world, please

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Much to my own surprise, I decided to leave Rasht this morning. After just one day. I had wanted to stay a bit and explore the city, but then my plans had changed, and so I got out the Caboose from her shelter, loaded her up, and left. After all, I could always come back later. Or so I thought.

I left Rasht on a cloudy day:

Luckily, I found a little country road that ran almost parallel to the highway, so I walked in peace most of the time:

The fields were green, the air was fresh, and I felt perfectly happy:

And then I saw this:

“WORLD… PLESE” it said there, on a simple brick wall facing the fields: “WORLD, PLEASE HELP US FROM ISLAMIC REPULIC”

There were some white blots on the wall. Whoever had written the graffito had added “DOWN WITH KHAMENEI”, but someone else had decided that the name of the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei should not be mentioned. So they had whitened it out.

I stood there, in the Iranian countryside, wondering about the story behind all of this.

Then I turned around a corner, and it was gone, left behind me like so many other things on The Longest Way:

Two of my friends from Lahijan came in a car and gave me these:

You remember the Mickey Mouse fire crackers I had bought in Taraz in Kazakhstan almost two years earlier? The ones that I had used on a foggy night on the border of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to fend off (imaginary) jackals?

I had lost them in the border check from Uzbekistan to Turkmenistan almost a year before. And now I had new Mickey Mouse fire crackers, yay!

It was an easy walk on the gravel road through the fields and the villages:

When I was about to reach Khomam, however, I had to go back to the highway:

There was a kebab stand that looked too good to pass by:

So I sat down for a meal:

And before I knew it, I had a place to sleep.

Daily video:

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No 360 degree video today, sorry.