A short magic carpet ride across the land of the Persians where the carpets are wooly, the smiles are friendly and the landscape is special.
Flying out of Delhi towards Teheran I had a stopover in Dubai and upon landing the thought popped into my head that if it wouldn't cost too much to delay my connecting flight then this could be a good chance to see the city that glitters with gold, black gold.

With Torb at least a few days behind me, waiting for his Iranian visa in Delhi, and no cost to delay my flight by three days, except the 75 Dirham airport tax (AU$25), I used up bandwidth on the free wi-fi at the airport trying to find a cheap hotel before jumping in a taxi to Naif Road, Deira. I was surprised to find that the Biblically famous “road to Damascus”, on which Saul the persecutor of Christians was converted, had moved from Syria to Dubai, and that it looked just like any other middle eastern street.

Though a hotel (150 Dirham – discounted from 500) cost me almost ten times as much as in India, meals and the efficient public transport system were very affordable and this meant I could catch a glimpse of most of the “sites” without blowing my whole travel budget. Even the bus stands are air-conditioned!

Now “catching a glimpse” of sites is very different from actually using them. I don't know that I'd ever have the money, or the inclination to spend the money, for a night at the iconic Burj Al Arab

or whether I'd even have enough to tip the driver when the taxi is a Rolls.

Actually, I wouldn't even shell out the 120 Dirham to go to the viewing tower of the big boy – the Burj Khalifa – telling myself that the pollution was too strong and I wouldn't see anything anyway.

In some ways I'm quite a literal person so I can't say that the streets are paved with gold, though I'd like to use that phrase. I judged the city's wealth based on it's automobiles: Porsche, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Maserati, Bentleigh and so on – they were all there. And I wasn't about to play chicken with this Lamborghini.

This, though, is what I expected of the Middle East, old school Mercedez driving through the sand like in the movie Three Kings.

Friends reacted with concern when I mentioned I was going to Iran, but I just claimed that “it's fine, it just gets a bad name 'cos it sounds like Iraq”. Truth is I knew very little about the place before I arrived, though fortunately I stumbled across the fact that outside credit and debit cards would not be able to befriend Iranian ATMs and I withdrew enough (hopefully) money for my Persian foray before touching down in Teheran.

It turns out that Iran is a modern country with soap dispensers in the bathrooms and refrigerated water taps lining the streets. This is how my travelers instinct defines whether a country is modern or not ;) Internet access is usually readily available (if you can manage to find it), but facbook is blocked :( Actually, one of the first thing that struck me arriving in Teheran was the small motorbikes with windscreens and vinyl roof - something I'd like to see in Melbourne

I was very quickly hit with the fact that little English is spoken here and it was going to be quite difficult to find my way around. I stumbled upon www.easypersian.com which is a great site with easy to follow lessons in Farsi/Persian. While it doesn't give too many words early on, it does well at teaching the Arabic alphabet, which would come in handy reading street signs as we traveled the country.

On arriving in Iran Torb met a man, Mehdi, who speaks English well and was happy to help us in search of motorbikes. I hadn't even considered that we would be buying bikes here, but after being shown to the area where second hand dealers are congregated (I'm sorry HU bikers, I wasn't focused enough to take down the name of the street) we came away with two 125cc Honda-wannabees. “Hormoz” I believe – with Honda badges. While they look identical (to my untrained eyes) to the Honda CG 125, they were USD$425 compared to the USD$1000 that we were quoted for a Honda “from Japan”.

The felt just like little toys after riding the Enfields across India. Especially for Torb, the giant one.

Our first stop outside of Teheran was Qom where we arrived late, left early, saw nothing, but had a great night's sleep in a mini apartment complete with kitchen and air con for 200,000 Rial. Hm, let's talk money. Here's the system: The unit is Rial, so a note will have printed on it, for example, “50000 Rial”. Good, simple. That is about AU$6. But we don't speak in Rial here, that would be too simple. We talk Tuman, which is not a real monetary unit printed on any denomination of money in the country. 50000 Rial = 5000 Tuman – that's easy enough, just drop one zero. BUT, to make it harder, “5 Tuman” generally means 5000 Tuman, which means 50000 Rial, which is AU$6. How much for that puppy in the window?

Now back to the travels. Favourite Iran experiences:

A) Esfahan
Beautifully shaded tree-lined streets with a flowing river and modern cosmopolitan feel. Of which the only photo I took of any worth is this effort of the bridge at the end of the main street. I'm going to give this one a title “Windows of Bridge”. Good name? Or “Windows into Life”, or “Sad Man and Happy Couple”, or “Photo of Bridge”. Song 2.

Actually, there is also this photo-pair, entitled
“Hm, where does this go?”

and “Oh”.

2) The road from Esfahan to Yasuj via Farsan
Easily our most enjoyable Iran ride through rocky gorges

opening up to stunning views across to the snow mountains

and up to a gorgeous lake lying just below the snow line.

It was on this day that we accepted an invitation to stay at the home of Goreman, a young man whom we asked for directions when we met him on the road. Some invitations are good to accept, some are not so good. This one was great - one of our highlights of Iran!

Upon arriving at his home we feasted on cherries, apricots, kebabs, milk (weird mint flavoured sour yoghurt goat donkey cow buffalo milk. Aka, I don't know what it was :) and then headed off up into the hills for a picnic.

They love their picnics here! Most days we see dozens of families out for picnics with their rugs and their kebabs. Our picnic was a watermelon and some kind of seedpods which we took with us up to a gorgeous place that Torb and I never would have seen on our own.

After demolishing the watermelon we went cross country a little to some kind of farm where an old family friend of Goreman brewed chai for us as we sat in his little open walled hut

and I looked out over all that would one day be mine.

D) The Kalutz - desert
Revving the guts out of the Hormoz in 2nd gear to climb over the Payeh Range, and dropping down into the long straight roads towards the desert plains.

Shah-e-dad is the last town of any note (read: where petrol, icecream and water are available – the essentials). After this shade can be found in old forts

or the lonely Kalutz desert camp (free accommodation apparently?)

But it is difficult to find shade or shelter in the ferocious heat of the Kalutz proper, especially as the sun stands up to it's full height during the middle of the day.

The interesting aspect of this area, though, are the mighty sand castles reaching 20-30 metres into the air. To judge the size you might just be able to make out the motorbikes as specks in the centre of this photo.

These sandcasltes provide morning and afternoon shade to fend off that flaming ball of fire in the sky. Unfortunately in setting up our camp we misjudged where the sun would rise and found our self fried out of bed by 6am.

Here endeth the favourites.

We also visited Persepolis, a once mighty palace complex begun by Darius The Great around 518 Before Christ and added to by team Xerxes and team Artexerxes after that. I found it awe inspiring to look at some of the remains of rock pillars and carvings, but some of the restorative work was overdone and took away from the natural history of the place (for me).

From Kerman we sold off the bikes at a steal (for those who bought them!) and took a reasonably comfortable 6 berth per cabin overnight train (165000 Rial) back to Teheran. Another overnight train (this time 4 berth - well worth it at 170000 Rial) to Tabriz and by bus into Turkey at the Bazargan border post.

Here's some bonus photos:

Sunset at the Kalutz.

Started flooding out oil, blowing smoke, making noises. We thought it was time to go back to towing rather than riding until we could get her fixed.

NOTE ON HOTELS

For anyone that uses the Lonely Planet: Hotel prices are consistently double those given in the 2008 edition of Iran.
The LP bags out hotel Khayyam in Teheran (just off Amir Kabir street) but I found that it was much better value for money than any of the others in the immediate area. Comfortable, breakfast included, friendly and free internet and wi-fi for 150000 Rial.

NOTES ON MOTORBIKES

I can't remember the name of the street where the second-hand motorbike dealers are in Teheran, but it is somewhere south and west of the main bazaar – you should be able to find it if you ask around for motorbike shops (duh).
Initially we were told that we would need to buy in the name of a local, but one dealer eventually gave us bikes with some document written out in Arabic – which I left Torb to sign :) When we had the chance to have it translated everything seemed in order (“the bikes belong to this person and they have been paid for and are registered and insured” etc.)
MAKE SURE you get a fuel card – this is needed at every fuel station to fill up: scan it in the petrol pump, enter the pin code (we had our codes taped to the cards), wait and fill. I had heard of strict fuel usage limits in Iran and I don't know if we had a limit but we didn't run out across 2000ish km.
We were given the insurance paper, registration card, and fuel card.
When it came to selling the bikes we were in Kerman and many potential buyers told us to take the bikes back to Teheran to sell them because we didn't have the “Sepan” (hm, I think that is the word they used). This greatly reduced the price that we were offered and some people refused to offer anything without this Sepan. If only I knew what a Sepan was! It could be the full registration paper (not just the registration card) or it could be a document stating that the bike can be transferred from Teheran registration to Kerman (or any other region) registration, like the Indian No Objection Certificate. Who knows? Actually, who does know? Let me know if you do know!
We were given no problems by the police or authorities except for at Azadi square (which is a circle!) in Kerman when three policeman pulled us aside, ripped the keys out of the ignition and looked like they meant business. It was a bit disconcerting but one of them radioed somebody and came back saying everything was fine but we should where helmets (I can count on my fingers how many helmets I have seen in Iran I reckon, so pretty unlucky that our one short ride without them almost brought the wrath of the mighty police force)
Parts and mechanics are incredibly easy to find (for this CG 125) because they account for about 80-90% of bikes on the road. Good luck if you're riding something else!