center around the Imam Reza Holy Shrine is targeting the pilgrimage tourism with all the ups such as diversity of stores, restaurants, and annoyances such as aggressive beggars, vendors, and so on.

Getting Visa from Turkmen Consulate

However, before sightseeing, we started the day by visiting the Turkmen Consulate, because from the Embassy in Switzerland we only received a letter of invitation (LOI) by e-mail (while already travelling in Iran). We wanted to convert this LOI into a real visa here in Mashhad to reduce the time at the border, where this would also have been possible. The process went extremely smooth. Just like in the Embassy in Geneva, the Turkmen employees of the Consulate were very friendly and helpful and against Lonely Planet’s information also speak English. It took us 20 minutes in total and we had our visa printed in our passport.

At the consulate we also met Olivier and Herni, two French guys who are travelling with their camper from France around the world. They also managed to get the Turkmen transit visa, which, as we heard, is unfortunately not always so easy. We heard stories of many cyclists whose visa requests got refused, or they had to apply three times to get the visa.

Visiting Imam Reza Holy Shrine

The main attraction for me as tourist is the Imam Reza Holy Shrine complex in the city center. It is a collection of many courtyards, mosques, museums, tombs and a library. When starting our visit, we were first asked if we are Muslims. Because we were not, we were had to wait at a special entrance for a guide who took us through the facilities. Also, we were not allowed to bring in cameras, however smartphones are allowed to take pictures and videos. This is beyond my understanding, but the consequence is that most of today’s pictures are not of the same quality as usual.

Once Lucie was cloaked in her Chador, we entered the first courtyard which had enormous dimensions and hosts 100’000 people during holidays for praying. After that we went on to more and more courtyards, each of them a little different. And we also visited a relatively newly built mirror room of gigantic dimensions which was very impressive.

However, we as non-Shiite were refused entry to the tomb of Imam Reza. Our guide, who was critical of the whole system in Iran, let us know that this rule was introduced recently by one or two persons, despite all the guides trying to convince the management to do otherwise. So much about tolerance for other religions which always gets praised.

On the other hand we got a special privilege as a tourist: We were lead into an office where a well-educated Islam expert was justifying the Islam as it is lived in Iran to us for almost an hour in perfect English. The guy was an excellent speaker and well trained in convincing people and finding answers to all kinds of questions. I have met such guys before, not just in Islamic countries, but also in Europe with other religions. The best is to not start arguing with them, they are trained better than I am. In addition, I had enough contact with police lately already, therefore I refrained from asking critical questions about the linking of the religion with the political system. We were left with a nice present in the form of a booklet from the Department of Propagation and Islamic Relations. Maybe I am going to read it on the next bus right – maybe not.

Evening program

After that, we enjoyed an evening with our French friends in a local restaurant. My dinner consisted of bread and water because I still had problems with my stomach, the others had some typical mutton ragout which actually smelled good, but I didn’t want to risk messing up my stomach again because in the following two days we have to cycle a total of 200 km to the Turkmen border.