Getting into hot air

10-23 June

After our last ride through the Albors Mountains we end in a small coastal village Abas Abad. Here, Hamid-Reza from Couchsurfing is our host, but we unfortunately do not see a lot of him. He has to leave for work at 7 am and returns at 10 pm. Still, he organizes a taxi for us that brings us a bit further west in the Caspian sea region. We are not willing to spend any more time than necessary on our bikes in this region. The taxi driver drives like an idiot, so we are happy when we arrive in Chaboksar. We are now in Golan province, famous for its rice and tea plantations. We do our best to find a road away from the coastal road, but after a while it becomes unpaved and utterly bump. Also the rivers flowing to the sea don't have bridges on this road. With the speed that we reach on the bumpy road, we will never arrive in Lahijan, where we will treat ourselves with a luxurious hotel. However, we miscalculated our tour of today a bit (we started later than we wanted, the taxi came at 10:15) and still didn’t get to Lahijan. So, we again camp, this time along a river near a small town. Unfortunately, at sunset, when I try to wash myself hidden between some bushes, the mosquitoes become over-active and start attacking me. Waving my hands and hitting mosquitoes as good as I can I quickly jump into the tent to not leave it again until the next morning. Not a relaxed spot for camping. The next day our hairs (and all the rest) get wet because of the ‘zelf-e shar’ and after only a few hours biking we check in in the hotel in Lahijan where I can release another blog and where we can relax. In the evening we have a good diner (trout) in a traditional restaurant with ladies in traditional costumes. We then cross the mountains again to not return in the Caspian sea plain again.

Coast in Gorgan province. The jungle actually starts at the coast line

Moist and warm climate in Gorgan province makes plant grow into triffid like shapes (Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham)

Ricefields forever (adaptation from Beatles song)

Jungle and clouds (and 'zelf-e shar', hair wetting rain)

Huge teapot in Lahijan park. Lahijan is the centre of a tea producing area. There are millions of tea shops selling tea in enormous quantities.

After a long record breaking descend (finally) we are looking for a spot to camp. We want to stay in Rostamabad, but there are no hotels and no available couchsurfers, so we camp on a football field close to Rostamabad. That very same night Iran beats Morocco with 1-0 in the World Championship in Russia, so our camp site is very appropriate for the occasion.  It is very warm and the weather forecast tells us that it will get even warmer, up to 44C in the area. The coming days we will be on relatively low elevation and a series of days in nature are upcoming without any possibility to stay with a couchsurfer or a reasonably sized settlement with a shop. After a very hot night near Gilvan in an olive orchard, with lots of insects, especially enormous bugs that this time attack Martin, we decide to make a short detour to Ab Bar, a village with two hotels. We hope to get some shade there, airconditioning and a possibility to wash clothes. Unfortunately, the first hotel, turns out to be an establishment to celebrate weddings and can only offer us a small hut in the plain sun. Not a good idea. In the second hotel there is an airconditioned room, but after an hour or so, the AC is overheated and is only able to propel more warm air into our room. The room and the entire hotel is very dirty as well, also this is not a good environment to relax. And we do need to recover a bit, because the two hot days we just had, have worn us out. We have to make a plan B and get into cooler air, so we consider to cross the mountains to Zanjan, rather than stay longer in this hot valley, which was the original plan. Zanjan is located on 1700 m altitude, but can only be reached by crossing a mountain pass of 2400 m, which from the valley is a climb of 2000 m. On the whole climb there are no trees and the landscape doesn’t look as if it will produce a lot of water or offer a nice place to camp. We are kind of stuck. 2000 m of altitude difference in this weather will take 2 days, so we have to carry so much water that it will inevitably slow us down or stop us completely, because the road is also quite steep. We decide for an early leave by taxi, which is easier said than done. The hotel owner has our passports and has disappeared. So, I call him and tell him he should return to the hotel and bring us our passports back the same evening. The only answer I get repeatedly is: Do you speak English? Apparently, my English language skills have quickly detoriated and now I have become ununderstandable. Fortunately, a girl with some command of English comes to the phone and half an hour later the hotel owner arrives. In the meantime, we have contacted an English speaking Iranian friend in Tabriz who explains to the hotel owner what we need: Our passports and a pick-up taxi at 6 am to bring us into cooler regions. The hotel owner is now also making an effort to get our passports back, so two police officers arrive to check the passports. They look at it for a long time, check all the pages, discuss it, look again, look at us and then finally have a brilliant idea. They make a picture with their phone of the ID page and then we get our passports back, the very same evening.

On the way to Rostamabad. 'Abad' appearing in so many names of villages, means settlement.

In Rudbar we meet this Japanese guy, cycling from Shanghai to Portugal

And this is his bike (and luggage). After having seen this I am not sure why I was so worried by a 15 cm large hole in my bike panier. Apparently, also with large holes you can travel far.

In Rudbar we are looking for a supermarket but we only find olive selling shops. Millions of olive shops with huge quantities of olives. One after the other. When we finally find a small normal shop, the owner is so delighted to have foreigners in his shop that he gives us a cup with this olive, walnut, pomegranate mixture. It is super delicious, juicy and refreshing. When we enter the valley north of Rudbar we understand where all the olives come from, one olive grove after the other.

We stay in an old not so well maintained olive grove to get out of the heat and into the shade. The advantage of the non maintenance is that there are no irrigation channels and the soil is compact and flat. Usually, the ground in an olive grove is not suitable to camp on. Still it is not an ideal place because it is full of insects, one of which led to a panic attack with Martin.

Iranian variation of the snowy pictures I take in winter in Switzerland

It is beautiful, but so hot. We have 36C on this day.

We then head for diner. There are actually quite a lot of small restaurants in the village and all serve rice with kebab. We end up somewhere where they are roasting complete chickens. We order one and completely eat it (yes, we are transforming into strong carnivores these days).

After a warm night and a surprisingly good rest the taxi indeed arrives at 6 am and brings us up the mountain. 800 m underneath the pass we ask the driver to stop, which he of course doesn’t understand, as he knows we want to go to Zanjan. We unload our bikes, luggage and 101 water bottles and master the last 800 m in relatively cool air ourselves. 400 m down at the other side we find the best camping site ever. We could have proceeded to Zanjan the same day easily, but we prefer to stay in the mountains, at 2100 m altitude, in the shade along a small mountain stream and pass the afternoon, relaxing in our luxurious light-weight camping chairs. The next day we are well recovered and stay with Hadi’s family a couple of days. We eat ice cream, visit the local historic highlights and eat very good food with lots of vegetables and have two late night’s sleep, because Iranians have diner at 10 pm, even though they have to go to work early in the morning. Hadi works in a bank and starts working at 7 am. The last night we go to bed ‘early’ (11 pm) and hear from our futons the cheering of the family and their friends while the Iranian soccer team plays against Spain. It doesn’t help, they lose 1-0.

Our best camping spot ever. We arrived around 1 pm. There is a lot of space, shade and a clear mountain stream. It is on 2100 m altitude so temperatures are still bearable. We chill out here the rest of the day and have a good and refreshing night's sleep.

To make sure that we catch every blow of wind the tent has the option of removing the front part of the tent. Since we are on 2100 m altitude, in the course of the night it gets chilly and we even need our sleeping bags.

Open landscape close to Zanjan. On the left the trees that line the mountain stream where we camped.

A big water reservoir, not completely filled, close to Zanjan.

In Zanjan we visit a restructured washing place called Rahtshoj Khaneh. It was used by women 

to wash their clothes. Nowadays, wax statues represent the life of these women. Visiting a 

structure that has wax statues is a good idea. It is nicely cool there.

We continue with the principle of starting early and passing the afternoon on a shady place. However, this becomes more and more difficult. While the landscape turns into a beautifully colored desert, the trees and bushes disappear, so we become dependent on agricultural areas with some trees. The camping spots of the two coming nights are not ideal, but we enjoy the landscape a lot and I can’t stop taking pictures. Fortunately, the entire two days the roads mainly go down, with only a few short climbs. We finally enter Miyaneh, from where we will take the bus to Tabriz.

We enter in more and more arid area. It becomes difficult to find a good place to camp.

In this green area we find a place to camp in an orchard belonging to a family from Zanjan. Since it is Thursday the family arrives in the afternoon to celebrate the weekend. Especially the mother is very curious and wants to figure out who we are and what we do in Iran. So she comes to our tent, armed with no English language skills and accompanied by her suns and cousins who speak a word of English or two. She makes very clear that we are welcome in their garden, can use their toilet and should visit them in their garden house to drink a cup of tea. Later on our camping spot is endangered by a flood. One of the farmers deems it necessary to pump water into the channel next to the orchard. The channel has a too low capacity and the orchard starts to flood. Advice of the farmer, who doesn't want to interrupt this act of water management: Move the tent. Instead we build a dike, worthy a Dutch engineer.

After we visit the Zanjan family we walk to the river just to find out that it disappeared. In the afternoon it was still there... No hamam today 😢

Early morning of a very beautiful and warm day. Luckily the route went mainly down, very slowly, so we could relax, take pictures and catch a little bit of wind without effort.

Close to the village where we camp we find these stork nests. The young storks are close to flying out. They are doing exercises with their wings to get stronger and prepare for the BIG JUMP.

Brick stone material is omnipresent here. The bricks don't get baked in ovens, but are sun-dried in structures like this. We are considering camping in them 😂 

Under the last trees before Miyaneh we find a few square meters under the trees and we pitch our tent there. Martin is observed by a local farmer who is also managing one of the water wells, 100 m down the road. The water from these wells is salty and bitter and we don't dare to drink it. While we were staying in the shade during the afternoon we are visited by this farmer and a few others. One brings us tea and this one a carpet. He doesn't understand how we can relax in our super-light comfy Helinox camping chairs, so we should lie down on his carpet. Later we visit him to get some drinking water and to use his toilet. Left to our tent a suonen (water channel) was filled while we were staying in the shade and we used it to wash ourselves. Also the farmer's dog finds it refreshing. 

The yearly poppy seed harvest is drying in the sun. Every now and then the farmer returns to turn the seeds around and eat some of them.

14th century (or earlier) brickstone bridge (Kiz bridge) across the Qezel Ozan River near Miyaneh. The bridge was restored in 1914 and destroyed in 1925 by communist separatists fleeing to Azerbijan.