Back Home!

 

Back Home! Bristol

After a night in a travellers site (who were very welcoming unlike the official camping site down the road) we embarked on a balmy ride through the backroads of Southern England. Having cycled 11000kms  it was a thrill to discover just how gorgeous an English Spring can be, punctuated with the odd ale in sleepy weekday pubs. And the sun. Hot but not that hot. And the breeze. Cool but not too cool. After the dry desert lip cracking wind of the Middle East and the Indian humidity this Spring climate is a real blessing.

And the English . We love ‘em, being English whippets ourselves, but some can be right rude and clunky. The only times we’ve been crowed at,  just for being cyclists, have been in the UK. Once on the way out- “get back in the cycle lane”- as if cyclists shouldn’t be on the road- and on our return through Southampton where a woman went into a frenzy because Jen momentarily wheeled the bike (Jen wasn’t even cycling ) across her path-”You cyclists don’t have your own rules you know.” The woman threatened to call the police.

It makes you wonder if there is something threatening about cyclists for the more uptight Brits. As if the freedom and independence that cycling represents undermines their sense of motorway order.

But the rest of this ragged isle were as kind and curious as the rest of this ragged planet. There was a particulary warm and kind man in a Wiltshire village who gave us long and melodious directions when we got lost on the backroads. His Wiltshire accent was so sonorous and familiar and yet so unfamiliar, an echo of  Bristol West Country tones.

And then the last pootle into the city of Bristol along the legendary Sustrans route 4 bike path. Our mate Joe turned up in a  boater hat with his ipod playing swing tunes from his pannier rack and Jen’s sister was resplendent on her sit up and beg cycle. And one by one  more of our mates turned up until the final few yards and we  freewheeled across the “Finish” line- a roll of wallpaper someone had found outside a house- the informal recycling system of East Bristol.  Everyone strolled to the local pub for the cheapest ale in town and it was brill to see so many old faces and say hello without having to explain our strangeness. After passing through so many homes that were home to others it was such a relief to be back in our own base. That wonky road sign was our wonky road sign, that charity shop was our broken charity shop,  and that terraced house, squeezed in a hundred, thousand others, our home.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us on the way and has been following this blog.

Our ride has been an adventure into the unknown, an unknown that has proved to be human kindness, an endurable care that extends around the planet like a force of gravity.

Don’t believe the hype. Don’t believe the 24hour rolling news that broadcasts terror into your living rooms. Most living is done outside those  rooms. And that living is not terrifying. But a world of quiet kind extraordinary giving.  Go see.

xx

jen and jet

billy and bertle

Return River crossing across the Hamble river Southampton (first crossing was in May 2010)

Home from Home

Billy Bertle take a rest English Country Lane

 

Billy and Bertle Au revoir

Reunited with the United Kingdom

 Cheese mainly. And cake. Lots of cake. This has been the bike petrol for the last month. Oh and the odd the train that took the strain out of the legs.

Ran out of steam half way up a hill in Tuscanny. Took a slow loco to Nice and then a sleeper train to Paris. Found the Paris Marathon and  cycled in the opposite direction to the tides of runners, which felt like we were cycling to the beginnng of our own endurathon. Found the Champs Elysees. Cycled down that. Found the French croissants. Ate them.

Cycled through the glory of Normandy in Spring and found all the bluebell woodlands we left behind last May. Surreal. Felt like our trip was a bluebell bookended dream. We are now just skinnier birch saplings on the bluebell covered floor.

Met Eric a French cyclist who let Jet have a wobbly go on his recliner bike.

Upright cycling to le Havre. Ferry. Use up loose change. Cycle off ferry. Man in fluro jacket says “Follow that truck”. He says it in English Not French, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, Maltese, Italian, French. But a friendly ballsy English. We follow the London Thames Estuary gravelly accent, the soot of the truck and are back in Blighty.

Parents buy us a pint in a Travelodge and remind us to put our bike helmets on. We stay with Richie and his housemates in Portsmouth and Richie makes us a veggie breakfast. Heaven.

Now we cycle back to Bristol along the south coast.

Back to a tiny dot in a big world.

But a lovely.

Tiny.

Dot.

.

Campsite Normandy

 

Eric teaches Jet to use recliner bike

Jet with bluebells Normandy

 

Monets Garden Giverny

 

net result of bike touring

 

Arrived In Italy With a Thumpio

Relaxing at the end of 2000km ride in India,Bombay

Wellll…..

Got on a train to Bombay with bikes, fought at midnight with taxi drivers, stayed with two lovely lovely souls in Bombay (Kunal and Helen respect respect). Got on a big container ship in Bombay just as the disaster of the Tsunami in Japan was being broadcast. Port security official in Bombay invited Jet into his office for what he thought might be a bribe but in fact was the official showing Jet an Indian newspaper with news of the Tsunami “You want to go on the ship still. You sure this is safe?”

“Yes,” says Jet, “we’ve got strong hearts.”

“OK,” he says, as if giving us permission, “You are kind of adventurers.”

So we got on the container ship with our hearts somewhere in our chests and, after the normal India port chaos, found ourselves once again in the air conditioned world of International Freight. This time the crew were much more friendly and the Croatian captain and his wife made sure we were well looked after. Tsunamis weren’t really top of our worry list. We were heading through the Suez canal as every country nearby seemed to be in civil uproar. But for the crew the real threat was piracy. This was something we had dismissed as we were told on a previous voyage that the ships were too fast for Somali pirates. But the Captain and the crew took it very seriously and the atmosphere on board noticeably lightened after we’d got past the Gulf of Aden and Saudi. The Captain said there are 2000 sailors held captive on “mother ships” off the coast of Somalia. Some container boats now have snipers. Ours had fire hoses.

After two weeks we arrived in Malta to find roads littered with Ferraris, day glo racing bikes and the odd horse and cart. Beside the road were African refugees and economic migrants. Reverse culture shock set in again.

 We then took a ferry to Italy and are currently cycling through Tuscanny. The weather is fantastic, blue skies, a spring breeze and daisys bobbing in the green grass. A blessed relief after the scorchio deserts of Iran and the humidity of India.

Jet in his usual language gatecrashing has been trying to speak Italian by adding “io” to the end of every word and scowling at poor Italian waiters because the average meal costs 15 pounds instead of the 50p for two thalis in India.

Jen has been indulging in Spring.  Spring will be continually springing as we travel north and you don’t have to pay for bluebells bobbin by the roadside.

We will continue cycling until the Euros or time runs out and then take a train to North France and bob across the channel for the homeward jaunt.

(Photos to follow, this computer don’t like cameras being attached…)

Peddle through the daffodils for us wherever you are.

j n j

x xd

found a camera friendly computer in France!…

daydreaming on a cargo ship, suez canal

 

The HUGE engine

 

Dramatic exit from Middle East and the Suez

Land ahoy! Arrive in Malta

 

A friend in Pisa

woo spring, Tuscany

Top of the Teas

There is an Indian gesture we see a lot when we’re on the bikes – the hand is upraised, the fingers spread out and wrist twisted from side to side, as if changing a imaginary light bulb. What this seems to mean is “what’s going on?” or “please explain?” or most likely “what are you crazy people doing cycling at midday with all that stuff when its 33 o c and 92 per cent humidity?”

The short answer is we’ve got a train to catch. The long answer, our ultimate purpose, we discovered a couple of days ago but we’ll get onto that later. But first to fill you in on our adventures since the last post.

Having been completely knackered and a bit aimless we found a paradise beach on private land where we managed to plug ourselves in for recharge via our achey toes and a socket somewhere in the soothing sands and sea. The beach hut had a palm tree growing through the middle and there was no one else around but the fishermen and a very attentive guy who seemed to pop up at every moment to offer Chai tea and Kingfisher beer, just as your arm flopped out of the hammock. We had to get our own water out of a well but it all added to the shipwrecked appeal.

All charged up we began peddling again, realising we had to cover another 1300 km in about 3 weeks to get to the train we’d booked two weeks before, not thinking then we’d get lost in beach world.

The road was beautiful to begin with until we got funnelled onto the coastal national highway and truck madness. The Indians build their vehicles around a big fat horn. They get the loudest, blastiest horn they can find and then build the rest of the machine around it, leaving the brakes till last.

Following the advice of our friends Freddie and Guy (www.abikejourney.com) we took a sharp left turn and wheeled through the interior plains, coming across a performing elephant on the way, and up, up , up into the lush hilltop tea plantations of the Western Ghats.

Right when we started this blog we came up with a page called “Top of Teas” where we promised our best tea stops. Lack of time and the infinite nature to tea stops put an end to further updates. But we can inform you that, here in the Western Ghats, at a hill town called “Munnar”, we found our Top of the Teas. We negotiated our way over a 1800m pass and up one last hill to the house of  Mr Iype, a local character who has been hosting tourists in his place in the middle of the tea shrub hills for the past 20 years.  Mr Iype beckoned us to sit us down in his cozy front room, with sofas much like Jet’s nan used to have, and widescreen windows overlooking the plunging valleys and made us a cup of Tetley tea with a dash of milk and a shortbread biscuit. “This,”  said Mr Iype, gesturing at the endless rolling green crop, “is where your tea comes from.”

Ah- Top of the Teas. We discovered the point of our journey, nearly 10000km from the UK to India to get a good cuppa. We had a cup of cha just before we pottered onto the bike path in Bristol, and here in India, we had come again to the grail, the circle complete, the simple but ultimately very complicated cup of tea. All those tea stops, the ”stepping stones of life”, by which we negotiated all those kms over so many countries.

Jen was entranced by the Spice Gardens we found further down the hill, cardammon and vanilla and cinnamon and all that stuff that sits at the back of our food cupboards and don’t end up using enough. We saw what it really looks like in the shady groves of hilltop Kerala.

Right now we need to cover another 300km to the Southern tip of India, catch the train back to Bombay and thence, fingers crossed,  get a boat to Malta to trainfrog with our bikes back to the UK.

For now we toast you with our cups of  tea from afar.

j n j

x x

Paradise Hut

Jenny Gardens

Monkey God hugs Shiva (can't get this image right side up but tilt your head)

Grubs Up (Massive Thali Take Out)

Temple Elephant Festival

Jet finds his tea.

Cycling through tea

No battery power remaining.

"No battery power remaining"

After the shock of reaching the finishing line we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. It seemed so daunting to cycle all the way to India we dare not think of what we might we do when we actually arrived. So we continued what we’ve been up to for the past 9 months. Peddle peddle peddle… The route south from Mumbai was  pretty remote with only scant tourist infrastructure and about ten ferry crossings.  It had a coastal topography a bit like Cornwall. Up and Down and Down and Up and Down and Up and…. The humid heat was a bit of a jolt after the dry heat of the Middle East and we spent a few days feeling dizzy and bewildered. We finally discovered “Wadi and Pow”, a kind of ad hoc veggie burger you can get in most of the villages and this kept us going till we reached the curry stops.

Somewhere into the second week, while Jet was encouraging Jen to “go a bit faster. We need to make it to the hotel….” his own legs failed him like a stalled engine and he had to push his bike up the hill. A fever ensued that rather worringly ebbed and flowed like the sea. Thankfully after a few days the snot kicked in and we realised it was just flu , of a rather tub thumping Indian variety. With Jen taking the fore we cycled woefully slowly along the beautiful rugged coast barely faster than the plodding buffalos. Although there wasn’t much traffic we met lots of  friendly bike tourists.

We peddled slowly into beach world and have been subsequently making slow progress from coastal shack to  shack unto the flatter sands of the state of Goa. 

Jet took a picture of the bikes gathering sand in one shadowy beach cabin and then the digital camera announced “No battery power remaining” and turned itself off.  That’s how we both feel now. We got to India and now we need to plug in somewhere. We’re having a go at the beach horizontal method but finding the whole Tourism shenanagans in Goa a bit topsy turvy. You can get a freshly squeezed orange juice and high speed internet here but the Thalis taste curiously bland and the super smooth roads seem too good to be true.  It’s beautiful but the chaotic fire of India doesn’t burn so brightly. It’s battery power may be a bit low… sucked up by all those digital camera clicks, ours included.

Part of us wants the challenge of the wayward  road the other part wants a banana milkshake and a lie down on a palm leaf sun lounger.

We met an amazing guy a couple of days ago. He cycled for fourteen years around the planet and then sea kayaked and dinghied for another fifteen.  He gave us lots to think about. Not that our trip was a minor trail ( in fact to us it still seems a moon journey) but that the world is endlessly offering you roads to go down, if you choose to take them. We have been taken aback by how many people are cycling long distances in all the countries we’ve visited. They don’t write books about it, most don’t  do blogs  but they are quietly peddling about having a nose.

We will continue to have a nose around India and plug in to the Chai battery power.  Apparently its even more humid down south reaching 100 percent humidity in March. Thank goodness for the Ocean. The cyclists Spa.

Thanks so much for all the comments we have recieved on the blog. You have been stalwart companions.

(We’ve just noticed that all our photos have gone a bit”stretchy”- this is something to do with the blog site changing its formatting so we apologise if we look a bit funfair on your computer. Click on the photo and it should appear more normal or at least to scale)

Happy bright pixels and saris in the sunshine to you all. 

j n j

x x

Dolphins jump in front of container ship on way to India

Start of India cycling -just south of Mumbai

Dawn Start Goa

 

Happy Tractor

Arrived

 

Made it.

Yup we made it. Container shipped over with a load of chemicals,  a transit van and who knows what else on the good ship CMG Coral.

After a lot of miles, punctures, sandwiches, biscuits, cups of tea, sore saddles and stargazing we sat down in our peeling paint room just south of Mumbai and shed a few tears as the ocean hushed at the shore. For all that effort, for all our family, for all our friends, for all the madness of it all.

Now we are cycling through some more isolated areas from Mumbai to Goa and taking short ferry trips where the road peters out and haven’t had much net access but we hope to add further updates when we have a bit more time. Suffice to say India has been a great landing. Veg food heaven for Jen and cups of sweet sweet milk Chai for Jet.

The people have been fab and really India hasnt been as full on as we expected.  Thanks India for being our destination. Thanks friends and family and all the other doods and doodesses for travelling with us.

But we still have a teeny bit more left to ride…

j n j x x

Hard Hat Sailors cross the Persian / Arabian Sea

Small leaky boat India (captain pitches out water as we cross inlet)

Off on a Boat to India

We really wanted to cycle all the way to India and were seriously thinking about cycling through Pakistan from Iran. Concerns about instability in the region ( now even in the South) and of course the recent flooding made us wary. As one backpacker put it “the last thing they need is tourists.”

But what finally put pay to our cycling was the visa. During the summer Pakistan visas for all foreign nationals applying ouside of their home countries were cancelled, certainly for territories west of the border. Other people attempted sending their passport home by fedex to get the visa stamped in their own country. Indeed we met a German couple who tried to do this in Iran until they were told that it was illegal to post passports out of Iran. (And to be honest you don’t want to be caught without your passport in Iran).

So what to do? We didn’t want to cram  into one of those flying sardine tins. Not because we’re we’re holier than thou eco invaders but because it just didn’t feel right. We’ve come this far clinging to the circumference of the earth and we’ren’t yet ready to give up on gravity.

So Jet posted a note on a Dubai internet forum and asked for advice, any boats going to India? Well the  consensus seemed to be you could get a Dhow, one of the traditional wooden trading boats that flit across the Persian gulf, the same kind of sloop that Michael Palin took in his “Around the World in 80 days”. However Jen and I hung out on the docks for a bit having a gander, with the all crews  gazing down at these foreign strangers on bikes and didn’t feel so comfortable. Then the subsequent entries on the internet forum mentioned that a couple of overloaded dhows had overturned in Dubai harbour earlier in the year. This coupled with Dhow rustic living (ie wooden ring over the side of the boat for toilet) and the fact that Jen would be travelling with fifteen other men  neither of us knew for seven days in open sea and we decided no. I think this option would be realistic for a group of men travelling with a personally recommended crew (perhaps with a BBC Michael Palin vouchsafe) but it wasn’t for us.

So what to do? Jet had been in contact with an agent for an International Freighter shipping company who offer limited spaces on their cargo boats. These ships are the giant mammas that carry consumer boff round the world and look like oversized, well, um sardine tins.( But oversized sardine tines that travel over the surface of the waters). It seemed a bit touch and go and the shipping agents weren’t the most communicative of souls. But after tracking down a doctor willing to prove we were medically fit to travel on a boat without a doctor(cycling 8000 km wasn’t sufficient evidence) getting Yellow Fever Vaccinations, signing about 12 pieces of paper and sending them to Canada we were granted passage on one of these beasts. Oh yes and paying lots of money. You’d think this would be an economy way to travel but it ain’t cheap. Who cares we thought we’re gonna darn well get to India on a boat. The kind of container ship that scares  tiny wooden dhows senseless but at least we’ll have our own loo, and won’t be clinging to each other like wet flannels if the winds pick up.

We managed to get a 3 month India visa. The boat trip takes 6 days from tomorrow and gets us to Bombay. From there we cycle south to Goa and down to the Kerala backwaters and then, well then we figure out how to get back home…

j n j

x x

Nutroast Christmas dinner, Thanks Rachel!

Jet with one of his fleet of Dubai supercars...

GnT at a bar next to a beach that costs £100 a day to lie on. Worlds most expensive hotel in background. We ate the free peanuts and tiptoed away.

Planet Dubai

Er we’ve now left Iran and arrived in a new dimension of time and space. Well that’s what it feels like. If Star Trek’s “Enterprise” had landed in Dubai Spock’s eyebrows would have gone into apoplexy. Having spent nearly 2 months sleeping on the floors of farm houses, camping in the desert and pulling the doorknobs off crumbly hotels we now find ourselves in  the lofty heights of skyscrapers with talking lifts. You can a find a diamond studded gold rolex here but most of the taxi drivers don’t seem to know the way round the next corner, most of them having arrived about five minutes ago looking for top dollar. Where as the restaurants in Iran had two items on the menu -kebabs and rice, on our first night in the Emirates  we went to a restaurant that had 132 different dishes, half of them vegetarian. Jen, who’s  been doggedly veggie despite no carrots in sight for 3 months, almost ate the menu she was so excited.

To be honest it’s been a bit overwhelming and we have been so lucky to find a sterling host in Rachel,  a friend of a friend, who has been putting us up in her appartment in nearby Sharjah.

Without Rachel’s welcoming hospitality and homecooked dinners we’d have been entirely alienated by the garguantuan cityscape and wayward taxidrivers. Full marks to Rachel! (And also to Marianne and Alistair who have let us use their Dubai pad in the city over new year. Look at us we’re like jetsetters, well on bikes, but anyway…) We also got to buy a beer for the legendary “Team South” , Freddie and Guy, who have been cycling about two weeks ahead of us for the past two months, and giving us top tips for the road by email. They saved us a lot of wrong turns and made it all seem doable.

So how did we get here? Well right now it feels we were teleported but if we cast our minds back it was another week of riding south from Shiraz in Iran to the Southern port of Bandar Abbas. We were determined to cover the remaining 690 km in 6 days to make the ferry departure to the United Arab Emirates and really pushed the old legs to do 115 km a day. The landscape and people became more “Arabic” in flavour, with more desert oasis, date palms and women with colourful cloaks and headdresses. We camped in a pomegranate orchard and stayed in a cafe cellar and a poor village and a couple of Basil Fawlty hotels before arriving, covered in a thin layer of sand and truck guff, in the port of Bandar Abbas. This, it seemed was where every truck that had ever passed us in Iran had been heading, all funneling down the same coastal road, four abreast to hoot us off into democracy.

It was a shame that whilst waiting in a traffic queue in the city, a kid on a motobike barged past Jen, who, being absolutely exhausted, couldn’t maintain the balance of her fully loaded bike and toppled over in the road, her first accident on the bike. Also a shame that this happened after 6 weeks of almost unwavering Iranian kindness- the kid just ploughed on, not even looking behind him as Jet screamed in his ear. The guy in the mechanic shop beside us was cool though and offered Jen a cup of Cay.

The next day after the usual bureaucratic shenangans we made it onto the ferry (which left four and half hours after its scheduled departure time) and  finally bobbed into the Persian gulf with some very big bags under our eyes and a lot of good memories of Iran. It was a frustrating place at times but also fascinating and a bit of a lost gem on the tourist highway as it’s that bit harder to get to.  Whatever is going on elsewhere in the establishment the common people of the country show an openess of spirit unmatched anywhere in Western Europe.

So here we are in Dubai then having cycled about 7500 km and wondering what to do with our tiny tired souls. Well we’ll be here for Xmas and thanks to Rachel it’ll be a homely one we’re sure (we’ve already had our first slices of nut roast and fruitcake ). We’re due to pick up our India visa tomorrow and please please let it be for 3 months and not for 1 month as we were told at one point. We hope to arrange a boat trip to do the final leg to India but that’s all a bit up in the air or rather lost at sea at the moment-so watch this space! The final frontier.

xx j n j

xx b n b

Dust devil

 

wheres the camel?...for those in bristol:'bling bling me babber'

 

pomegranate camping

 

get back on your horse / bike

 

tallest building in world and lil ' Jen

Jet hugs Dubai

Paramedics, Stone Masons and Zither Players

We are now in Shiraz, about three quarters of the way down Iran, after 7 days of cycling through the ancient heartlands of Persia (more sand, scrub and plastic bags…but cliff plateaus rising up like lairs of dragons). Not much in the way of official accomodation but Iranians being Iranians the whole country feels like your front living room. On day two we arrived at dusk in a village with zip but the freezing desert cold. Yes, said the Iranian Red Crescent in their little roadside outpost, you can stay in our Ambulance station. And a very comfortable abode it was too.  They put blankets over our legs like we were cycle invalids and made us hot sweet cups of tea. It felt like St Johns Ambulance had been forever waiting for us in the nowhere lands.

Stonemasons have been consistent Samaritans. We’re not sure why but throughout Turkey and Iran they have been the most kind and gentlemanly. Perhaps it comes from crafting the stillness of stone all day. They have shared their lunch, tea and civility with us at renovations across the desert.

One night we stayed with a Jeweller in a small town. He played the Zither, an instrument a bit like the xylophone but wih strings. His son played the Ney, a bamboo flute with a wide tonal range.

We stopped over with a farmer who specialised in picking up random road travellers and had a guestbook covering the past fifteen years, plastered with badly lit passport photographs of errant souls. “We are all one under the same sky,” he said. It was a moving testament to Iranian kindness. The farmer taught Jen how to prune his seedless grapes (prune at 5 nodes up, unlike the seeded variety) We met Irans “second strongest Man” near some ruins and camped on a high plateau where it was so cold Jet’s bum felt like it might fall off (despite his fleece sleeping bag, thermal leggins and two pairs of underpants) The desert at this time of year is a strange ‘ole place-cold in the shade, hot in the sunlight and peach plum freezing at night.

But always, when we’ve needed it most, there has been hot sweet cups of tea and a warm bed. Indeed sometimes it has felt like the Iranians have been over hospitable and it has been a relief to turn down offers of a bed and book into a cheap hotel  just to have our own space and lie around listening to the BBC World Service. Simple pleasures in jam packed lives.

In a few days we leave Shiraz to begin the final leg of our Iran journey to the port of Bandar Abbas, which we should complete before our visa extension runs out in a couple of weeks. From there we take the ferry to Dubai in United Arab Emirates and cobble together a voyage to India.

 For now though its slippers on and bike shoes off.

The Persians in Shiraz have incredible green blue eyes…

j n j  x x

Paramedics save Cyclists!

New Hejab (modest) bike wear.

"The Remains of the Lunch". - Soon to be a Merchant Ivory Film.

Bike Central

We arrived in Esfahan feeling like bleached white bread. Cloud free skies and  endless desert turn your brain to flour and the bike feels like a dough machine kneeding your head into Sunblest. We needed a rest and hoped that Esfahan would be a bike free zone.  But there in the courtyard of the hostel were fourteen touring bikes. To begin with we were a bit frustrated. We had imagined ourselves the sole bike explorers traveling boldy across the sandy plains, lone spirits in a race against the trucks . The reality of course is that Iran is a crossroads between the Middle East and East Asia and right here, right now, every cyclist on the overland route had converged on Amir Kabir hostel and chained their frames like coralled horses into a ten foot dusty yard.

The morning after arriving and our brains were more wholesome, more Harvest Grain than Sunblest.  We discovered it was entirely refreshing and quite moving to meet so many cyclists; crazy skinny people with sunglasses tans and burnt noses. There was the Irish guy who had cycled from Cherbourg to Istanbul on a titanium racing bike with pencil tyres in 3 weeks ( it took us 3 months). In Istanbul he’d met a French girl who’d forged her bike out of a frame from a skip and parts stuck together in a bike co-operative. They’d hitched up and travelled at a more sedate pace. The  Irish guy showed us a rope he’d attach around the back of his bike to the front of his girlfriends steering column to pull her up hills! Jen has been asking Jet to do the same for her. Jet obviously feels it should be the other way round. We thought we’d had bad luck with punctures but the Irish guy had traversed an evil thorn patch in Turkey and managed to gather seventeen puntures in one go and then had to pull out 73 thorns from his tyres (when you have that many thorns you count them all)

There was a Lithuanian guy who was proud of how low his daily mileage was (most bike tourists-mainly men- tend to boast how big their daily mileage is- like their shoe size.). But this guy gathered a maximum of 40 km a day (our average is 70-80) and his record low was 5km -the equivalent  of going round the block to get the paper. He seemed to be carrying a boiler sized tank of water on his bike. He was a hero of the ”slow travel” movement.

There were two English guys from London who were contemplating cycling the “Stans” (the high central plains of Asia en route to China) during the Winter snows. They hadn’t any warm clothing and were eyeing up bodysuits they couldn’t afford. They were the skinniest cyclists we’ve seen in ages but looked like they could survive any season grazing on hazlenuts.

There was the Kiwi couple who had just completed the Asia route in the opposite direction and were en route to Turkey and Europe. Jo had had her bike stolen in China one month into the trip but had soon fashioned another and then continued onwards unhindered for the next six months. Mike  sewed up his front tyre with dental floss after it split in his first week. It was still going strong after six months.

Then there was a French couple cycling to New Zealand for the rugby world cup. They’d met a guy who was carrying a surfboard on the back of his bike between surfing spots.

All these Tour de Worlders  sat around discussing bike nerd things- tyre gauges, bottom brackets and front hub repairs whilst the other backpackers made their excuses or looked on blankly. Each bike seemed to be a reflection of their cyclists- like dogs and their owners- cobbled together mountain bikes and frazzled beards, top of the range racers and short back and sides but a consistent theme amongst the riders was a sense of independence and joie de vivre. Everyone was alive to the challenges they faced and this made them more twinkle eyed than the average tourist (well we would say that…)

In Esfahan we  rested our legs, took a side trip to the desert, ate lots of cake, stared at planet sized Mosques, ate continents of rice, read novels, got our visa extension  and finally  said goodbye to Bike Central to head ourselves into the great unknown with six water bottles and a big bag of doughy bread.

j n j x x

Small boy. Big Sky.

Stained Glass Specs. Mansion House Kashan.

Fin Gardens. Kashan

Imam Square Esfahan does fountain thing.

All filled up on Aubergine mush.

Daydreaming. Imam Mosque. Esfahan.

Cold at Dawn on top of Carvansarri Roof in Desert

Jet flies. Sandy Desert.

More daydreaming, in the desert.

Bike Graveyard. Yazd Bazaar.