Category: Riding home

If there is one thing we learned from cycling along Turkey’s Mediterranean coast is that hard work is rewarded. With hard work I mean climbing a accumulated ascent of several Everest equivalents (a measurement I just made up but I think should be a thing). With reward I mean beautiful scenery, delicious food, hospitable people and just plain fun despite our protesting legs. We joined an international Mediterranean cleanup event (Let’s do it Mediterranean!) near Mersin, watched…

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Fascinating what a trip like this does to your personal standards of hygiene. We (I) have turned into completely disgusting human beings. We regularly go without shower for five days in a row while cycling several hours a day. I am happy to wash my face & pits in the sink of a petrol station. Roadside peeing is a daily event. And the question “Does a cyclist shit in the woods?” needn’t even be asked.…

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Flashback to Iran. Everyone is great. The most hospitable people I have met in my life. Unexpected invitations to people`s homes and peeks into their family lives are sometimes so overwhelming that we are at a loss for words. But of course there is the one idiotic exception that leaves us speechless in a slightly different way. “My son is a big fan of Hitler”, said our couchsufing host. Antonio and I looked uncomfortably at…

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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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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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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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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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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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