Project VELAIA

I continued through the night and found a guy in a fuel station who had quite fast internet and was video conferencing with his girlfriend in Istanbul - me interrupting we had some fun nontheless and I was able to check mails and stay up to date.

The road was in a building phase for about 20km with big pitholes and stones and dust everywhere. I used the chance of low traffic and cool temperatures to bring that part behind me during the night.

Later I stopped next to a Jandarma area, a part of the Turkish military, with the intension to get a place to sleep there. But the young soldiers where so afraid of this lonely cyclist of the night that they only gave me water at the same time having their automatic rifles in their hands and waving with the same ones to keep me in distance - the military presence everywhere is one of the things I disliked most about Turkey.

 

Then finally the day came when I was to set my foot to Iranian ground. But first I had another 90 kilometers with a overwhelming view on the Ararat mountain, the highest of Turkey with over 5000 meters (if I remember correct). Riding along the good quality street I had a last bad experience in Turkey when a small shepherd-boy threw a big stone that hit my bike - I also had a stone in my bag but that was destined for angry dogs and not for small children. So I just took a photo from the stone thrower and put it on my flickr account

  

 I uploaded all my pictures to the internet knowing about the bad connectivity to come.

 

In the evening I arrived at the border and everything went fine. I was officially welcomed by a special representative (for tourists) and given a map and some information. I also changed 200 euro to Rial (about quarter a kilo of notes or 2.5 million

 

Continuing for another 20 km I was welcomed very very warmly by the people standing next to the street, had an interesting conversation with a student and tour guide and was picked up in the evening by Ali in Maku to spend the night in his flat - man, that is what I call Iranian n hospitality!

 

The second day in Iran continued in the same way the first ended - all people greeting me, smiling and sometimes when you are riding in the countryside you can hear hellos and salams from farmers hundreds of meters away from the street, you turn around and see them waving their hands.

In two markets the sales clerks wanted to cheat me by adding another 0 to the price for fruits but I didn’t pay knowing from Ali and locals and my LonelyPlanet guide the fair price.

 

In the evening I stopped in a small village and was immediately surrounded by hords of locals, mainly children with big interested eyes. A young man immediately took care for my bike and protected it from the many curious children. When I came out of the market with a bottle of juice and some fruits after 2 minutes the whole village stood in front of me and my bike very interested about these strange looking guests.

 

Now I have again easily found a room to stay for the night in a restaurant next to the street to Tabriz and had a long conversation with an English speaking law student.