Crossing the Zagros Mountains in Khuzestan

23-29 April

We are now in Khuzestan, a province known for its nomads trekking from one place to the other with their cattle. The tribe typical for this region is the Bakhtiari tribe. It appears that nomading has been modernized and we have the impression that all nomads use trucks to get from one camping spot to the next. Every morning the cattle is loaded on a truck and transported, whereas the tents , people and their belongings are transported by smaller pick-ups. We are not sure whether this is just modern nomading, or is a sheer necessity, as the grasslands are all utterly overgrazed.

Initially, we descend to around 400 m, which becomes pretty hot and views are quite a bit hazy. This seems to be dust and moist and is also a sign that bad weather is upcoming. Indeed, the weather forecast predicts thunderstorms for the late afternoon and the day after. While we pedal through a quite impressive landscape, the sky gets darker and the wind is getting stronger. In the afternoon we find ourselves in a pretty desolate landscape. Rolling hills, muddy grasslands, some agriculture and above all no shelter to hide away for the rain. Our plan is to find a room, but in the first village where we try we are not successful finding one. In fact, the young men talking to us don’t behave very friendly and the village looks kind of creepy with all doors painted in the colors of the Iranian flag. Probably it doesn’t mean anything, but it doesn’t feel good either.

We continue to the next village, a car stops and a guy comes out to talk with Martin. He is an English teacher, so we can have a real discussion with him. He invites us to his home and Martin accepts without asking where his home is. It appears to be 20 km away in the wrong direction and it brings us back to an elevation level where we started biking at the beginning of the afternoon. I am not happy with this at all, but the guy is not willing to give up on us and let us go. In his village everything is there we need, he says. Outside his village the world is bad and dangerous. We finally agree that we follow him and that after the rain he will organize a pickup for us, to bring us back to the place where we are now. We follow him, but since there are also a couple of climbs, it goes slowly and the guy (Reza) proposes to put bikes and luggage (and us) in his small car. This will obviously not fit at all, so the logical solution is that we put our luggage in his car and follow him without all the weight. Mmmmmm. This is a matter of trust and giving up control. What if the guy disappears with all our luggage? We decide to trust him, but I keep the backpack with the money and other valuables with me (and take a picture of his car). Just before his village we get stopped by the police. So far, the police has done nothing more than wave, cheer, greet and welcome us, but now, for the first time they want copies of our passport. Reza explains that the police is doing a good job to keep the region secure. The police also want to know whether we like Iran and we confirm that so far all Iranian people have been superkind to us, including the police. They are very pleased with the answer. After the formalities we continue to the English school where we can stay two nights. In fact, we can stay forever if we would believe his uncles and other family members. And this turns out to become a little bit of a problem. Reza considers us not only his guests, but kind of his personal property. He doesn’t leave us alone a second and brings us from one family member to the next. After all visits we finally are brought back to the school at 11:30 pm and since the outer world is dangerous we have to close all windows (with bars) and Reza closes the door. From the outside. We are locked in.

Fortunately, the next day Reza comes to open the door and he leaves us alone for a couple of hours. But not without telling that we can’t go on the street, into the village, all too dangerous and nobody will understand us. Since the sky has turned into a deep dark yellow and it starts to rain cats and dogs with thunderstorms, we don’t care, but in the evening it takes us at least half an hour of a very explicit discussion to make clear that we don’t want to be imprisoned anymore and that he should leave the keys with us or the door open. Which he does. The next day, at 8 am sharp, the promised pick up arrives and we leave. Reza keeps his promises!

He also stays in contact the next few days and does organize another place to stay a couple of days later. The man is priceless but a bit possessive as well.

After being dropped by the pickup we climb to a tunnel (10% on average over a couple of kilometers). Just before the tunnel we get halted by a couple of police men, but they don’t want to check our passports. They want to take pictures and give us a bottle of doogh.

The tunnel gives access to the Shimbar region. This is a bushy plain in the midst of the mountains and it is flooded. There is also a waterfall and people told us it is the most beautiful waterfall of Iran. With all the water shortage and the rains of the day before our expectations are not very high. We are guided by a guy to the waterfall which indeed is very muddy and not impressive, but the walk was actually beautiful and we get some explanations of the environment plus the personal opinion of our guide about the Iran regime. The guy has worked in Manchester for a while in a pizzeria and his English is quite good. People are very poor in Shimbar and there are even people trying to find gold. We hear the echo of their hammering. He is not happy at all with the regime and he feels the Shimbar region is left alone by the government. No maps, no exploitation of the archeological treasures, villages without electricity and streaming water. On the other hand, he didn’t like to live in Manchester either. He is now basically doing nothing and trying to live a healthy life in nature, nurture himself well, not using drugs.

Shimbar area

We go on and this evening we end up next to a Bakhtiari camp and are invited to drink tea with them. They live a very spartan live. Their tents are basically only tarps. The young men this night sleep somewhere in the grass near the road. The Bakhtiari men tell us to leave our bikes in their camp and they will protect them from robbers. They also make clear to us to not leave any piece of equipment outside of our tents as they will be robbed. Sheep and goats have been robbed as well. We do as we are told and sleep through the night without any incident.

The Bakhtiari want to understand what we are doing there. Staring is not forbidden...

Drinking tea with the nomads

The next day we get our bikes back and continue. The only thing we later find out we miss is our Rough Guide Persian Dictionary that we most likely left in the Bakhtiari tent while drinking tea. This is very unfortunate as it helps us with conversations. Now we are completely dependent on my Google Translator, that unfortunately does not tell how the Persian letters are to be pronounced.

We climb to a pass at 2300 m and we get surrounded by snowy mountains, although they are hard to see due to the haziness. On our way to the pass we lunch next to the road and a huge family considers us the attraction of the day. Hundreds of pictures, laughter and giggling and 3 liters of doogh, a melon, 4 oranges, a few cucumbers and a kilo of bread later, they decide to continue their journey. We cannot carry it all and leave most of the bread and 1 bottle of doogh for the dogs.

Quietly eating lunch in the midst of a hilarious Iranian family can get a bit difficult.

and it doesn't help at all to get our bikes a bit lighter...

We enter a broad valley with a real clear mountain river that gets fed by numerous mountain streams. There are plenty of good sites to camp and when we stop to pitch our tent a youngster calls us and tells us that we should follow him. His family is very happy to see us. They clearly live in poverty and the first thing I do is give the heavy oranges and tomatoes away. There is no electricity, no streaming water, the kitchen is outside and food is cooked on a wood fire. But also there are three cars and 2 motor cycles on their terrain. It doesn’t take long until the two adolescent daughters come to ask for hand cream. We are happy to give it away to them, but they don’t want to have it anymore when they discover it is produced in Iran. They only want real English products (for whatever reason). Then they ask me for make-up, which I obviously don’t have. In the meantime the young boy is trying our bikes and we have to stop him to make sure our tires are not worn off already after one month. Then the mother comes and asks for money. That is something we can definitely do for them, pay for the campsite and use of the toilet. We make sure that we do not make an exhibition of our equipment. Still, the next day my small plushy reindeer, attached on my bike, has disappeared. Well let’s hope that the small 4 year old boy enjoys it. It is definitely not an important piece of equipment.

The next day we continue, still with good weather. Phone coverage is coming and going and Reza calls us to ask where we are, what we are doing and to warn us for bears and robbers. He also tells us that in the last village before the highest mountain pass he has friends and he wants us to stay there. We have nothing against that, as we have information that bad weather may be coming. So, we agree that I call him as soon as we arrive in this village (Mavarz).

It takes a bit longer to get in Mavarz than expected because we pass a police station. A guy with a gun jumps out of his watch tower and nervously shouts at us that we have to stop. He keeps repeating it and also shouts for translators. We don’t like nervous, shouting man with guns, but we do stop rather than trying to escape and we have to enter the police station. Within a minute all employees surround us. All friendly, smiling men who invite us to…….. play table tennis with them. Huh, oh yes, in the meantime our passports get copied, but the table tennis is much more important and fun. It is over 30 years ago that I played my last table tennis match, but I get the hang of it pretty quickly and after a while I become a threat for my opponent. One of the other police men is now taking over and I have no chance. Better like this. Don’t dare to beat Iranian police. After a super interesting conversation about soccer, where the names of famous Dutch soccer players and clubs as well as Iranian soccer players playing in The Netherlands are shouted back and forth, we receive a bottle with refreshing water and our passports back and we can go. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures of the table tennis match, unfortunately.

When we arrive in Mavarz the phone coverage has disappeared again. Our Irancell SIM card is not covering this region properly, but people who know the area have other SIM cards, so we ask someone if we can use their phone (we actually do not ask but make gestures to explain it). We call Reza and while we are waiting for our host, the owner of the phone offers us dates and popcorn/rice and when he leaves, gives us the whole bag with popcorn. We are brought to the families’ house and we stay there 2 nights. We learn a little bit about the farmers life which is definitely hard, especially for the women. In the weekend the boys take care of the goats and come back home at dawn, eat, try to make some home work and then go to bed. The mother milks the goats before the goats leave in the morning and after they return. She collects the milk and makes doogh and mast (yoghurt). Also, she makes bread herself, although that is really not expensive to buy. This is all hard physical work, I am invited to try myself and work on the doogh maker for a while. It is not surprising that the mother has pain in her back. I teach her some exercises to stretch and relax her back, but I doubt she will ever apply them.

Doogh making by Karin. It is basically shaking a container made from goat's hide with goat's milk in it until the milk gets sour

Doogh making by a profi. A lot more of energy goes into the bag.

The daughter, Fatimeh, is about to complete her geology study but she is back home to support her mother. I hope that she will complete her study and ask her what her dream is. She wants to serve her country with her geology study, but doubts whether she will ever get a job. Too many young unemployed people around in Iran. This story we hear over and over again.

The day we want to continue the bad weather really starts, so we decide to take a taxi for the last 150 km to ShahreKord. This turns out to be a good decision, climbing a steep high mountain pass in thunderstorm, hail and snow doesn’t belong to our hobbies. Moreover, something in the food we got served wasn’t really appreciated by my gut, so I am suffering from a light travelers’ diarrhea. Later, when Martin also gets it, we understand what the source is. It is the doogh from the farm. We should have known better. The milk is not pasteurized and the environment far from proper. As a matter of fact we were bitten by quite some flees as well (carpets on the floor, no vacuum cleaner, animals around).

In Shahrekord we are dropped in front of a hotel and the owner immediately starts to drag in our luggage, puts our bikes in the basement and then reveals the price of the room and shows the room to us. The price is extremely high and the room has no windows. So, we collect our luggage and bikes and leave. The personnel of the hotel gives us 2 drinks and the guy next door who is a mountainbiker offers us a coffee. In the next block we find another hotel with a more acceptable price quality ratio. We could have stayed with the grandma of Siavash, our new Warm Showers contact in Esfehan. But after so many home stays and not being entirely healthy we prefer to stay on our own.

The next day Siavash comes with his car to bring us to Esfehan, 90 km away from ShahreKord. He has thoughtfully brought a lot of stuff to protect our bikes during the car ride. In the coming days he appears to be invaluable.

Bikers food called Kak (for the Dutchies: It tastes much better than kak)

Biker's food: Wrap made of Iranian flatbread, filled with banana and Nutella

Biker's food: Wrap made of Iranian flatbread, filled with walnut cream cheese and dates

Reza, the English teacher and his family

Children in Iran don't get enough sleep. They also have to be able to sleep everywhere. This is a typical cradle in which the child is fixed and cradled. The cradle gets covered by a blanket while the adults keep shouting and conversing.

Reza keeps his promise and a taxi arrives at 8 am sharp.

Martin negotiating a road averaging 10%. Our first dog, called Khubi the First, has no problems following us. We loose him when we race down to Shimbar.

Lady in a small and poor village in the Shimbar region, spinning wool

Our personal guard in the nomad camp during the night that the robbers may come

Martin gets harassed by children

Watching pictures of The Netherlands, Switzerland and of our families. For this occasion we  invented two children, Ted and Christel and 4 grand children, which is just about acceptable according to Iranian guidelines. We showed the pictures at least 5 times to all the visitors that came to get acquainted with the tourists.

Portrait of the farmer

Chilling on the carpet. This is where we most likely got bitten by flees.

Baking Iranian flatbread. At the left is the oven. It is a steel device in which a wood fire burns. The flatbreads get baked on the lid and the growing pile of flat breads is turned regularly.

Flatbread acrobatics

Fatimeh, the daughter of the house, was of big help during our stay in the farm house. She spoke a little bit of English. Here we are having a Google translate conversation.