capítulo 6 - inglés

                 Diary 6

   We quickly get used to the Bandari rythme again and, our heads clearer after the mystical trip on Hormuz island, we decide to buy two 125cc Iranian motorcycles to cross and get out of the country. The earliest the better since Manue has to go 5 days later.

   The situation is complicated, but not impossible. The day after, we do a wire transfer to a friend to get money (As we cannot use credit card in the country), and we head toward the street where they sell second hand motorcycles. Along with our dear friend Aziz, pretending to buy the motorcycles for him to get the Iranian price we go in the crowd. Tourists are not so common in these places and we don’t go unnoticed! We get caught in these groups of young men on the side of the road, around hundreds of motorbikes in all kind of conditions. Various discussions and a test run later, we are decided to follow one guy back to his garage.

   We assist in a good bargaining lesson from Aziz. And hours later, we all come to an agreement and we become the new owners of two traditional Iranian two wheels! On top we also get the necessary repairs for a long trip and a luggage rack. We have an appointment the next day in the morning to check the repairs and maybe already get them…

   Now we have the product of our adventure, it is time to make calculation. There is 1200 km to go to Teheran and the motorcycles can only go 80kms/h so we can do a max of 400kms per day so we can make it in 3 days. The reality is sad, the next day the motorcycles are not ready and we cannot all go crossing the deserts of the Persian kingdom!

   Two days pass and we are still fighting with the Inidian exporter of our Royal Enfields, and we decide to send them to Istanbul and get ready for leaving. It is time for Manue to get her train ticket to go to Teheran, to fly back to France, and for Guiller and Thomas, it is time to hit the road once the transfer is confirmed and the motorbikes paid.

   It is in Bandar Abbas that in the end of January, after 3 months spent together we say goodbye to each other, the heart heavy to have spent so much good time together, that we will soon be able to show in images. It is a new adventure for each of us: Deunpunto Alotro continues, and the train starts…

                                                                               

The morning of our departure the sun was shining bright. We harness for the first time the mountain of luggage on the motorcycles and we could not help the smile of mixed emotions, excitement and a kind of fear of what to expect from now on.

From the start, everyone try to (as always) put fear and doubt inside us with things like: The police will make your life difficult, the people in the north of Iran are not as nice as the people of the south of Iran, the north of Iran is one of the coldest place on earth (Hehe, tell this to an Eskimo!). Well has always, we let people talk…

   Now, let us tell you what happened:

We leave with our brand “new” Irano-chinese motorcycle CG125 around 12pm. Our first concern was about 20km away from Bandar Abbas at the first police roadblock. We read on a blog that a guy was left without the bike there after only 20km made. However, our situation did not allow it: We had to be in Yazd at about 900kms in the next 4 days to renew our visa about to expire.

We come to the roadblock and we only see two soldiers. We slow down and come to the line where the soldier indicates us to not stop and continue. An explosion of pleasure takes hold of us! At last the adventure on two wheels starts!

   In Iran the roads are beautiful, in very good conditions and with usually two lanes in each directions. The landscape reminds us of our beloved Island of Hormuz with vegetationless mountains of ocre and intense red color. The temperature is ideal and the wind blows with us.

We fully enjoy the driving, with our eyes wide open all the time so we miss none of this. We stop twice to refuel, and take these opportunities to buy food and dinner and our indispensable pipas that accompany our endless evening chats.

   The sun begins to give way to the moon, and we have to find a good place to set camp. It will be in a salt desert, that looked like a gigantic lake that had beautiful golden color instead of an intense blue. We enter into wilderness in order to pitch the tent at the foot of an island.

The temperatura is good and the soil not so hard, we had it all, all we needed.

   The sun rises early and so do we. The day before, we did 250kms and we set the goal of 400kms for the day. We cannot delay any more of our precious time, we only have three days to reach Yazd.

Vegtation is conspiciously absent all along the way. We drive the longest straight road ever seen and although we enjoy it seems like it will never end. The sun stays with us but the nights become colder the more north we go. And the problem is to find wood to make fire and warm us up in these desertic plains. Luckily we had the music to warm our hearts and good sleeping bags in which to spend the night.

For the first time in Iran, we spend the days by ourselves, we did not have ambassadors to show us their beloved land. But for the first time we taste freedom, nothing to push us, nothing to stop us and the land becomes our pitch.

   First incident with the police:

We were riding on a secondary road when a police car bypasses us and pull over on the side of the road and hand signal us to stop. Thomas, although the intensions were more than clear on their part, does not see the hand sticking out of the window and reduces gear to accelerate properly. Guiller seeing this, quickly decided that the best he could do was to also slow down and drive pass them smiling and waving playing dumb. It surprisingly worked, we probably left them feel stupid in their car, and we did not come to see them later along the way.

   Between Bandar Abbas and Yazd we come across our first mountain range and it is with a great pleasure that we enjoy the curves. There we see for the first time in a long time some snow, although the weather is still very pleasant. Another magic touch to the Persian land.

   So the days passed, one after the other, until we reach our first destination: Yazd. Place where we had already been and where we already had good friends. The reunion was amazing, if the Persian hospitality is impressive, the love and friendship do not have limit. The place we stayed at, the Hotel Marco Polo is managed by an Iranian that lived quite some time in India. We had to stay in this city during 4 days, waiting for our visa extension. We spend the days speaking in the restaurant with the newly found family composed of the workers of the hotel.

   So we did our first thousand kms in a blink of an eye. The feeling is incredible and the motorcycles are behaving incredibly well. From now on we have one full month riding in the north of Iran before crossing the Turkish border.

   In the next chapter we will cross the center and north side zigzagging and finding ourselves again with great the people that define the great Persian culture and authentic humanity that define the Iranian people.