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The Iran Awards: the highs and lows

Iran is easily one of my favorite countries I have ever traveled in. Surprisingly, it is also one of the easiest countries I have traveled in, although this is perhaps difficult to compare with non-pedal-powered forms of travelling. Mostly due to the hospitality and generosity of the Iranian people, but also because of the beautiful stunning and varied landscapes, ancient historical sights, delicious food. So, to sum it all up without going into lengthy detailed descriptions:…

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Riding home

How to take the train from Tabriz to Turkey with a bicycle

Sorry guys, this is not a very exciting post full of wild adventures from the road but a rather boring, informative one. It is also devoid of pictures as taking photos of infrastructure, including the railways, in Iran is forbidden. This is a country where you don`t accidentally want to be mistaken for a spy so for once I stuck to the rules… Rather than plowing through snowy mountain passes and freezing to death (well…)…

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Camping in Iran: from mudpits to five-star cityparks

One of the most daunting (well, for me anyway) prospects of the trip was the amount of (wild) camping we were going to do. Would we get discovered? Would we get harassed, robbed, or worse? Would we encounter dangerous wildlife? And what about staying clean? Like most worries in life, these turned out to be completely unjustified. Yes, we would get discovered – and consequently asked to get our picture taken. Yes, we would get…

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Food of Iran

Rather than updating you with endless day-to-day accounts of our adventures in Iran (which would get quite boring) I will write a post about the different aspects of traveling in Iran on a bicycle. As perpetually hungry cyclists, the most important aspect is, not surprisingly, food. Persian Food Philosophy The first time we were invited to an Iranian home for dinner the conversation was, naturally, about food. We learned that Iranians have a rather unique…

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Shiraz – Yasuj: Ruins, the House of God, and Mountains.

After almost one week spend in the lovely city of Shiraz to give Antonio’s knee a rest we hit the road again, this time Northwards towards the smaller town of Marv Dasht, situated next to the ancient ruins of Persepolis, which was our real destination. The road was flat, smooth and mostly with a wide shoulder. After a 2 hour climb to get out of Shiraz it all went downhill from there – literally, luckily,…

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Iran Part 1 – Bandar Abbas – Shiraz

Our trip started great. A day before our scheduled departure we got a phonecall from the ferry company saying that the ferry we booked for got cancelled due to bad weather but that we could either 1) wait one week and catch the next one from Dubai to Bandar Lengeh or 2) Take one today from Sjarjah to Bandar Abbas. Not wanting to spend another week in Dubai we opted for the same day departure,…

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Diving Riding home

Farewell Dibba

After a few weeks of work – already with one half of my brain on the trip while the other half was still trying really hard to focus on work, which didn’t really go well judging by the number of lost/misplaced/disappeared items – we finally managed to leave Dibba. Which turned out to be easier said than done. We planned to go out with a bang, with an old friend visiting from overseas, a planned…

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Riding home

Give me a break – A new adventure!

Like many of  you, or I guess most people, I need a break. Although I have one of the best jobs I can imagine, it’s still a job and a girl needs to travel, right? Even if my job happens to be in some of the more beautiful/interesting/remote/fascinating environments in the world, it’s still a job. (Which, the girl that had been diving with us for two weeks and was now waiting for the same flight that…

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Diving

Would you like some ants in your curry, ma’am?

I just picked up a piece of popcorn that fell on the bed last night and ate it.This probably means that I’m a disgusting pig but it also got me thinking about all the other disgusting food incidents that happened the last few years while living abroad. We used to get two meals a day in the divecentre I worked for, brought over from the local village. they were packs of rice and fish or chicken…

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