Tag Archives: Iran 🇮🇷

Having gone to sleep at two, I somehow woke up at five thirty. I just lay there for a while. Then I got up, brushed my teeth, packed my stuff, and left: One of the dudes from the night before came along on his motorcycle and said goodbye: And then I was alone on the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

At about ten in the morning I stepped out of the door and into the North. In Iran, the Caspian Sea Coast was called “the North”, and people in Tehran had warned me about it. It wasn’t just hot there in the North, they had said, it was also humid as hell. But I, having […]

Again, the highway: One thing that is remarkable about the coastal areas here is that women are apparently allowed to ride bicycles by themselves: From what I understand this is forbidden in most other parts of the country, where women must always have a male companion present when they’re riding a bike. Why, though? Either […]

Walking along the highway, and never being able to leave it, and having the earplugs block everything out and making the world sound as if I was underwater, had left me with a strange sense of detachment. It felt as though I was driving a car through this part of Iran, only very very slow. […]

Stayed in another motel. It had a very quiet, empty, almost post-Soviet atmosphere to it: I liked it. There was a photo at the reception desk that showed a group of French people: Were they famous? I didn’t know. What followed was another day on the highway. Again there were people selling clothes: And again […]

Leaving Fereydunkenar meant trading the beach for the road. It meant four days of fast walking, most of it done exclusively on a highway. But one thing it also meant was a chance to take my two new stools out for a walk: And they turned out to be awesome. I tried to avoid the […]