The mere sight of Esfahan reminded me of familiar places. The plain that we crossed in order to get to the city is a spitting image of the one surrounding Marakesh, my favourite Moroccan city. We weren't impressed by the city at first night, although the traffic is nothing like the one in Tehran. It has been affected by tourism, people only approach you when they have selfish motives to do so. The only exception was Shahab, the reason we grew fond of the city eventually.
The fact that I didn't come to Iran for the sights might not even surprise you. The past year and a half I dedicated most of my time to building my house on wheels and I spent the first few weeks of my journey - which started almost without me taking notice, straight out of the preparational chaos – covering thousands of chilometres. Plus, there's my job that basically consists of sightseeing and it all dictates a different way of existance. I didn't enter a single mosque nor a pallace. I came here to rest and meet people. Like my friend Ivan from Slovenia, whom I met in Yazd says: “All the mosques are the same, I'm going to the beach.” Well, people aren't all the same.
While I was driving to Garma, I remembered how I screamed “desert!!!” when I was approaching the Syrian Palmyra some years ago. I finally felt it, three weeks after leaving home. The desert oasis Garmeh looked dull at the first sight, but Carmen was adopted by the family of Mr. Aref on the first day and he brought us tee and dates and kept inviting us for lunch whenever he wasn't bringing us date branches from the field in his Sunday clothes. Even though there are processions of tourists walking through the village, the local people are still very hearty, which is reflected in their sincere greetings and smiles. Not even the generator that was buzzing for two hours in the middle of the day bothered them. It was time to do the washing, so we tried out the brand new, never before tested washing machine, stood in front of it and stared at the lights as if we were looking at a television for the first time. It works! It survived all the shocks! Hurrah! We hung the laundry, so I can finally treat myself to a ride in the desert with the KTM. I bit in the dust yesterday just to test it, without the helmet, the shirt, and the boots... today I mean business, I said to myself. While swimming and jumping over the dry torrentriverbeds and climbing out of them I realize once again that working on the truck consumed one and a half year of my free time. I'm not ready for a serious ride, neither physically nor technically. But I'm getting somewhere. It seems like I'm getting the hang of it again. The sun sets behind the hills so I turn back. Of course, it wouldn't be a challenge to drive parallel to the riverbeds, no. I have to cross them and get my share of adrenalin. I descent into an even bigger valley, observe where to enter it so I can cross it smoothly and bite into its bank on the other side. Oh, dear, the slope finishes here! The water eroded through the last few metres and I found myself in front of a vertical hole about two metres deep. I pulled the gas all the way and could just imagine myself somersaulting. I land vertically on the front wheel, the forks get a heavy blow, I stay on the wheels. But the forks suddenly feel so soft, I hope nothing happened to them. I realize pretty quickly that it isn't the forks that are soft but my left wrist. Jesus. I inspect the bones, they seem okay. I feel weak and like I'm about to faint. Hurry home!
Carmen gives me painkillers, but we leave the bike outside. The wrist starts to swell. In the evening we drive to a city 30 kilometres away and when we get back, the bike is gone. We find out in the morning that it was taken by the police so nobody would steal it. Way to go, guys! My wrist is swollen, I'm in a bad mood and I don't feel like dealing with this on top of everything, but the villagers organize for me to get to the police. The village healer treats my hand with yolk, flour and fat. She says I'll be okay.
We staid in Garma until the next morning, I wasn't in a big hurry on my birthday. And the pain was getting worse. In the afternoon we take off towards Yazd in the south through Khura, which is 400 kilometres of ride. Our first stop was the hotel, where they even have water pipes, as we've been informed about a week ago. But you can only get them late in the evening, after the front door is closed. Water pipes have been banned in this city as well. There are three youngsters sitting on the sofa next to ours. When I hear Spanish, I twitch my ears. David, Alicante. Camilo, Florence. Arthur, São Paulo. They're all wandering around these parts of the world and keep adjusting their travelling plan as they go along. Arthur, a young Brazilian lawyer, is in the middle of his four-year long journey with the bike around the world.
In the Silk Road hotel we finally met with the Slovenian guy whose heels we’ve been at for quite some time now. Ivan spent last night in prison. Apparently it got quite cold on a blanket on a stone floor towards the morning. But he was “their guest”, they let him go later in the morning. The two young Iranian girls and an Iranian boy he was socialising with at their place when it was raided by the officers of “the Islamic Purity Committee” - an agency whose name I made up, but did actually exist until recently - weren't so lucky. They couldn't be reached on their telephones for three days, I imagine they didn’t exactly go easy on them.
The next day it was time for the hospital. The wrist kept looking worse. The Mortaz General Hospital in Yazd is a huge, clean and nice private hospital. The doctor holds the X-rays against the light, looks at them and turns to me. “Everything okay? I can go, right?” He looks at me like I had fallen on my head. In an hour I was lying and listening to the beep of “the machine that goes ping, ping”, as the Monty Python guys would say. When I woke up, I was adorned by a fresh plaster. The ulna was dislocated and broken in the wrist. Yeah, well, we'll just have to reorganize for the next month.
Last night a Turbodaily 4x4 from Bern and a Landcruiser pick-up with a living quarters extension from Innsbruck parked in front of the Silk Road. They came from Turkey and are headed to Pakistan. Today Alex and Benoit from Marseille, who came to Armenia with a Peugeot 205, joined the crowd. Since they didn't have the Carnet de passages that you need to enter Iran they sold the car there and plan to get to India on local transportation. Arthur is currently taking care of the visas for the rest of the journey. He changed his plans, instead of taking the bike to Armenia in winter, he's going to head to Oman and Yemen. You might spot him somewhere in Europe in spring or summer. The Australian family came to Iran from India. The seven-year old Harry proudly explains to us how he has been travelling since his eighth week, while the three-year old Alexandra is not shy at all to tell us how she's been on the road since she was five months old, while climbing to her pushchair. They put up the Christmas decorations today in the Silk Road hotel and stuck a disgusting Merry Christmas sign on the wall. Aaaaaaaah!!!!! Is there any place at all where I can hide, if I'm not even safe in the Islamic Republic of Iran???!!!
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