Bicycle Touring Central IRAN - The Persian Heartlands
We are approaching Iran’s Central Plateau, the Persian heartland. In the capital Tehran we have to extend our visa. Later we’ll continue southeast, passing the holy city and hotspot of the Islamic revolution Qom, and reach the desert city of Kashan by the end of June. And yes, cycling in blazing temperatures is at the top of our bucket list, but first things first: We are making our way to Hamadan, which is the first city that at least we meet here in Iran with a Persian majority population. So this will be a change, because then obviously people will not speak Azari or Kurdish, they will speak Farsi. Third language for us in Iran, which as you know is a struggle for me. But first we need to get there.
I think it’s about sixty or seventy more kilometres behind these mountains. Let's hope we can make it today. Hello from Hamadan. Today Said is going to show us the best parts of his hometown city. Far in the distance you can see the tomb of Baba Taher, one of the first very important Persian poets, which we cannot visit today because of the special holiday. It is closed so we cannot go inside… It’s not a special holiday for us! What is it? It’s the anniversary of Khomeini’s death. It’s not a special day for us. Woman, life, freedom. But it’s a holiday, no? It’s a free day.
Yes, it’s a free day. Thank you! Have a nice day! So, that’s that! That’s that! We will not go into detail right now, so let’s have a look at this amazing pottery instead. What a brave woman. Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, Khomeini became Iran’s first supreme leader, the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he remained until his death. The subject of a pervasive cult of personality, Khomeini is legally considered "inviolable", with Iranians severely punished for insulting him regularly. Critics accuse him of human rights violations including ordering of lethal force against demonstrations, and the execution of thousands of political prisoners.
On paper over 99% of Iranians are Muslim. However, as apostasy from Islam can be subject to capital punishment most people don’t brag about losing faith in public. Imamzadeh Abdollah. (at the Emamzadeh Abdollah square) As in most religions, there are different branches of Islam, with over 90% of Iranian Muslims being Shia. This is only the second largest group globally, far outnumbered by Sunni Muslims.
The major distinction is that Shia believe that the Prophet explicitly designated his cousin and son-in-law, Hazrat Ali, as the first in a line of hereditary and infallible Imams from the Prophet’s family, to lead the community after him. Go, go… Thanks! *in Farsi Anyways, there are more things to see in Hamadan, however… Closed. Obviously… It seems like most Iranians celebrate Khomeini’s death one way or the other. Most sights and even shops are closed and … We are leaving Hamadan. As you can see there is a little bit of traffic here.
We’ll not be in the mountains far from most people this time. No! We’ll be on the main road towards Saveh or Tehran. Expect heavy traffic, a lot of trucks, bad air quality for sure, as we try to make distance. It’s very flat the next 200 to 400 kms, extremely flat, so we should make good progress on the kilometre count.
You might very well be asking yourself why on earth would the two of us take this horrendous highway, which is very loud, very dusty and there is a lot of unfiltered exhaust of cars and trucks that are by design over 50 years or older. We can rest assured that our life span will be reduced for at least a couple of hours by just breathing this in. Snack time! Very healthy today! Crisps, mango juice, which is probably also very natural and what did my sore eyes find… a non alcoholic premium lager beer. I see this for the first time in Iran. I think this will be really refreshing in this weather. They call it an islamic beer. I just lost my hat! Good morning! Yesterday evening we were caught by a storm with heavy wind and rain. We were lucky to find a shelter by the Iranian Red Crescent.
We had a nice evening with the guys here. Fortunately the night was without emergencies… Hopefully there is no emergency now. We are going to have breakfast and hit the road towards Saveh. Our mirrors got battered real good. Every time my bike falls over to the left side there is an additional crack. And Arev lost her mirror, so she got a new one.
Buy guys! Goodbye! *in Farsi Have a good time! Thank you! Bye bye! Hello! Hello! Hello! Doing well? Where are you from? Germany. Hello from Saveh. We blasted 200 kms in the last two days. We are so lucky to be hosted by Mahdi. On such a hot day the first thing we do is eat a local ice cream. This is a saffron ice cream with carrot juice. It’s the best dessert for summer when the temperatures reach to 40 to 45 degrees. Very nice!
And I love this! Cheers! It’s very interesting. It’s good. It’s hard to describe. Some intense carrotty sweetness, but also the freshness of the ice cream and the special touch of saffron and then some nutty crunchiness from the pistachio. Really good and very refreshing! This is The Grand Mosque Saveh, in Persian “Masjed-e-Jāmeh Sāveh”. It’s the third oldest mosque in Iran and was built in the 12th century.
It stands on the foundations of an even older mosque from the 10th century. It was extended and decorated until the 16th century and thus combines several architectural styles. A little oddity are the two iwans. They are facing south and west, as the north position is occupied by the remains of a Zoroastrian fire temple, from the pre-Islamic times. We finally are in Tehran to the bus station here at the Azadi Tower, which means the Tower of Freedom.
The massive tower, originally named Shahyad Tower, literally “Remembrance of the King”, was built by order of Iran’s last Shah, Reza Pahlavi. The now iconic place saw important protest gatherings during the Islamic Revolution 1979, and got renamed soon after. The main reason we came to Tehran at all was to extend our visas and now we are going to the Central Police Department for Immigration. Let’s see how that goes and how much time it will take. Going over the street is a little stressful in Tehran.
Watch out! It took us just 30 to 40 Minutes to apply for the visa extension. We needed to pay 50 Toman per person. And you need to pay with a credit card, so it’s good we have the Iranian gift card, as you cannot pay cash. Then they said we can come back on Sunday, but we asked if they can make it faster, so we can come back tomorrow around the same time and can get our visa extension.
Usually you can buy tickets in a place like here, but there is nobody there. They left the terminal. I guess, I’m supposed to do it myself, for that I would need to be able to read Farsi, which I can’t. Eventually our prayers are heard and we can buy some tickets. The Imamzadeh Saleh Mosque entombs the remains of Saleh, a son of the Twelver Shia Imam Musa Al-Kazim. Arev has a new style today. Turns out, it is also the burial place of two Iranian sisters, Masoumeh and Mahdieh, who died in 2020 when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 people on board.
We then also pay a visit to the Sa’dabad Complex, which was built as a residence by the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties. Today, most of the palaces and other buildings are open to the public, to showcase the decadent life of the former residents. Woohoo, we can be so happy, as we got our visa extensions. It’s on a paper like this, nothing in the passport. One more month in Iran, until the 19th of July. Early next morning we take a taxi back to Saveh, where we left our bicycles at Mahdi’s family’s place.
We can’t wait to get back on the saddle, as there is so much left to see in Iran! Our destination today is the city of Qom. It’s about 70 kms from Saveh. I think there is nothing in between, so we quickly want to buy some fresh bread for the road. It’s very hot! We hopefully reach Qom today, tomorrow Kashan and then onwards to Isfahan.
Temperature in the sun is scorching 46 degrees celsius. There is no shade. But what can you do, right?! Iran features very different landscapes and climates. However, the centre, east and southeast are bone-dry and very toasty. Wow, it’s so flat and empty! In all honesty I am a little bit concerned about the temperatures. It’s 40 degrees in the shade now.
It's the middle of June. The next few weeks it will just get hotter and hotter. Also we are making further to the south. I’m not sure how far we can make it. We are in the holy shrine of Lady Fatima Masumeh. It’s located in Qom. This is the second religious city in Iran after Mashhad. It’s a very important city for us. It’s a religious city because of this Holy Shrine, because the Islamic Revolution started here, and because there are a lot of seminary schools in this city. So it’s like the Vatican for the Catholics.
As you can see the mosque, we call it the Grand Mosque. It was built about sixty years ago. In those salons we say our prayer, but early mornings these salons are classrooms. Our mullahs, our maraji, come here to give their lectures. It’s free and open, so everyone can participate, but not everyone can understand, because it’s really advanced. In our tradition mosques are the centre, or the heart of the city. The woman tasked with giving us a tour also explains that the colours of the tiles, as well as the floral, foliate and biomorphic patterns are supposed to resemble how they imagine paradise.
We are here at the holy shrine of Lady Fatima Masumeh. She is buried right under the dome there. We can go in, right? It’s the men’s side, the lady’s side is from the other courtyard, but you cannot, because you are tourists. The tourists cannot go in? No. You will distract others from their worship. But I look like this. You look like this, but you will act strangely.
So, Lady Fatima Massumeh is a very famous figure among us. She is the daughter of our seventh Imam and sister of the eight Imam, who is buried in Mashhad, Imam Reza. She learnt all Islamic sciences from her father and brother and people came to her with their questions. That’s why she was famous for being “Aleme”- It means "very knowledgeable lady". She also had another title like “massumeh”. It means immaculate, the one who has never committed any kind of sin or mistake. So she was very pious and knowledgeable at the same time. That’s why she is really respected among us.
There are more than 300 descendants of the prophets buried here in Qom, almost all of them are men, but none of them has such a great memorial building. We are from God and we are going back to God. Thank you very much! Yeah, that’s it. Well, be that as it may.
We can’t deny that Iranian Islamic architecture is extraordinarily impressive. Our visit took a little longer, but it was very interesting and beautiful to see the shrine and everything they built around it. We still have one hour of ride to get out of this one million people city and try to find a place to camp. So, let’s go. It’s about 7am as we finally are leaving the city of Qom. Yesterday when we were just about leaving the city when it was already dark, we were stopped by people in a car and they invited us to their home. This is really very special about Iran, that we only spent five or six nights in our tent in almost six weeks in the country, because almost every day we get invited by someone. This is incredible.
It’s also sometimes… We kind of feel the need to be on our own for a bit, to get some videos edited and so on… Oh, sure! Morning! Hello! Doing well? Can we take a picture? Thank you! Yes we have, we have, thanks. It is extremely hot, but the landscape here is amazing. It’s so beautiful! Slowly we have the feeling we are getting closer to the desert. We also see more and more people covering their noses and mouths. Typical desert style. We officially are in an arid hot desert climate now.
However, Arev is of the opinion that it’s not a proper desert if there are no sand dunes. It’s about 5:30 pm. We both are pretty wasted after two long days and two short nights. We’re about 15 kms from Kashan, but right now we’re feeling so weak we don’t even know if we can make it to the city centre. We are at the end of our energy. My legs are just waiting for any excuse to cramp. Yes, we are very tired today. Today we are walking through the historical city centre with its many mosques and we will visit the bazaar too. I can really feel now that we officially are in the middle east.
We are entering the historical bazaar of Kashan. It’s basically going in a very long line. So from here to there. We’re going this way, because we know that there is a nice tea and an old bath house. Let’s see what we can find and dive in. In every bazaar in Iran there are a lot of jewellery and gold stores. Because it’s still a tradition in many families, once they marry, the family of the future husband has to give a lot of gold to the family of the bride.
So I assume this is why the demand for gold products is really high. This beautiful building used to be a caravanserai where in the last thousand years trade caravans would rest on the silk road from China all the way to Europe. And of course they would trade their goods and this is how the cities along the silk road came to this huge wealth, so that they could build buildings like this.
What a treat! We ordered tea and got this. One black tea and one with saffron. Additionally we got cookies, dates, “nabat” the persian sugar, normal sugar and cinnamon. Very beautiful. We keep making the same mistake and completely forget that there is a break between 2pm and 4pm, where everything closes down. It suddenly looks like a ghost city. Earlier Arev was already there on the roof but now all the doors are closed. It looks very interesting from the top. But it doesn’t seem that we can find a way up there right now, maybe we’ll try it later in the evening.
My friend! I understand, but I don’t want to eat more sugar. My friend! Mamnoon! (Thanks!) “Mamnoon” is Arabic, “merci” is in French, in Persian it is “Sepasgozaram”. “Sepasgozaram”... “Hello” in English is “dooroot” in Persian. Hello - Durood, Goodbye - Bedrood! Durood! Bedrood! Persian.
Is she your friend? No, my wife! Wife! Very nice! So this nice gentleman will show us the roof of Kashan, but first we go down. So at the end of the day we made it to the roof! Nice! Let’s see what we can see from the top. This is amazing. We are on the roof of the Bazaar. All the holes here...this is where the hot air can go out. Oh, now I understand! So this was a zoroastrian fire place of worship and today there is a mosque.
Zoroastrianism is very nice! We are back. Kashan. Bazaar. Try number two. Now everything is open. A lot of people are shopping and going about their daily routines. We try to change some money. A lot of the time we did it in the jewellery shops. Let’s find out how we do it today in Kashan.
Nope! He does not change money. Well, I don’t know how it works in this city really. In other cities we’ve been told the jewellery and gold traders are the best bet for exchanging money. But right now they are nor really willing, also they are giving a really bad rate for the Euro. So we keep trying!
It’s not a good rate! Welcome to Iran! Thank you! I understand! So the rate here in Kashan is really bad for some reason. They want to give only 51000 Toman per Euro, while online it says 54. This is a discrepancy of 3 which is the worst rate we’ve changed money in Iran. So I don’t know what’s going on. But this guy was really good at making his point. He showed all his Euro and Dollar bills and said “if you want Euro or Dollar I can give you a better rate”. I’m counting money. We are millionaires. We are multimillionaires. So this is ten… So I assume this is one million? One million.
This is for real the most amount of paper money I’ve ever had. Okey-dokey. Thank you so much. Finally we have a bag of money which is 100€.
And now we’ll go to the hostel and rest a little bit. Tomorrow we will start cycling towards Isfahan. There is nothing around here. Not one tree. F*** nothing! I misjudged completely while looking at the map.
We're low on water. Dang it! So nice! He just stopped and gave us these bottles. What a legend! I’m not feeling so well today. It’s not even that hot. I mean, it’s hot… but I don’t know. I have a headache. My stomach feels strange. Something is wrong. No energy.
My butt hurts too because my saddle is shit. Oh my God. And the next gas station is like 16 kms from here. Other than that it’s just rocks. Oh man, please tell me there is no climb today.
Mathias is super exhausted. We just made it to this gas station restaurant. He is lying. I don’t know if we will be able to continue from here. I don’t know what will happen. Ok, that explains everything. 37.8 degrees celsius. So I guess it’s not a good idea to cycle in this condition. I don’t know. I guess we need a place where he can rest.
We decided to hitchhike to Isfahan, if we can. Because we have a friend there, she can host us and Mathias can relax there for some days. Thank you very much! It was nice to meet you! Unfortunately we hitchhiked to the wrong end of the city. Now we are 37 kms away from our destination.
So we had to figure out how to order a Nissan Abi via the “snap” app, which was not so easy because it was all in Farsi. But now there should be one coming. A massive thanks to our amazing contributors on buymeacoffee.com who have been supporting us for over a year now! Producing this kind of long format travel documentary takes ridiculous amounts of time, effort, money, and of course coffee! We love taking you with us, and every single contribution helps us to get another episode out. Via buymeacoffee.com/aworldbiketour you can top up our budget for more coffee, desperately needed equipment, food and accommodation supporting our independently produced niche content. Since recently you can even send all your money to paypal.me/amazingworldbiketour
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2024-07-20 22:55
