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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Leaving Golestan After our rest day in Golestan, we started today our path towards Mashhad. And Golestan National Park remained tricky terrain for biking. It continued going up and down for the first 30 km through wonderful green fields and small canyons. And then suddenly the climate changes. Only a few km after the last […]

Planned Sightseeing and Change of Plans After last night’s busy evening we decided to start cycling only in the afternoon so we can do the hosts a favor and stay a bit longer with them. Therefore we planned to visit what they call the “jungle” of Golestan in the morning by car. Jungle sounded great, […]

Lowe and the waterfalls After our host offered us fresh bread for breakfast, we went on a short car ride into the hills for seeing Lowe waterfalls. Wonderfully embedded into the green forest it was a lovely place to start the day. And because it had rained during the night, the colors of the leaves […]

Visa for Turkmenistan First the good news of today. My transit visa request for Turkmenistan got finally approved. Which means that I will start crossing Turkmenistan on April 18 and should leave the country again on April 22. So I have 5 days for 500 km. As the visa is strictly bound to the indicated […]

Leaving Alborz Mountains Around 40 km were between us and the Caspian Sea when we stopped yesterday after almost 140 km and stayed the night at a forest camping. The night was not particularly quiet because the camping was right next to the highway, but we were tired enough to get the sleep we need. […]

Across the Alborz Mountains The Alborz Mountains are between the capital Teheran and the Caspian Sea. These mountains have several peaks above 4000 m, the highest of them is Mt. Damavand (5604 m), a volcano. At this time of the year there is still a lot of snow in these mountains, making them a wonderful […]