Destination Sunrise

When I said in my previous post that I would write about Shiraz, it was not totally accurate. The city of Shiraz lacks great sights, in my opinion, and the most remarkable attractions are the shrines of Shah Cheragh, mostly off-limits to non-Muslims, and the mausoleum of Hafez, a great Persian poet that has a national hero status but who did not mean much to me. I focused mainly on eating faloodeh (frozen corn starch noodles with syrup and lime juice, sounds horrible but it is delicious) and would have tried the famous local wine if it had not been totally illegal.

Yazd is a city in the middle of the desert. To be precise, in the middle of two deserts... the Dasht-e Kavir and the Dasht-e Lut. Those are the two biggest deserts in Iran, northeast and southeast in the country, respectively. Nowadays, Yazd is famous for being a very conservative city, where religion plays an important role in people's lives.

My friend Ghazal lives in Semnan, a mid-sized Iranian city two hours east of Tehran. After I got my Uzbek tourist visa and applied for the Turkmen transit one at the relevant consulates in Tehran, I continued my trip eastwards. I was looking forward to visiting Ghazal and her family in Semnan because part of the idea of this trip in Asia originated when I met her a couple of years before in Yerevan and we talked about seeing each other again in Iran, so that she can show me her country.Those were lazy times, after so much driving under the sun in Central Iran.

Turkmenistan is shrouded in mystery, as it is one of the least visited countries in the world. North Korea gets a lot more visitors a year, most of them Chinese, and certainly much more media attention. But what do you know about Turkmenistan?

The name of Samarkand still evokes smells of exotic spices and images of camel caravans across the desert but, unfortunately, that is quite far from current reality. Many travelers choose this city as the destination of their long-distance journeys across Asia and I just hope they know that camels and spices are long gone...What is there in Samarkand today?

Leaving Turkmenistan was a sort of relief... the levels of hospitality there were just amazing but corrupt police and army officers make life very difficult for travelers. Apart from that, I had a four day transit visa and did not really like the idea of overstaying in the country. Across the border from Dashoguz lies Uzbekistan and I was leaving a police state to enter... another police state!

Warning: this post is different from all previous ones.

Sorry to keep you waiting for so long but I hope this post meets your expectations...

Whole day lost at the tire repair shop...

Entering the Marco Polo home stay and feeling warm air from a wood stove on my face was a blessing. I met there a Swiss family who was cycling around the Pamirs and, shortly after my arrival, a guy in a motorcycle outfit joined us. His name was Jirka and was very excited to meet me because he had been following my tracks all the way from the Wakhan valley and... he was riding a BMW 1150 GS Adventure. Same bike as mine but ten years older, with the same front and back wheel specs. And believe it or not, he had been carrying spare tires all the way from his home town in the Czech Republic.

After the fellowship on two wheels had crossed the thousand towers, we all got reunited in Osh. We spent a couple of lazy days resting, eating properly and remembering all those stories that would bond us forever. A couple of days later, each of us would go his own way but the adventure would always remain in our memories. Stuart and Jirka left their bikes stored in Osh and flew back home, to Norway and the Czech Republic, respectively.