On The Road

I wake up to a blue sky and I’m happy that I didn’t leave yesterday. I get gas and find my way out of town with a local map I got from the hotel. Just outside town I visit some cuneiform rock carvings and a waterfall next to it.

The rock carvings are very underwhelming but since they were made in three different languages they have Rosetta stone like importances. I buy some very tart fruits from a vendor at the waterfall and give him some coaching in English pronunciation. There are a couple of small ski resorts nearby.

The road zigzags through the mountains

to the little village of Oshtoran, where I explore the mud walled Qal’eh Hamza Khan fortress at the side of the road.

I follow the road to Tyserkan

and I spend some time searching for Jewish prophet Habakkuk’s tomb. This town has only signs in Farsi and with the help of m local map I can actually find my way. As I walk up to the tomb I’m surrounded by a flash mob of male teenagers. All want to know my name, where I’m from and so on. I don’t really get a chance to look at the tomb, let alone take a good picture.

A girl of about 14 or 15 finally walks up to me and apologizes in very good English for the behavior of the boys and asks me if I need any help. I can tell that she’s nervous and it must have taken quite a bit of courage to step in front of the boys and talk to me. So I talk to her for a while and compliment her on her English. With the help of another girl I’ll get a map for my onward travel and one of the boys insists that I take a drawing of the tomb with me. So we find a place on the bike and off I go.

In Nahavand I’m looking for a local biker to show me the way to Haman-e Haji Agha Torab, a former bath house turned museum. The first kid I can stop after a while has no idea but two older guys are up to the challenge. They lead me through narrow alleys and the little 50cc has a hard time with these two. At least we are not racing through traffic. They join me for a tour of the place and it looks like they have never been inside before. The old Haman is a wonderful building with whimsical mannequins standing in for real bather.

I wish it would still be a working Haman. That would have been a treat. The place is secured like Fort Knox with several cameras in each room. My two saviors strike a pose for a picture and lead me out of town.

I ride on to Borujerd, which turns out to be bigger than I thought and I promptly get lost. I stop just before a roundabout to get my bearings and a kid on a bicycle stops next to me. I ask him for the road to Chagalvandi and he motions to follow him. Off he goes like a mad man. It’s quite hot and I feel bad to have him do this for me. At an intersection he asks me if I want some ice cream and I nod. So he guides me to a little shop where I get treated to an ice cream Shiraz style.

Repeated attempts by me to pay are refused and I thank my hosts and the kid leads me to the road to Chagalvandi. I say goodbye and realize he has put me on the main highway to Khorramabad, which I don’t want to take. I ask another guy and after a big powwow with some bystanders a guy leads the way with his car. He only leads me farther down the highway before he admits defeat. I wave goodbye, turn around and use the Zumo to work my way to the right road. The road turns out to be a dream. A scenic mountain road with no traffic to speak of. It’s late and I stop for fewer pictures than I should.

I roll into Khorramabad, the capital of the Lorestan province, just as the sun sets and find a hotel with pretty shabby rooms but secure parking. The manager talks my ear off about being a large man, i.e. paying large, but I negotiate the price down to a bearable level.

I walk into town and look for a restaurant. I see a sign in Farsi but can’t figure out where the entrance is. I ask a guy and he takes me up with an elevator to the restaurant. It turns out he works there. I order some food with him and he seats me at a table. I watch the families around me. The kids have a blast with a fake Christmas tree which sprinkles fake snow on itself. I sit at my table, wait for my food and drink some water when a bunch of guys take the seats around me without saying a word. I’m surrounded by grim looking guys who don’t even acknowledge my existence. This is weird. The guy who brought me up to the restaurant comes over and wants me to follow him. Once we are away from the table he apologizes profusely and seats me on one of the takhts. I’m still wearing my motorcycle boots and I don’t want to take them off after riding in them all day. Wouldn’t be fair to the other guests. So, I just sit at the edge and get awkward stares from the all women table across. There is something about traveling solo that Iranians don’t understand. I get this question a lot and they always ask why and then look very sorry for me. Going out to eat by yourself is equally foreign to them and some restaurants simply ignore you unless you go straight to the counter and order. When my food comes I’ll eat quickly and make my exit.

P.S.: While I’m writing this I’m watching the English news on Iranian TV. The anchor man does a very bad imitation of a CNN anchor man and sounds more like a speech synthesizer. The news selection of course is another story.

After a very sparse breakfast, even for Iranian standards, I take a short walk to the Falak-ol-Aflak castle, which sits on a hill in the middle of the city.

It is not very photogenic on the inside. There is just too much dodgy plumbing, wiring, lighting, and air conditioning marring the historic walls. The castle does however have a very nice museum. Especially the section about the Nomads of Lorestan is very informative and has signs in English as well. Back outside I reckon it’s clean your toxic chemicals bottles day.

I first thought the guy is just going to dump them into the sewer. I get on one of the castle towers to have a view of the city

In the afternoon I give the bike some TLC and take a ride to the ruins of the Shapuri bridge

Just before taking the above picture I get rear ended by a little kid on a 50cc. It’s on a field in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around. How he managed that is beyond me. He just bends my license plate and breaks his blinker off and gets a crash course in English swear words.

After yesterday’s dining disaster I look for a different restaurant and come a across this one:

It’s not what you think. It’s a Mashaal and it’s even worse than the other other restaurant with the double arch.

On my way back I walk past a spooky playground

I’m afraid that Khorramabad will not make my list of favorite cities. It has so many things going for it: A nice setting surrounded by mountains, rivers running through it and enough ruins in the city and sprinkled around it to make it interesting. However, the rivers have been turned into smelly sewers filled with garbage that everyone just drops wherever they go, the traffic and pollution is of course horrendous too.

I know it will be a long day so I leave Khorramabad early, apparently too early to get some breakfast. I get gas at the other end of town because the gas station in front of my hotel has been closed since yesterday. With some help I get out of town and with a lot of asking I find the road through the Zagros mountains. The mountain roads have been spectacular so far and I want to continue to ride them as much as possible. It’s another beautiful day and along meadows sprinkled with poppies,

past nomad’s tents

I ride to the small village of Bished

where I park my bike and take a ten minute hike to a waterfall below the village.

The waterfall is stunningly beautiful, just don’t turn around because the place is completely trashed. People have managed to haul the junk here. Why they can’t take it with them I will never understand. On my way back to the bike a family starts talking to me and we study the map together. As I thought, I have to ride back 20km before I’ll be able to continue through the mountains to Esfahan. The men tells me I know the roads better than him. I don’t know about that.

In the next village I see a bunch of dead sheep lined up at the side of the road and blood stains on the road. Intended killing or road kill? Probably the later, otherwise they wouldn’t be laying in the midday sun, I hope. A dog is taking a bite.

I carry on for a while and eventually make my way down through some switchbacks to dusty Sefid Dasht, which sits in a small valley surrounded by high mountains.

The town looks a bit rough around the edges, as you would expect in this location. I stop and buy some cold drinks and food, since I haven’t had anything to eat yet. I ride out of town, up the mountains on the other side and the road deteriorates rapidly. I drive through a number of goat herds and the herders confirm that this is my road. I spot a shaded place next to a little stream and decide to take my lunch break.

After lunch I find myself once again on good tarmac after a few more kilometers. I pass many nomad tents and tiny villages

with beautiful mountain backdrops.

Once again the tarmac disappears and I find myself on a dirt road. I come across two guys trying to fix a broken down dozer and confirm once more that this is my road. They invite me for tea but I want to keep moving. I just hope the dozer hasn’t been broken for long and the road is in a reasonable shape. I climb up a mountain again and reach the pass at 2960m. The road forks a few times on the way up and I stay on what looks like the most used road

On the pass I meet an older couple from Aligudarz who confirm my choice of road and invite me for tea and cookies. As I come down it’s just dry dusty mountains.

The road now alternates between dirt, excellent tarmac, and disintegrated tarmac and I have to go slow, never knowing what is around the next bend. As the area flattens out I look back one last time before heading to the highway

OK, one more look

Once I reach the highway I’m surprised how well maintained it is and how little traffic there is. It’s four lanes with about 200m between the opposite directions. I let it rip and sure enough I get pulled over by a cop with a laser gun. Luckily I was only doing 110 km/h in that section which is the speed limit. He wants to see my passport and asks me where I’m from. Ah Germany, he points to his parked Mercedes and says “Very good”. He then gives me the sign to go slow and waves me on. Very nice cop. I see a few more radar traps along the way but they leave me alone. At one point the semi in front of me decides to switch lanes for no apparent reason, as they often do, and I have to hit the breaks hard. As I do this my pants are getting wet. Oops, what just happened? Not what you think. I hit the breaks hard enough to slide forward in my seat and the mouthpiece of my camel bag gets caught between me and the tank bag and releases some water. Nice and cool. I should do this more often.

At a gas station I have something to eat and have a chat with a Kurdish biker gang (their words) on 50cc motorcycles. I use the Zumo with the Iman Square GPS coordinates and the location of the river to find the way to my hotel without a single wrong turn. Just 1km before my hotel an overzealous cop pulls me over and wants to see the passport again. He doesn’t say a word and waves me on. I check into the trusty Iran Hotel, where I have stayed on my last visit, and three of us maneuver the bike up some stairs into the lobby where it now sits under the hijab. After a shower I walk down the street to the Venice restaurant. The only thing authentically Italian about this place are the snotty waiters – one with a recent nose job – but they have a salad buffet and pasta. A welcome break from the monotonous Iran restaurant kebabs.