When I woke up I sighed, because I knew I had to go back to the noise and the confusion of the highway: I had studied the map the night before, and I had determined that there were a couple of waterways that I had to cross before I got back on the country road: […]
Gilan was like Mazandaran – hot, green, and full of rice paddies: I had decided to take a path through the villages, so I was a bit worried about the rivers that came out of the mountains and crossed my path (or rather: I crossed theirs). But an early bridge seemed to be reason for […]
Remember the ecolodge I had stayed in a few months earlier in Radkan? I had liked it so much that ever since then I had periodically punched “ecolodge” into my googlemaps, hoping that another one would appear on my way. This one was called Gileboom, and it turned out to be a lovely little house […]
The heat wasn’t the problem. The heat combined with the humidity was. It felt like a steam bath. Just a few minutes after I left the hotel I was drenched in sweat. The streets of Ramsar were empty: As you can see on the map, I tried to avoid the coastal highway as much as […]
I had walked a bit too much the day before: up to the old hotel and around it a few times and then to a restaurant and back through the city to the place where I was staying. All in all about 15km give or take. So today I stayed in, edited my videos and […]
Ramsar was full of big fat villas: I was told that they were from pre-revolutionary times, and that well-connected people from Tehran lived in them today. And also Arabs. In Iran, the spectre of the rich Arab who came to buy stuff and live the high life was never very far. Though personally I had […]
Woke up and looked at the Caspian Sea: It was angry. There were signs like this all along these parts of the shore: I wondered if this was because the water was polluted or because the currents were stronger here. It didn’t matter. I had come to walk, not to swim. These two gentlemen stopped […]
I was happy when I looked outside and saw clouds. Maybe walking would be more tolerable this way? Well, it was. Kind of. While the clouds did provide some cover from the sun, the overall humidity meant that everything was still hot and sticky anyway. I walked in short intervals and rested a lot: Sometimes, […]
I had arrived at the hotel at one thirty the night before, and I had slept at three. So I felt a bit groggy when I stepped out into the sunshine at about ten in the morning and said hello to this flower: “You look like shit”, the flower said. “I know”, I answered, “you […]