Into the Desert of Death

We arrived in China with dust between our rattling teeth. Due to the roads of uneven rubble and our Chinese truck's complete lack of meaningful suspension, we had to cling to the bundles around us to avoid being thrown out of our seats. The greenery of Kyrgyzstan had dissolved to leave barren red mountains and clouds of dust so thick you could see it wafting through the windows like smoke. We were entering the great Taklamakan desert, the most deadly stretch of the old Silk Road. Some believe Taklamakan simply means 'once you go in, you never come out' others have referred to it as The Desert of Death. The Desert of Considerable, if not Fatal, Discomfort might be a more apt title today. Alongside the 'road', wind-blown construction workers slept in bleak encampments, trying to lay a 21st Century highway in this ageless wilderness. For the moment, the wilds appeared to be winning.

After five hours of this truck-based torture, a Chinese terminal building emerged from the murk surrounded in Disneyland streetlights. 'Welcome to China!' cried a uniformed guard. In customs there were informative signs in Chinese and Arabic characters but, beneath this, the thoughtful English translation simply read 'Times New Roman'.

Kashgar, our first stop in China, is a predominantly Uighur city. The Uighurs are a Turkic, Islamic people who have found themselves, largely unhappily, under Chinese rule. The people are far closer in appearance to Uzbeks than to Chinese and the language is a close cousin of Turkish. Interestingly, Iran aside, we've been using the same words for numbers ever since arriving in Istanbul. Who said foreigners weren't all the same?

The streets of old Kashgar hummed with life, skull caps and wispy beards decorated the wizened faces that gathered around the market stalls as hawkers sold herbal aphrodisiacs, bear fat skin ointment and a yellow juice that came from a weird stew of scorpions, snakes and hedgehogs. Bewhiskered men spilt from the Friday mosque and ate bread hot from the street tandoors or bundled their veiled wives and kids onto their scooters, puttering off into lanes of mud and smoke. Most of the surrounding buildings were in a state of ruin, bulldozed to make way for Modern China. Gaudy new malls sat like abandoned spacecraft amongst the rubble, sending neon messages back to the mothership in Beijing. Here, Han Chinese (the predominant ethnic group in China) shopped for fashions and face creams and there was barely a Uighur in sight. Over-loud sound systems blared the latest pappy Chinese pop but failed to drown out the honking cars and the Mandarin being barked on every street corner. Though muted by the ever-present dust, the Han buildings had their own volume, assaulting the eyes with their acid-trip technicolor. We were saddened by such Han imperialism, but largely delighted, after months in the Muslim world, to be in the brash, noisy silliness of China.

On the outskirts of Kashgar sits the near-legendary animal market. We rode out there on the back of a kind of motorbike trailer. Other visitors were taking the same method, stupid looking sheep and angry looking bulls eyeing us warily. The market was a mass of hoof and dust, the air filled with a lowing and braying and whinnying that mingled with the cries of the traders as animals were led off to new homes (or perhaps new pots), horses were test-driven and fat-tailed sheep's fleshy rumps were fondled for maximum fat. Though Nic had her eye on some pathetic-looking donkey or other we managed to leave empty-handed.

One of the true highlights of Kashgar was the people we met. Having spent months travelling less-travelled roads, it was lovely to meet a hostel-full of fellow backpackers. It is remarkable how quickly strong friendships can form and we spent a happy week eating, sleeping (in dorms, you understand and generally in separate bunks) and living with a wonderful group of people. Sadly but inevitably, these relationships are always wrenched apart by the pull of the road and soon our group was scattered to the sands and to the mountains.

We headed east along the northern Silk Road, spending 24 hours on a train that smelt of stale cigarettes and instant noodles. Despite an almost unassailable language barrier we had soon made friends with our fellow passengers and even, after a few hours' struggle, managed to ascertain their names. Outside, the desert was bleak and forbidding and barely a non-humped soul stirred. We finally arrived in Turpan, a hot, dusty (apologies for my constant references to dust, it's just so, well, dusty) town that sits in the second lowest depression in the world! I was quite excited by this fact before we arrived but then realised that there's not much to be said for being low. It's just hot. And dusty.

We cycled out into the countryside (read: dusty plain) and waved at the cheerful locals who called out 'hello!' I like to think they thought we looked like nice sorts and were seeking to form some cross-cultural relationships but fear they may have been saying 'look there's a hairy freak on a bike, let's wave and see what it does!' The hairy freak and his spaniel-eared companion dutifully waved back. Anyway, this is all rather tangental. We reached a ruined city that had been half-consumed by the desert, ate a picnic in a 5th century Buddhist temple and returned to catch a night bus to the Silk Road hub of Dunhuang.

The bunks on the bus were two feet too short for me but even with my knees round my ears, I still managed to enjoy the moonlit desertscapes and fell asleep watching the glowing cigarette ends of insomniac passengers. In Dunhuang we slept in a cabin that sat in the shadow of a vast range of perfect sand dunes and were awoken by the cries of goat kids and the papery flap of the birds that darted from the eaves. Nearby was one of the 'sights' we've been looking forward to since London, the Thousand Buddha Caves.

We were guided around by torchlight for each of the 700-odd caves contains exquisitely delicate wall paintings and sculptures dating back more than a thousand years. The artwork is a clear child of the Silk Road, where Persian, Central Asian and Indian styles mingle with the more local Tibetan and Chinese aesthetic. It was here that European archeologists first discovered the Silk Road's importance in spreading Buddhism to China. It was here also that the British explorer Aurel Stein ran off with thousands of priceless Buddhist scrolls some of which you can still see at the British Museum. 'You've seen them?' said our guide with great excitement. It is times like this when I realise how miraculously lucky we are to be able to see all these wonderful things. With the Buddhas left once more to their peaceful slumber, we set off toward the setting sun, nothing but a dull glow in a sea of dust.

In the Valley of Horses

Firstly, can I apologise for the lack of photos. Once again, we're in a country where this blog site is banned (this is coming to you via my wee brother) so doing anything other than text is a bit complex. You'll have to just make do with the boring wordy bit...

After weeks of desert dust, leaving Uzbekistan by the  verdant Fergana Valley was like jumping into the sea on a hot sticky day. Black smudges on the eastern horizon slowly thickened to become a rampart of mountains that marked the border with Kyrgyzstan. It was in Fergana that Central Asians were first met by Chinese travellers who had ventured into the unknown west to find the near mythical Fergana horse. The horses were rumoured to have wings and to breath fire, but the forlorn donkeys and scraggy old nags I saw gnawing on the fields didn't quite live up to expectations. It was this first meeting of east and west, however, that first began the exchange of goods and ideas that was to become the Silk Road.

*a short disclaimer: all history included in these blogs is based on stuff I've read and quite possibly misremembered over the last year or two so it could be complete rubbish. Let's just keep quiet about it and carry on...

We first stopped in Osh where the wounds of more recent history still lay unhealed. In 2010 Osh was the scene of serious ethnic violence and rioting (it seems Stalin sneezed while drawing the border and annexed thousands of Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan). Trying to find differences between these groups other than language is difficult. The best we could come up with is that they wear different silly hats. Traditional Kyrgyz men wear tall felt hats that, along with shiny boots, big belts and beards, gives them an almost gnome-like appearance. In Osh, they pottered around the  bazaar eyeing up bridles, horseshoes and shinier boots. The bazaar itself was patched together from rusty Chinese shipping containers and a few riot-damaged buildings. After the relative order of the more Sovietised Uzbekistan, we revelled in its filth and chaos.

We next took a string of minibuses into the  mountains, squashing in between head-wrapped country women until forest draped the valleys and white peaks surfed the clouds. We stayed in a homestay in the amiable and amiably named village of Arslanbob. The bridge to our house had been  washed away in the spring melt so we had to cross the gurgling  water via a makeshift construction of old plastic pipes. Every house has a yard with chickens, a donkey or goat (both if you're lucky), fruit trees and an outdoor mud ovens. Last year's harvest is stored beneath the seating platform and truly fresh produce is rare, the seasons here still mean something (generally wooly apples and hairy potatoes).

From Arslanbob we hired horses and a guide and  clopped through the dappled light of the world's largest walnut forest. My steed was not far from the Great Glue Factory in the Sky and wheezed along grumpily. I had visions of him collapsing beneath me with his legs splayed in all four directions. On the road we passed old 1950s Russian trucks  carrying dozens of hoe-wielding locals on their way to the high pastures. Here they planted potato and corn, hacking with mattocks at the damp earth in the shadows of the mountains.

We rode up to a rocky promontory where I really felt my horse should have reared up on his hind legs so I could wave my Stetson in the air. Instead he decided to turn around and sullenly chew the grass behind us so that my back was turned to the glorious view of the valley, twinkling as it was with zinc roofs and a thousand meltwater streams.

After only a few days in Kyrgyzstan we discovered the border to China was about to close for ten days and that we would have to make a premature dash to the frontier. We took a shared taxi to the village of Sary Tash. Normally, you share taxis with other people but his one was partly shared by a hundred loaves of bread, some putrid smelling eggs and a bag of meat that kept dripping blood on the floor. Sary Tash was a town of collapsing outhouses and muddy yards churned up by peasant boots and mountain drizzle. For the first time since Albania, we slept more or less fully clothed in beds so saggy we were nearly folded in two.

Early the next morning we stood by the road stomping our feet and praying for the sun to rise. We were hoping to hitch a lift to the Chinese border but for a while all we saw we're a gormless cow and man having a poo in his yard. We didn't have to wait for too long before a Tajik truck stopped and we clambered into the cab. 'To China!' we cried (well, that's at least how I see it in my memory), climbing the passes into pristine snowfields that stung the eyes. After only half an hour, we had to join  a queue of trucks that were attempting to cross a stretch of lethally bumpy ice. When some inevitably got stuck, I jumped off to relieve myself and, in a thoughtful bid to entertain the weary truckers, fell waist-deep into the snow. After a lot of waiting followed by a lot of juddering around painfully we cleared the ice and finally reached a border town of rusting caravans. Across the border lay China! 

But that will have to wait for the next exciting installment! Did our intrepid explorers make it to China? Did Nic have a sudden bout of food poisoning? Had the Chinese border inexplicably moved 150km to the east? Find out next time...

The Road to Samarkand

Khiva, Uzbekistan

After checking our passports, the Uzbek border guards checked our football preferences. Though we were unable to agree on the superiority of Manchester United we were waved cheerfully through. Before long we were hurtling away in an old Lada that seemed to be held together with parquet lino and gaffer tape.

As cracked roads and Soviet factories swept by in the dust, I asked whether life had been better under the USSR. 'Life good now!' replied our driver 'in USSR I was teacher, now I'm taxi driver!' I didn't entirely follow his logic. We spluttered to a stop at the old city of Khiva, one of a line of Uzbek oasis towns that serviced the old Silk Road. The city was a warren of honeycomb houses, mosques and azure tiled minarets. It isn’t really a living city, it is partly a theme park for overweight French and German tour groups. They roll out of coaches in a mass of overstretched pastel travel-wear and telephoto lenses, gawping like dying fish. We haven't seen any such tourism since Western Turkey and it was a bit of a shock. Still, as theme parks go, it was truly beautiful and seeing a silver moon over the silhouetted skyline removed the tacky modernity and allowed us to step back to those romantic Silk Road days. The good old days when they did romantic things like trading slaves and throwing criminals from minarets.

We changed money on the black market (you get nearly 30% more than in a bank) and were given thick, gangster bundles of notes. We have to carry it around in a bag.

Less than 100 pounds in Uzbek Som
On the way to Bukhara there were two roads, one half-destroyed by sand and potholes, the other only half built and strewn with huge barriers of concrete. Our taxi had to weave between the two over little beaten earth ramps. None of this stopped our driver from driving at 140kph whenever possible, or from deciding to moisturize his face with a little cotton pad in one hand and a bottle of cream in the other. It was up to his knees alone to steer round the potholes and through the narrow concrete gaps. Near-death flew by the window very five minutes. Seatbelts are slung over one shoulder for police checks but otherwise its considered weak to wear one ‘It’s against my soul!’ said one Uzbek.

Somehow we survived and made it to Bukhara. By this point in our journey we had seen enough mosques and madrassas to last a pious mullah's lifetime and possibly didn't fully appreciate the beauty of the architecture. It was fascinating though to see the bleeding of cultures traced in the stone. Persian tiling clashing with Tibetan woodwork, true Silk Road architecture. It was also lovely to see friends we had met in Iran and Uzbekistan, other Silk Roaders following the dream east, discussing roads to China while the domes turned from azure to gold in the dying sun.
Samarkand is largely a fairly drab Soviet city but it is also home to some pretty monumental architecture. It was the imperial capital of Tamerlane (Timur the Lame). Tamerlane controlled an empire that stretched from Pakistan (or thereabouts) to the Mediterranean. We've been hearing tales about him since arriving in Turkey. One described a foolish Anatolian ruler who said something along the lines of 'That Tamerlane's a pussy, I could slap him up no problem.' Hearing of this, Tamerlane had the ruler and his entire city slaughtered and beheaded, then demanded that a mountain be made of the heads. Unsatisfied with the height of the mountain, he had his men rebuild it with a bloody mud mortar until it satisfied his crazed desire. In short, he was a bit of a twat. He did, however, commission some amazing buildings, huge constructions of glorious blue and green tile work, gold ceilings and towering minarets. Even to our mosque-numbed minds, it was quite stunning.

A Samarkand interior

Another train took us to the Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital. It was almost a relief to find there were no historical monuments to see, just Soviet boulevards cooled by chlorophyll-green trees and a few monumental, yet tacky, buildings of white marble. Though there’s nothing much to truly inspire here, we’ve enjoyed walking around the spray of the sprinklers and the smoke of the street side shaslyk. The main reason we came to Tashkent was to see Nic’s ex-student Maruf. Maruf smothered us with the full power of Uzbek hospitality. He paid for our hotel and our food and drove us everywhere. We ate with his family, devout Muslims in a country where secularism often overrides (it is more common to see women in tight-fitting skirts and fishnets than in headscarves). The family plied us with food and gifts and I am now the proud owner of a rather fetching purple wedding gown. I even ended up wowing Maruf’s PVC firm at their weekly football match. My giraffe-like finesse had them revising their high regard for English football.

Nic shows Maruf's family our wedding photos

The main stress during trip has been obtaining visas. In order to follow our journey we have had to acquire letters of invitation, flight details, hotel bookings and employer references. Naturally we have had none of these so have become rather expert in forging such documents. Amazingly, in the last couple of days, we have acquired all the visas we need to complete our Silk Road journey and are now free to pass through Kyrgyzstan (I don’t think even the Kyrgyz know where that is) to China. With the hot Spring sun now warming our backs we travel onwards to the mountains with the distant scents of the Far East just beginning to tingle our noses.

Outside Tashkent

Slow-dancing in Central Asia

We left Iran via a range of craggy mountains littered here and there with the rusting carcasses of crashed lorries. As we descended onto the flat desert scrub of Turkmenistan, we caught our first glimpse of one of the most extraordinary cities in the world, a cluster of white towers shimmering in the dust. As we approached the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat we saw women, beautiful women with flowing hair and tight-fitting dresses. After Iran, this was most shocking, the brazen hussies! Nic let her headscarf drop and we gawped at the dresses and head wraps in a clash of gaudy colours and were so relieved to see women being allowed to be women again (albeit women who made their clothes from 70s curtain fabric). But the women could not keep our gaze for long, Ashgabat was upon us.

Turkmenistan has been described as Central Asia's North Korea, a totalitarian system has been in place since independence from the USSR and tourists are only allowed to visit if accompanied by government minder. We were given a three day transit visa and were not really meant to see anything on the way. Amazingly, those three days turned into one of the highlights of the trip.

Turkmenbashi was the president of Turkmenistan from independence to 2006 when he died. Modern Ashgabat was his own little vanity project and his portrait still hangs in squares and on government buildings. Unlike sour-faced dictators like Mao or Lenin, Turkmenbashi is pictured in smiling catalogue poses, running through the mountains in a tracksuit or admiring an unseen view. Sadly, the gold statue that used to rotate with the sun has now been removed. What remains is a pristine city of gleaming white marble, vast municipal buildings and two-storey high TV screens showing the glories of Turkmenistan. An army of workers prune the manicured gardens, polish the gleaming chrome traffic lights and sweep the unsightly dust from the vast empty squares. It is illegal to have a dirty car so every vehicle, like every building, sparkles in the sun, reflecting the thousand bubbling fountains. Despite being a madman's theme park, the city somehow worked and we walked around with grins of disbelief on our faces.

The first three hotels we tried would not accept foreign tourists so we ended up in an ex-Soviet block governed by bulldog-faced babushkas. It was all peeling 1950s wallpaper, scuffed carpets and infinite faux laminate corridors. The people reacted to us shyly, it was clearly not normal to have a pair of unwashed outsiders dirtying the place up. The people in Central Asian sometimes look Mongol, sometimes Russian, often a mix of the myriad peoples that have swept across these lands.

The next day we managed to charter a taxi to the northern town of Konye Urgench. We had been physically pulled five different ways by eager taxi drivers and ended up with the one who pulled hardest. Our man was a member of that universal tribe, the Boy Racer. We tore out of town to ear-rupturing hip hop and the false modernity of Ashgabat soon gave way to scrubby desert. Yurts and camels appeared among the dunes as the road grew worse and the tunes got cranked up further.  At times we were driving at a near 30 degree angle. Next the road were the broken bodies of rolled cars that had spotted the potholes too late. This was one of three major roads in the country and its destitution highlighted the absurdity of Ashgabat's 'perfection'. Bizarrely, in the middle of the desert, stood one solitary section of a modern flyover complete with lampposts and tarmac, going nowhere.

We finally arrived in Konye Urgench, a city once sacked by both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane but now is just a few ruins amongst dusty lanes and humble concrete houses. A 60m minaret built in the 14th century still survives, looking out toward the horizon for the ghosts of the Mongol horde.

After such a long and eventful day we retired to our 'hotel' 'bar' amongst golden swags and pink lacy alcoves . We were just enjoying a nice cold beer (after 7 weeks, even Berk tastes good) when the door burst open and a wedding party danced in trailing a glum looking bride in a cloud of white nylon. Before long we had downed a glass of port and found ourselves slow-dancing to some dreadful Turkmen pop. As the Euro-house blared on and the men got increasingly sweaty, Nic pointed out that we hadn't even managed to slow dance at our own wedding and now here we were, in a cheap roadside motel in Central Asia, drunk on port and Berk, dancing in a mass of vodka-crazed Turkmen.

It was quite some transit.

Whisky Good!

Our time in Iran is nearly up. The last week was spent in Tehran where a line of white mountains give false hope to the concrete-dwellers down below. Tehran is a vast grid of flyovers, cables and propagandist murals. The former US Embassy is rather tastefully daubed with images of a sick and dying West, the British Embassy still stands silent. These symbols do not however reflect the opinions of the people we have met.

We were walking through Tehran with Freddy, an Iranian friend of ours when he spotted the police up ahead. Freddy, unlike most Iranians, sported sideburns, long hair and  a rock T-shirt. As we approached the police he quickly and subtly removed his earring.  I asked if they would they take the earring if they saw it, 'No' he said 'they'd take me.' He wasn't joking, friends of his had been arrested for less. One friend, a black-clad drummer with a mane of curly hair, had been arrested for little more than being with his girlfriend and for being a 'satanist' i.e. having long hair. He faced a 6 month jail sentence but was lucky enough to have an uncle in the police. It is these small things rather than grand ideals such as democracy that often get people most riled. Before democracy, before freedom of speech, people want personal freedom, alcohol and sex (or at least the right to hold hands with their girlfriend).

Amongst the hundreds of people we have met in Iran only two have had good words to say about the government, one was in his early teens, the other a touch unhinged. The rest have attacked the regime with unchecked vitriol and not just the regime, but Islam itself. Of course most of the people that speak to us do not represent all of Iran, they are the educated, the open-minded, but there are many such people. A majority say they to want to leave Iran, ask us how they can get to England. 

Plenty of things happen behind closed doors though. Freddy (he has rejected his Islamic name) and friends meet in a smoky cafe in Tehran, images of revolution and rock musicians on the wall. Here men and women with tattoos, piercings and dangerous thoughts smoke and talk. I was surprised then, to hear that they were playing inoffensive soundtrack music and soft jazz, 'We can't play vocal music' they explained 'they [the authorities] think it's satanist'. Elsewhere, one middle-aged man excitedly invited us to his hotel room where he proudly got out a bottle of homemade vodka and huge bag of weed. 'Whisky, good!' is a common refrain. Another man told me about his underground club who meet once a week to discuss Pink Floyd lyrics.  It is unbelievable that such a thing has to be underground and perhaps equally unbelievable that anyone can make sense of Pink Floyd lyrics.

Every time someone starts government-bashing (and this is very often) I ask what can be done, how it will change, but the answers are always pessimistic. There is no hope, they say, we just want to leave. Some blame the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some blame the coming of the Arabs, the coming of Islam. It  is so very sad. I have never known a country with so little hope, a country with such a broken heart.
The people here have been so unbelievably kind and hospitable I can't even begin to describe it, but being in Iran has been a sobering experience, a saddening experience. Perhaps what has made it so difficult is the fact that it is so easy to relate to the Iranians we've met because, like many of us, they are educated, worldly, modern people but they are trapped in a medieval prison. I don't want to put any of you off visiting, it is a wonderful place for a holiday and a place where hospitality and generosity take on new meanings. In the last few days we were given chocolates and a miraculously fast visa extension by an army colonel, given a free meal in a restaurant because we were 'guests' and a free lift to our homestay by a helpful passer-by. Miraculous acts of kindness by strangers have become the norm for us.

We've now nearly untangled the bureaucratic nightmare that is Central Asian visas (the Uzbek Embassy didn't even stock application forms) and will soon leave for the liberal paradise of Turkmenistan (well at least it's one place ahead of North Korea in the free media league).

We're now in the holy city of Mashhad, a kind of bottleneck for overland travellers to Central Asia. We stay in a sort of a home stay with a ragtag bunch that includes Dutch and Spanish cyclists and a French couple who drove here in a 2CV. We've all had enough of being stopped, greeted and questioned by well meaning but incessant passers-by twenty times a day. The finest variation on the 'where are you from?' question we've heard was the quite wonderful 'Made in?'

To Turkmenistan!

Castles Made of Sand

We were in a taxi hurtling into unfeasible blackness, the driver barking unintelligible pidgin over the blare of the radio, when it struck me that we were miles from anywhere, there  was not a single light on the horizon, not a sound but the roaring engine, the wailing radio.

It was a relief when we finally pulled into a mud-built settlement, lights glowing from behind ancient doors. A man waved from behind a mud wall, with his other hand he appeared to be feeding a baby camel. We had arrived in the oasis village Garmeh. Before long we were stretched out on carpets before a fire, drinking chay and listening to a shaggy-haired Sufi make miraculous rhythms on a pair of clay pots. This was Maziar, a kind of Iranian hippy (if such a thing is possible) who had renovated his rambling family home and opened it as a guesthouse. Everything was made from the desert, mud brick and adobe moulded into a kind of intricate sandcastle. That night we stood on the roof and watched the stars, the only things that disturbed the silence were the yowling of jackals and a tiny stream gurgling a hundred metres away.

When morning came we realised how remote we were. The village was a cluster of mud houses and archways amongst a ring of green date palms. For miles around there was nothing but dusty plains and jagged brown mountains. Next door, a thousand-year-old fortress crumbled back from whence it came, rejoining the dust clouds that allowed one to look directly at the sun, a perfect silver disc in red-brown haze.

We climbed the mountain behind the village and, after surveying the absolute nothingness, realised what an unearthly paradise Britain would seem to these people. While stood on a high rocky crag I let out wolf-like howl (what else would one do on a high rocky crag?) and, a hundred metres away, Nic responded. Except, when I mentioned it to her, she said she hadn't made a sound, she had simply heard two separate howls. There was only one possible conclusion, the jackals had accepted me as one if their own. 

Resisting the urge to join my furry brethren, we travelled through sand and dust storms (at times it felt like a strange night was falling) to the village of Toudeshk. Our experience here was quite wonderful and I intend to write about it before long (somehow, despite doing essentially bugger all, I can never find the time).

As per usual I have got overexcited here and run too far ahead and must retrace our dusty footsteps south to the ancient city of Persepolis. It was from these parts that Persian armies blazed west to sack Athens and here, years later, that Alexander the Great retaliated by burning  the city to the ground. We have been following in his bloody footsteps since Greece, for it was he who blazed the path that made the Silk Roads possible (we try to avoid the raping and pillaging though- it doesn't seem to go down too well). In Iran, Alexander was depicted as a horned devil, children were warned (and sometimes still are) that Iskender would get them if they didn't eat their greens.

I digress. Persepolis was wonderful and it is far beyond my literary powers to describe it adequately. Bizarrely, the thing that sent most shivers down my spine was the grafitti. Into a archway guarded by griffins, great explorers had carved their names (among them Henry Morton Stanley) and, ignoring the crowds and clicking camera phones, you could almost imagine yourself among them.

 We next went to Yazd, a whole city of mud architecture. Lane after beautiful lane of courtyards, caravanserais, tunnels and arches swarmed around us, as if it had grown organically from the desert floor. The roofscape was riven with badgirs, intricate chimneys that are designed to suck cool desert breezes down into the houses. Beneath the city ancient qanats still bring water from mountain streams. These are underground channels that were (and occasionally still are) dug by hand, carrying fresh water for miles and miles. 

In an old qanat cistern, now an empty dome of mud brick, we found the utterly bizarre Yazd Zurkhaneh Club. Zurkaneh is the ancient Iranian practice of mystic body building. In a circular space a group of sweaty men and boys perform ritualistic feats of strength to a throbbing drum. As the men heft huge weights, swing chains and whirl like dervishes, Sufi prayers and poems are sung. As the rhythms quickened and the exercises grew more intense, I found myself with the peculiar sensation of being rather moved by the sight of a fat hairy man in absurd trousers making himself dizzy. 

Though there's much more to say, I cannot ask of you any more of your time (and perhaps some things are best said when outside these borders). We're now amongst the wayward traffic of Tehran waiting for Uzbek visas, planning the next stretch of the journey east.

Thanks for reading and I hope you're all well out there.

Welcome to Iran

This comes to you via a top secret source (code name: my brother). The Iranian authorities had clearly got wind of the dangerous nature of my prose and blocked this website before our arrival.

Leaving Turkey by minibus, we were dropped at a dusty road, Iranian flags fluttered on the hill before us. Traversing trucks and oversized hessian packages, we arrived at a desk serviced by a stern moustache. Attached to this moustache was an even sterner looking man who began thumbing through our passports in painfully slow motion. I was beginning to think about a different route to China when, STAMP! We were waved through to come face to face with the glowering twin portraits of Khomenai and Khamenai and the grinning faces of black-marketeers. We were in Iran.

Hiring a taxi to the nearest town, we sped between craggy brown mountains and the sun-bleached posters of Iran-Iraq war martyrs. The first women we saw were swathed in black chadors (the black sheet that only shows the face) but soon we were seeing girls with Bollywood make-up, skinny jeans and headscarves clinging precariously to absurdly bouffaned hair. The men, an extremely gentle lot, responded to such a show with faded denim and gallons of hair gel.

Arriving in Tabriz, we stood on a street corner dazed and  culture-shocked as neon buzzed to life in every shop window and traffic honked and screeched around us. The comforting Roman script used in Turkey had dissolved into disorientating Arabic squiggles. Before long, the map we had been examining had been whisked away by helpful hands and a gaggle of men swept from the pavement and a nearby electrical shop to spirit us to our hotel. You are never lost for long in this country.

'Hey Mister! Where you from?'

'Engilistan'

'Engilistan? Very good country! You are welcome in Iran!'

This is the conversation we have ten, twenty times a day, once accompanied by a kiss to my head (an old man who sold, and perhaps was,  nuts), twice accompanied by offers to dinner and, more often than not, followed by long conversations as we stroll the bazaars or amongst the shadows of heavenly buildings.

The heart of Tabriz was its bazaar, a 7km square labyrinth of vaulted brick that was begun a thousand years ago. We tumbled through its ornate arches to occasionally find ourselves in cathedral-like halls where beams of dusty light shone on piles of gaudy fabric, or caravanserais awash with Adidas shoes. Though ancient, the building still lives. With a shout of 'Yalla! Yalla!' cart-pushers shove their wares through forests of chadors past spices, cow's feet, and 'Louis Vuitton' bedspreads. Faithful spill from hidden mosques into the snow-flecked city.

Then to glorious Esfahan where we saw some of the most magnificent buildings we will ever see, architecture that brings a lump to the throat. Watching the sun set over the blue domes and palaces of Naqsh-e Jehan Square was special (even when distracted by a hundred  shaking hands and offers of tea). Esfahan even had that rarest of things,  other travellers! We hadn't seen any in weeks.

We're now in the poetic if disappointingly unwiney city of Shiraz. At the tomb of Hafez, a saint-like hero of Persian poetry, people gather to pay their respects, recite poetry and lay red rises on the marble. Nic, clearly feeling the mystic vibe, started reciting a poem that began 'Pick-a-nose Pick, picked his nose and made him sick'. Really, I do try to culture the dear girl.

Tomorrow we're off to the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis! That's about the most exciting sentence I'll ever write.

Note: In a previous post, I mentioned a lake of 'scared carp', this was supposed to read 'sacred carp'. I neither take part in nor condone the frightening of fish (or any other aquatic creature) and apologise for any confusion this may have caused.