Iran, I never believe in first impressions but here are some.

Day 38 Continued - Tabriz, Iran

So here I was crossing into the unknown. When in London I had told people I was traveling to Iran I had received a few blank looks, some worried sentiments and some serious concerns. So many people seem to have so much to say about this country but so few have visited it, so I was excited to find out what the real picture is.

I have to say first off the border wasn't too scary... in fact the border guards at Stanstead are more scary looking. There was quite a lot of paperwork and the enjoyed the various get ups of the staff manning the operation. The main guy I was dealing with wore a snappy shiny black suit and white shirt, he looked pretty fly. The man in charge wore a jumper that I think might have been from C&As back catalogue. Then there was the man who did the computer inputting, I can't really remember what he looked like because my distinct memory of him was the comedy backhand he received (it was straight out of the movies) from a man who I assume wanted to get through the border quickly with no trouble. I didn't need to grease wheels thankfully and I was through in a record time of an hour. I was in!

As I drove down and out of the border area, I got my first glimpse of the chaos I was letting myself in for. Exiting the gates, I was confronted by a wall of pirouetting cars each snaking through the tangle of vehicles entering and exiting. Each seemed to have a magical inch thick force field that prevented any contact. Obviously the illusion of the force field was soon shattered but I will come to that later.

I stopped for fuel, Iran's petrol stations are not as numerous as Europe and I planned to make a habit of filling up whenever I could particularly as the bike only has a range of 100 miles. The fuel attendant asked for 20,000 Rials. Now I knew the fuel was cheap but that was ridiculous. About one pound to fill the tank!

Tank full and everything in order I was ready to hit the highway. I headed for Tabriz 300km, I would take about 3 1/2 hours. Thankfully the highways seemed to be pretty empty and it felt good to be making progress. As I moved along about 100km per hour, every now and then an Iranian car packed full with 5 passengers would get as close to my back tyre as possible and then creep up alongside me so I could almost change gear for the driver and everyone inside would stare, wave and, or smile. At first I almost fell off the road, not used to quite such a cozy relationship with my highway sharing, car driving friends. Within 10 minutes this was to be topped by my not so friendly, highway sharing lorry drivers. On a straight section of road, about 300 meters in front of me a lorry was coming towards me in the opposite lane as is to be expected, however slightly more disconcerting was the lorry behind that despite my presence in the middle of my side of the road decided to pull out and over take his fellow lorry driver. This created a problem for me either I would become mince meat or I needed an exit strategy. The later seemed the best bet, thankfully those thoughtful Iranian asphalt layers had left a thin ribbon of tarmac just under a meter wide on the edge of the road, this is usually populated by road kill, of which sadly I have seen much and we are not talking bunny rabbits here, think more domestic animals large and small, anyway at that moment not wanting to join them and become I permanent inhabitant of the highway fringe cemetery, I yanked the bike into the safe zone as two large squealing, black smoke belching trucks roared past. OK so that's how its done in Iran. Size is king and I am at the bottom of the food chain!

Having just about got to grips with the highway after 300 km, the road started to become busy again I was entering Tabriz. Now the chaos of leaving the border was one thing but this was a completely different matter. I can't really explain how the traffic management works here, and indeed it is arguable weather it does. As I entered the city I saw my first victim of a failed 1 inch force field. He had managed to beach his car two wheels in the air and two wheels disappearing beneath street level.

I can explain this, in Iran the drains are not like drains else where, from childhood you might have some memories of donning wellington boots and jumping in the puddles and stepping in and out of the stream in the gutter of your street.

Well in Iran if you allowed your child to do that, they would need a white water raft with trained expert at the helm. The gutters are about 60cm wide and 50cm deep, more of a canal than a gutter. Anyway so this unfortunate chap must have made the mistake of misjudging his positioning in the safe zone and slipped off the edge. As is the way in Iran a crowd seemed to have gathered around and some sort of rescue effort was in full swing.

I headed on, they didn't need another chef. Now driving cities usually doesn't phase me and indeed some people say if you can drive in London or perhaps more particularly Hackney you can drive anywhere. Now that is an out right lie. To drive in Tabriz, not knowing where you are going is perhaps the most challenging and life threatening activity I have ever taken part in. Problem one is every other driver on the road, you have absolutely no way to predict what they will do, problem two most of the signs are in Farsi, with an occasional one in Latin script. So you have to learn a technique of keeping one eye on everyone else on the road and one eye trying to find the way. After asking several confused looking locals I made it to the center and a guesthouse, it was miracle.

The guesthouse was shelter, privacy and refuge from the street. It looked like the sheets complete with cigarette burns and black hairs may not have been washed in recent years and I can be sure that the toilet hadn't by aroma alone but at four pounds a night I couldn't complain.

Having recovered from the road and changed out of my riding gear I decided to wander the streets. It wasn't long before someone said hello, asked me where I was from, where I was going, how long I had been in Iran etc, etc. I think perhaps these are set questions taught at school and I have found this across Turkey and now in Iran. At first it is fun given so much attention but after the sixth child, you just want to clip them round the ear and tell them to bugger off!

Then out of the blue I heard an American ascent. I had not been expecting that. A short man with balding grey hair pushing a bike, speaking very clear American English said 'Hello'. I was quite surprised and stopped. We struck up a conversation. The man's name was Ray, he an Iranian who had lived in Chicago working for IBM for thirty odd years he had been quite successful before for one reason or another he had been forced to return to Iran and had been left with nothing. In Iran he had been party to some anti establishment activity and had been given a little bit of a battering in return. He had also visited Iraq and ended up in a Kurdish jail. I had to respect him for his balls, he seemed harmless and he had certainly had an interesting life. We chatted for a while, he introduced me to a friend of his who was a very good animator. Later that evening I met two very nice Kiwi travellers. Tristin was living in London but now travelling back to New Zealand for a wedding and his friend Rachel was also returning to her native New Zealand for the first time in ten years.

I met the Kiwi's whilst having pizza, so Iranian! However, a rather remarkable thing happened. A young Iranian girl came up to our table and said hello and welcome to Iran. Now considering under Muslim law it is illegal for a man to touch a women he is not either related to or married to and it is considered rude to look a women in the eyes if you are not acquainted with them, this seemed pretty liberal of the girl. She was also pretty casually dressed. Rather than wearing the full black with the shawl wrapped around the face, she wore tight trouser, a shortish skirt and a jumper and a head scarf pulled back so you could see her fringe and it was high at the back so you could see her pony tail. She asked about our eating customs of which we told her about fish and chips in newspaper, which she seemed to like. She thanked us for our time and again welcomed us to Iran and left, for us it felt like we had just witnessed girl power Iranian style.

Day 39 - Tabriz, Iran

The next day I met Ray in the morning, we went and I changed money at the bank which was almost as bureaucratic as getting through the border, following this I went to check on the Visa situation, apparently I was fine as I had entered whilst the visa was valid. I now had 30 days to cross the country.

Next we went to the Bazaar, which was everything you might expect from a middle east market. Spices, sweets, skinned sheep's heads, perfumes and carpets. The carpets I found very interesting. Since I had entered Iran there were a couple of things I was still trying to get my head round. Firstly the lack of alcohol, which I now understand to be elevated by some dodgy moonshine that is home brewed by some of the more liberal population. Now the second item was pornography. Surely this has existed since the dawn of time, weather it be a cave mans scratchings into his rock walls or the stuff that had made Hugh Hefner the wealthy man he is today. My answer laid in the carpet sellers of the Bazaar. As we went in and out of the shops it started to register that a great deal of the carpets had western women on showing OH NO there hair! Not only this but occasionally they would just be in a tightly clinging nightie. Now I am not sure if this filth is legal but I certainly will be complaining to the Mullahs about the portrayal of western women in there country.

After the excitement of the Bazaar we headed for the blue mosque. The mosque had collapsed in the 1700s and only recently been re-erected. Only a few of the blue tiles remained but it was pretty cool. Round the back though even better, was a burial ground from 3000 BC. A walkway passed over the top and you could see down into the graves, skeletons in tact.

Later that day we had another revelation, this time bought to us (The Kiwi's and myself) by a local engineer who had wanted to marry Rachel I suspect, despite the fact he had a wife and a young daughter. He basically explained that area we were in wasn't Iran at all but Azerbaijan. Basically, following some more market research it turns out that the population of northern Iran are Turks not Arabs and speak Turk. Many dream of being reunited with Azerbaijan or certainly becoming autonomous. Another political minefield, right next to Kurdistan.

Day 40 - Tabriz, Iran

I headed for Kandovan on a day trip, it was very nice, pretty similar to Goreme but with out the tourists and a little more rustic and smelling on donkey turd.

On the way back i got hopelessly lost coming back into Tabriz. Finally i found the park i wished to visit. A policeman asked me for a bribe to look after the bike which I promptly refused to give and found a spot round the corner and crossed my fingers it would be alright. It was. In fact, touch wood, I think Iran is an incredibly safe country, bar the traffic.