20 years ago today – Day 272

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Saturday, November 30th – Esfahan to Zahedan - 14,559 km

I have a breakfast of yogurt and a banana as soon as the café opens. The busboy avoids eye contact with me completely, but as I ride my bike away I see him watching me from a second floor window. He is obviously talking about me to another busboy who staring at me trying to process what he has been told. I don’t know what the first busboy is saying about me, but I am fairly sure he is not telling anything about what he did. It feels like the right time to be leaving the city. I shouldn’t take anymore chances like last night.

I hurry to the bus station and arrive fifteen minutes before departure. The bus has just started to load. The driver slides my bike in the last of the rear compartments before packing other suitcases and boxes around it so it cannot move. It doesn’t matter if it is buried as Zahedan is the last stop when everything left will be unloaded. I take the seat behind the driver so I can see out both the front and side windows. For most of the trip I am sitting alone with no one beside me although the bus is mostly full.

Like in Turkey, the highways in Iran are mostly used by buses, trucks, government and military vehicles as most people here cannot afford a car. The grey brown, barren landscapes and low rocky hills slide by my window hour after hour. It all looks so empty, devoid of life and civilization even though modern Iran has been the central hub of many great empires over the past three thousand years. We town in several towns and the bigger cities of Yazd and Kerman, but we see nothing over them but the highways in and out of each depot and the frequent exchange of passengers. Shortly after Kerman it grows dark with four more hours to go.

There are military checkpoints along the highways. They are like holiday road blocks for drunk drivers in North America, but here people are don’t drink. They and their vehicles are being pulled frisked for minor infractions, like not having a photography of the Ayatollah on the dashboard, and such. Any reason to hold someone overnight in jail, I suppose, so they can practice their cattle prods on them. At each stop our bus is held up for an additional five minutes while everyone working at the stop has a chance to peruse my passport, not because there is anything suspicious about it, but because no one has ever seen a Canadian passport before. They seem mildly apologetic, almost ready to ask for my permission before showing it around.

I am beginning to understand how modest and humble Iranians are by nature. They are very considerate, courteous, and shy too. Men never bare more than their forearms and heads in public and women only their hands and faces. When the driver stops at one point to take a piss, not only does he walk a couple minutes away from the bus and behind a sand dune out of sight, but he does it kneeling. I see him brushing the sand off his knees before he re-enters the bus. If I had witnessed this in Toronto, I would know he was not alone behind he dune, but here it’s out of the question.

I struggle to stay awake after it grows dark. There is only one small town deserving of a stop in the desert between Kerman and Zahedan and the time drags horribly. I am fortunate that my bowels have behaved the whole trip, outside of a few farts when no one was beside me, but the boredom made the trip a chore. I lean the side of my head on the window so that the vibrations would keep me awake but after half an hour I have a kink in my neck and a bruise on my head.

We roll into Zahedan around 9 pm. Zahedan, which is supposed to have half a million residents, is a sprawling low rise town with businesses set back far from a wide main street. It has no street lights. The only light comes from lit rooms in buildings we pass and the flash of approaching head lights. Divers here leave their headlights off except to flash them at on-coming cars that they see approaching – dark shapes on a dark road that occasionally catch the reflections of lights from the buildings.

I feel it is too dangerous not being able to see approaching cars or holes and debris in the road, so I push my loaded bike when there are not enough lights around. My own feeble bike light only lights the ground two metres in front of me, which is suitable only for walking speed. I walk a full kilometre along the main drag before finding a two-floor hotel in the less-than-obvious city centre. I am tired and hungry, and not willing to go out again and the air is icy and threatening to freeze. For dinner, I make do with an incongruous mixture of leftovers and snack foods I have been carrying in my bags.

I have almost made it to the border of Pakistan, but before I can go on I have to find Coen and Vincent. I am quite anxious about finding them. I will not be able to find a Western bank until we reach Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, the south-west province of Pakistan, and that is still at least a week away, and I will only be able to access the money with their help, through their banks, until my charge card and Visa card are replaced. I am so screwed if they have moved on without me.


PHOTO 1: dusk from the bus window

20 years ago today – Day 271

Friday, November 29th – Esfahan

This morning in the cafeteria, the young busboy smiles at me again, this time like we are friends who have an established relationship even though we have never met. I put my hand of his shoulder briefly as I leave and he clearly likes it.

I have a series of chores to do this morning, and things to see before I go, this being my last day in town before I move onto Zahedan. I visit a travel agency to ask about fares to Zahedan. I am able to get a bus tomorrow but I would have to wait until Tuesday to get a flight so that is out of the question. The bus trip, for 1200 km, costs only 7000 rials.

The official exchange rate in the national bank is 65 rials per American dollar. Other banks exchange 200 rials per dollar, but on the street I am able to exchange a dollar for 1300 rials on the black market. It feels unsafe to make an illegal exchange but Roger helped me pull off such an exchange on the Khaju Bridge yesterday. Visitors are required to show a receipt that they have purchased 2000 rials at the official bank rate (about US$30) when they leave the country. Coen exchanged that much for me in Tehran when I was sick and I have the receipt, but the cash itself was stolen with the rest of the contents of my money belt five days ago. At 1300 rials to the dollar, my bus ticket to Zahedan costs just a bit more than $5, but at the official rate that would have been $108, which is about $25 more than what I have left.

With my ticket for ticket in hand for 7:30 am tomorrow, I walk to the Nagsh-e Johan Square and to the covered Grand Bazaar that fronts onto the north end of the square. The bazaar is immense, and not that different from the one in Istanbul, so I don’t go deeply into it. I am only here to buy a new money belt, although I don’t have much to put into it.

I ride my bike up the cycling path along on the median on Charbagh Avenue to its end, and then another three kilometres to visit the Menar Jonban, the mosque of the shaking minarets, as it is often referred to. My time is limited so I cannot spend long here. It is not as large or architecturally interesting as the big mosques on Nagsh-e Johan Square and it costs 1000 rials to visit, more than I want to waste at this time. I ask a Swiss couple as they are leaving if it was worth the visit. They say it’s ‘nice’, unenthusiastically. The minarets are 10 metre high add-ons that sway in an earthquake. The Swiss say a staff member climbs into one minaret every half-hour and gets it swaying to cause the other to sway. They say you can feel the vibration throughout the church, but that the church itself is actually a mausoleum and not too interesting.

Ahmed’s parents have a home about a kilometre away so I walk with him. They greet me in the foyer of their home where I remove my shoes. I make the embarrassing gaffe of offering my handshake to both of them instead of just his father. His mother looks at my hand in a way that says ‘I see it but cannot touch it’ without saying anything. I mumble an apology but they brush it off without another thought.

They invite me into their living room and offer a snack of fruit and pistachio nuts as we talk. Both his parents have been to the US and speak fluent English. They are respectful of their customs and mine. I am the ignorant one here, only knowing a handful of words in Farsi. They ask me what the differences are between Canadians and Americans and how I like Iran. I like both his parents and they seem to like me, though Iranians are as rich in formal graces as they are in oil. I would probably never know it if they detested me.

The only shocked and disapproving reaction they have is when Ahmed, in his proud enthusiasm for his home town, boasts that eight of the twenty-four Iraqi fighter jets that defected to Iran three years ago, at the end of the Iraq-Iran War, are being hidden in Zahedan. “Ahmed! That is NOT something you should tell a foreigner! Do you want to have us throw in jail?”. “I will never mention a word, I promise,” I say humbly, and that seems to reassure them.

Our visit lasts an hour. I bid farewell to Ahmed and promise to write to him from India. I have been faithful to all my promises to write, unlike most of my friends. I ride down to the river and back to the tea room on the Khaju Bridge – this place has become my preferred hangout in the city, much like Mann-o-Meter was my favourite place in Berlin. I don’t think I ever consciously made that choice but I just keep coming back to here.

Roger is here again, this time by himself, and he’s still on top of the world. Last night, when he ran back to the tea house to reclaim his forgotten movie camera, he found the doors locked. He fretted about it all night and scarcely slept. When the tea house finally opened, he learned that they had found and protected his movie camera. It was in perfect condition. He has wisely left it in his hotel room tonight, I catch myself thinking. Then I remember all that was stolen from my hotel room and I bite my tongue.

Roger came here to make a movie about Iran. He doesn’t have a script in mind or even what he wants in the content, but he is taking clips of Iranian life, customs, architecture and people and he hopes the story will speak to him through the experiences he has. He says most people have prejudiced points of view about places they have never visited. When he visited here the first time a year ago, he was shocked at how different it was to what he had believed before, so he felt it would be best not to have a script. He plans to stay here two months if he can keep renewing his visitor visa that long.

He highly recommends that I visit Mashhad, a city in the north-east corner of the country near the point where Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan meet, and Shiraz to the south of here, but I am afraid Zahedan will be the last Iranian city I will see. From there, it’s a day’s ride to Pakistan. A week from now Vincent, Coen and I will be there.

We decide to go for a dinner out together, at a cheap, local eatery that serves the Iranian national dish, the chelo kabab. It is to Iranians what the hamburger is to Americans or maple syrup is to Canadians, Roger teaches me. The chelo kebab is a plate of unseasoned, boiled white rice topped with an unseasoned skewer of broiled lamb. Some of the higher end places will even add a dollop of butter to the top of the rice. Roger says a glorious crescent of fine cuisine runs half way around the world from France, Italy, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey all the way to the Indian sub-continent, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Japan, but it strangely seems to hop right over Iran.

I would not be a good judge of Iranian food, since I haven’t tried it. This is my first solid meal since I arrived in the country. To help the chelo kebab go down, I have a soothing bowl of plain yogurt (Gawd’s food), and for dessert, Iranians have a special ice cream treat. Their ice cream contains flakes of frozen clotted cream and is delicately flavoured with saffron and rose water. It is sandwiched between two thin, crispy wafers that appear to be a cross between a Belgian waffle and a ping pong paddle. It is to die for, especially when you haven’t had solid food for almost a week.

Roger and I part ways on the bridge with an awkward, homophobic hug and a handshake, which comes strangely after the hug instead of before it. I push my bike back to my hotel, savouring the evening slowly and trying not to exert myself too much. My stomach gurgles horribly my digestive enzymes have a fight-to-the-death feeding frenzy over the meal I have just eaten.

The hotel is dead quiet when I come in. I pass the busboy coming down the stairs, I presume on his way out. We smile at each other openly and glance back a couple times after we pass to catch each other smiling back. My room smells musty as I open the door. I leave it open a couple centimetres and open my window a crack to let a breeze pass through. I lie on my back on the bed and massage my digestive nerve runs down my abdomen from my navel to settle my bowels, a trick I learned eight years ago when I was getting holistic treatments for digestive problems.

I lie there for several minutes, massaging gently, until I realize that someone is watching me through the crack in the door. It is the busboy, who has returned to seek me out. I guess, with my half my hands dipping below the belt, he thinks I am massaging something else. He is certainly massaging his ‘something else’, I see. In a few heartbeats my own cock is stretching to have a look. I open my pants to show it to him and he is spellbound.

After a couple more minutes, I stand up, my cock still erect, and slowly move over to the door. At first he backs away, but I beckon to him and gesture for him to hold it. It takes a few coaxes, but he finally grips it, softly at first and then firmly, stroking it softly like a magical and sacred object. He pulls his hand away, plays a bit with my precum on his fingertips, and then, without warning, disappears around the corner in a bathroom.

I wait a couple minutes for him to return before I walk over to see if he is still in the bathroom. The shower is running and the door is locked. I peek through the keyhole and see him showering without a curtain and pounding his meat feverishly. He either hears me touch the handle or sees a change in the light coming through the keyhole, because he leaves the shower to cover the keyhole with a cloth. I guess he’s not an much of an exhibitionist as I am. I return to my room and close the door. At least my digestion is feeling better.


PHOTO 1: artisan making a patterned tablecloth in the market
PHOTO 2: bike path on Charbagh Ave

20 years ago today – Day 270

Thursday, November 28th – Esfahan - 14,548 km

I have a good night’s sleep in my new room and my stomach is feeling better. I am still having some cramps and mild shooting pains from time to time, even with the gentleness of the yogurt, but I consider them to be adjustment signs as my small intestine gets used to food coming into it again. I am hungry, which is a good sign. I am afraid though, that I haven’t been this light since I was 20.

I have breakfast of yogurt and tea again, this time in the hotel restaurant. The young busboy who flirted with me last night is working today and just as friendly. I have pretty much concluded that he speaks no English. He has lots of bashfully eye contact with me this morning.

I return to the tea house on the Khaju Bridge but the Iranian students from yesterday are not there. In fact, it is quite empty and I am not thirsty so I continue to the south shore. I walk further south today, to see the renowned Armenian Church near the university. The Armenians comprise a sizable percentage of the city’s population. They settled here as refugees after a war with the Ottomans in the early 1600s. They built the Vank Cathedral shortly after they arrived. It is quite a stunning church, ornately decorated inside.


I return to the bridge and the tea shop in the afternoon. I meet a Brit named Roger there, and a German named Heinz with his girlfriend Zara. They have been staying at a guest house south of the bridge and have been here longer than I have. Roger is making a film about the city. He relates to me all the problems he has been having as officials here are extremely suspicious of anyone filming. They have guilty consciences, I explain, which leads to paranoia. The Iranian students show up again too. Ahmed wants to introduce me to his family tomorrow, before I leave the city. I agree to meet him here tomorrow at two.

Roger and the German couple go to a local, inexpensive diner with me for dinner. I have only yogurt and soup, which my stomach seems to be handling. It is already dark by the time we leave. We chat some more outside before we part, until Roger suddenly realizes that he left his camera in the tea house. The three of them hurry back to see if it is still there or has been turned in, leaving me on my own.

I have decided I will be able to leave Esfahan by Saturday. Tomorrow I can check out the costs of a bus or a flight to Zahedan myself, and make my bookings. I have heard no more from the police. I have no idea what has happened to the young thief. I ask Ismail, my landlord, if the rumour I have heard that thieves in Iran have their hands cut off if true. ‘Not for first time offenders!’ he gasps. “We are not barbarians!” I tempted to ask if the police are, even if the residents are not, but I don’t want to offend him. Iranians are embarrassed when visitors make mention of the obvious symptoms of oppression.


PHOTO 1: entrance to the Vank Cathedral
PHOTO 2: courtyard of Vank Cathedral
PHOTO 3: inside the Vank Cathedral
PHOTO 4: interesting light patterns

20 years ago today – Day 269

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Wednesday, November 27th – Esfahan

I am ravenously hungry this morning. If I don’t eat something I am likely to get more diarrhea from stomach acid and not eating. It has happened to me before. In spite of not eating solid foods for since Friday, I seem to have a bit more energy today.

Rashid is absent form the front desk when I go out this morning, thankfully. The day is pleasant out, a bit cool but sunny again. I walk up Ferdowsi Ave to find a café and I have some tea and plain yogurt. It goes down well. I continue up to the Nagsh-e Jahan Square to locate the tourism office I had seen the day before. I pick up a map of the city with recommended attractions. I stop into the Grand Bazaar at the north end of Nagsh-e Jahan to see what it is like but the weather is nice and I don't want to buy anything.

I amble down a boulevard called Charbagh, which has a wide median with a landscaped walkway and a cycling path on either side. It is the first time I have seen a cycling path east of Austria! Charbagh Ave ends at the broad but shallow Zayandeh River and the Siosepol Bridge, also known as the Allah-Verdi Khan Bridge and the Bridge of 33 Arches built about 400 years ago. It is a pedestrian only bridge and the longest in the city.

On the south side of the river, I follow Mellat St, which borders the riverside park. It is a peaceful route in this big city. I take my time, resting whenever I am tired, but just being able to walk about again without fear of a bowel eruption has me in a radiant mood.

I follow Mellat east a kilometre and a half, past a vehicle bridge to the second pedestrian bridge, the Khaju Bridge. This bridge is said to be built at the most beautiful point of the river and was built by a Shah around 1650, who had viewing pavilion built in the middle where he could survey the beauty of the river. It is as compelling at the mosques in Nagsh-e Jahan. On its underside, the arches are magnificent and there are shops and tea rooms.


As I am taking my time today, I stop at a few of them. In one souvenir shop I talk to the owner who asks me where I am from and how I like Esfahan. I tell him it is so beautiful but it has been a difficult time for me. I tell him the whole story of the illness and the robbery, as well as Rashid’s anger at me over being held in jail overnight. Ismail, the owner, is horrified that I have had such a misfortune and then have been treated this way. He also owns a boarding house near this bridge and writes down the address. He insists that I move there today and that I can stay for free until I am ready to move onto Zahedan. I thank him profusely and promise to return to confirm that I have made it there safely.

I return to Rashid’s hotel and pack my bags. I collect my passport from Rashid, who seems relieved that I am leaving. I coast back towards the bridge to Ismail’s boarding house. It is a larger but less fancy affair. The staff are very friendly and there is a restaurant on the main floor. They show me to a storage room where I lock my bike and as soon as I am settled in I return to the Khaju Bridge to let Ismail know I am settled in. On the way back to the bridge, I stop at the police station to tell them where I am staying if they need me. There are more background screams coming from the interior rooms so I don’t linger. I hope I never have to return here.

There is a tea room under the bridge not far from his shop and I stop there to eat a sweet bun and drink some tea. I am approached by a couple university students, Raza and Ahmed, who are curious about me. They are excited to know I am traveling by bicycle and eager to exchange addresses. They are anxious to tell me about Iran and Raza does not hold back his anger and frustration over the presence of the Mullahs in his country. I am shocked to learn that most Iranians believe that the Mullahs and Ayatollahs were imposed on his country by the West. They began the revolution to depose the corrupt Shah of Iran twelve years ago by meeting in mosques, the only places the Shah allowed people to gather. That led to massive street demonstrations and open opposition and when it became clear that the government was about to fall, Ayatollah Khomeini, who they had never heard of before (the Shah would not allow mention of his name in the Iranian news) flew in from his refuge in Paris to take over control of the revolt and suddenly Islamic law was imposed. Raza says the Mullahs stole the people’s revolution.

I argue that the mullahs are totally against the West so would not have put them into power, but Raza argues the US was nervous about the Shah’s attempt to build Iran into a nuclear superpower and they wanted him out. He argued that the US supported Saddam Hussein too, in the eight year war against Iran after the revolution once the Mullahs turned against them. They promised to give him Kuwait if he defeated the Iran, but after the war ended without a victory and they didn’t give him Kuwait, so he turned against them and invaded Kuwait anyway, which started the Gulf War. That’s the last twelve years retold in a nutshell. What an eye-opener!

Back at the hotel, I decide to eat in the restaurant downstairs. One of the busboys who works there seems to have taken a shine to me, in my emancipated shape. He is batting eyes with me and blushing whenever I return his attentions. I say hello as he passes my table and he bursts into a wide smile, but he doesn’t answer. Perhaps he doesn’t know any English.

I am tired from being out on the town so much today. I won’t go out again after dinner. It has been a wonderful day though, not only because I am able to get around more and eat something, but because I am in this new hotel. The busboy, as well as other staff, live in the boarding house too. I don’t feel as isolated as when I am in a traveler-only hotel.


PHOTO 1: the Grand Bazaar at the north end of Nagsh-e Jahan
PHOTO 2: I like the lighting in the Bazaar
PHOTO 3: Charbagh Ave, with bike lanes
PHOTO 4: Siosepol Bridge (Bridge of 33 Arches)
PHOTO 5: on the Siosepol Bridge
PHOTO 6: the Shah's viewing pavilion on the Khaju Bridge
PHOTO 7: the arches under the bridge, and cute trolls too
PHOTO 8: the Khaju Bridge an the Zayandeh River in the evening

20 years ago today – Day 268

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Tuesday, November 26th – Esfahan

I had a reasonable sleep last night. I only had to go to the bathroom three times. Coen and Vincent are up early to get ready to leave. They are meeting Kate and Stephen at their hotel, where they have been spending some time so not to disturb me. They leave me more packets of supplements and their stock of Imodium. Vincent reassures me they will wait for me in Zahedan. He asks me to leave a message for him about where I am staying at the Poste Restante and he will check it each day. I feel somewhat more assured but anything could still go wrong with me before I get there.

Now they have left and I feel abandoned and at a bit of a loss. I remember how Mike Silk would disappear if I was sick or injured, and although these guys are nurses, it feels much the same. I need to trust in my ability to get by, even when I am sick.

I am quite weak from hunger. I decide to go out and have a cup of tea somewhere. I bring my camera along in case I have enough energy to walk around. I first stop at the check in desk to see how Rashid’s visit to the police station went. He is there and he isn’t very pleasant to me. He tells me the police held him in jail overnight to punish him because I was robbed, because his hotel has brought shame on Iran by letting this happen to a foreigner. I am horrified. I say I am sorry that this happened to him, that I had not intended this when I asked for his assistance. He says his night in jail was the most humiliating experience in his life and now his family’s reputation has been stained. I tell him he has done nothing wrong but he turns away from me, waving his hand for me to go.

I am feeling quite upset over Rashid’s jailing and his anger towards me. Perhaps it is best not to stay at his hotel after this but without money where can I go? Instead of looking for a café I go straight to the police station to continue my report. It is quite busy and the ‘reception room’ is full. To my surprise the young man who robbed me is sitting there waiting for his turn to be interviewed. He looks terrified, and I would be too. I shoot him a sympathetic look and he looks surprised, but grateful too.

I sit there have an hour, sharing the waiting room with him and a few others. I feel like giving him a hug. I feel no resentment or anger towards him now, knowing what he is facing. The police constable who started my interview yesterday brings me tea. He sees I am acting kindly to my accused robber and it confuses him. I don’t mind. I suspect they will go lighter on him when they see I am not angry about the situation. Eventually, I am called in and I spend another half hour being interviewed. I wasn’t questioned why I was being friendly to the thief. I suppose I am just a strange Westerner to them.

I feel better when it is over. Know I will never get my money back or any of the contents of my money belt but I will survive, I hope. I find a café and order a tea. I put lots of sugar in it and that gives me a bit of energy. I also buy some sugar candies that I can suck for energy, and some juice, since I cannot stomach solid food yet.

I wander back to Nagsh-e Jahan Square and take more photos. The square, which the mullahs now call the Imam Square, is a World Heritage Site dating from the Renaissance era in Europe. It is huge, half a kilometre from north to south and a sixth of a kilometre from east to west. On the west side is the Ali Qapu Palace where the Shah used to live. The Shah Mosque on the south end was the official main public mosque when it was the nation’s capital, and the Sheikh Loftallah Mosque was the private mosque for the Shah’s harem.


After spending a few minutes in the palace, I wander into the courtyard of the Shah Mosque, and then into the courtyard of the Sheikh Loftallah, but only into the parts where I don’t need to where my shoes. They are both adorned with the most amazing tile work, more intricate than the Blue Mosque in Turkey. Women in black burkas flutter by, adding to the exotic appearance of the unfamiliar but exquisite architecture. These are the mosques I dreamed of seeing, with their colours and patterns. I just had no idea where they would be. Even the Blue Mosque, perhaps the most-visited one in the world, in bland in comparison.

I don’t have a lot of stamina yet so I make my way back to the hotel after an hour. Rashid is still at the desk and still refusing to look at me or answer my greeting. This is very uncomfortable. I spend the rest of the evening in my room to rest and so that I won’t need to pass by him again.


PHOTO 1: music room in the Ali Qapu Palace
PHOTO 2: Sheikh Loftallah Mosque
PHOTO 3: telephoto of Sheikh Loftallah Mosque's dome
PHOTO 4: from the inside courtyard of the mosque
PHOTO 5: the inside of the dome of Sheikh Loftallah
PHOTO 6: the Shah mosque
PHOTO 7: the outer courtyard of the Shah Mosque
PHOTO 8: more of the Shah Mosque
PHOTO 9: a decorative mirab in the Shah Mosque
PHOTO 10: woman in a burka, entrance to the inner courtyard
PHOTO 11: inner courtyard of the Shah Mosque

20 years ago today – Day 267

Monday, November 25th – Esfahan

By late evening, before Vincent and Coen had gone to sleep, I was awake again and running to the toilet. I have lost count how many times I have gone to the toilet but it has been painful and torturous. I am shitting a black liquid with no solids in it. Vincent says it means I am shitting partially digested blood. If I was bleeding in my lower bowels it would be red, but a black colour means it is my small intestine that is bleeding. The blood has to travel the full length of my bowels, which is how it gets partially digested.

I feel like hell, but it gets much worse. I discover that my money belt, which I tucked away in my cycling handlebar bag yesterday before I went for a walk, is gone. I had left it there because our hotel looked so secure and I didn't feel like carrying it. My I'm panicking. Neither Coen nor Vincent has seen it and I remember clearly putting it where it no longer is. My head is screaming louder than my bowels.

I remember the young man who was repairing the faucet in the bathroom when I returned from my walk. Since I had only been gone a half hour I assume he must be the one who robbed me. I go to see the manager, Rashid, at the front desk, and he assures me he still has my passport. Thank gawd for that. He takes my information and tells me he will file a police report on my behalf.

I return to my room to use the toilet. Vincent and Coen are still there. They remind me that they are nurses in the Netherlands and explain that when the skin lining the small intestine has been destroyed or severely damaged I could shit water until I dehydrate and die, which is what happens when someone has cholera. They have brought small packets of salts and mineral supplements with them and they have been out to buy me two 2-litre bottles of water. They instruct me to drink a glass with a package of supplements every time I am sick. The supplements cause the water to be absorbed by my stomach instead of it racing right through me like a runaway train. Vincent says it's a good sign that I am shitting less and less, that the bleeding is slowing, but it will take a full week for the skin in my small intestine to grow back and re-establish my equilibrium. I shouldn't travel until it does. They tell me to rest as much as I can and then they leave to do some sightseeing with Stephen and Kate.

Rashid comes up to my room an hour later, after I have had two more visits to the can, and says the police would like me to come down to the station on Abas Adan St, half a kilometre away, to formally file my report. He apologizes again for this happening to me and when he sees the serious state of my health, he kindly offers me free accommodation in his hotel until I recover. He has told them the name and address of young man who was working on the faucet and they said they would question him. They have told Rashid to come down too, to make a statement, though we do not need to come together. I was afraid of this, in my condition, but of course it is necessary.

I make the trip to the station on my own two hours later, in the early afternoon, after my insides have settled down. I feel like Death warmed over. The police are extremely polite and apologize to me for what has happened. They offer to make me tea, but I explain that I am on a strict diet of water and Imodium. They understand what I mean and they nod with sympathetic looks.

Their kindness is juxtaposed by screams of pain coming from a man being tortured in a nearby room in the back of the station. One does not want to get into the police bad books in this country, which can happen quite easily, I have heard. I tell them what I know, that only my money belt has been stolen, and in it was my birth certificate, credit card, debit card, medical record and about US$150. The debit and credit cards are no good here so there is no threat of them being used. I need them for further withdrawals when I get to Pakistan though, if they can be recovered.

The screams coming from the back room keep interrupting my verbal report. The constable taking down my answers notices that they are upsetting me and suggests I might want to come back tomorrow when I am feeling stronger. I thank him for his consideration. What a weird situation to be in. Toto, we’re not in Toronto anymore!

I have managed the trip to and from the station and my hotel, half a kilometre each way, without an embarrassing “accident”. My long cotton pants are a pale blue colour so black liquid would have stood out very obviously. I have a few more bouts of diarrhea before the evening ends. They are becoming smaller, but if they don’t stop soon my anus will be bleeding too. I keep drinking the water and taking the supplement packages.

The Dutch boys come in and ask how I have managed. I tell them about the trip to the police station and that the bouts are slowly decreasing. They seemed relieved. I feel blessed by their support but that soon evaporates. Vincent tells me that since I am doing better he and Coen are leaving with Kate and Stephen tomorrow morning to continue on cycling through the cities of Yazd, Kerman and Bam south-east of here.

“Leaving?” I ask. “Didn’t you want to stay in Esfahan three days to see the sights?” Apparently, Kate wants to move on. She and Stephen have already been in Esfahan three days and they don’t care if we haven’t been, or that I am seriously sick. I am choked. I want to ask why he and Coen would abandoned me at this point of need to cycle with such a selfish people, but he isn’t asking my permission. They have already decided.

All my worst fears are coming true. I only have US$90 sewn behind a patch on one of my panniers and no way to procure more cash. The only Canadian government office in Iran is the embassy in Tehran, not here, and I am being abandoned while I am bleeding internally. My Iranian visitor visa will expire in ten days.

Vincent reassures me that we can meet up again in Zahedan, near the Pakistani border next weekend. I can fly there or take the train or bus the 1200 km. He has done his homework before speaking to me. The ticket is ridiculously cheap, less than $10 even by plane. I won’t be able to eat for a while and my accommodation is paid for so I should be able to manage on the little money I have, he tells me. He’s probably right, but if I do not reconnect with them in Zahedan I am truly fucked. I need to travel with them until I get to Quetta, the first large city in Pakistan, where I can access western banks again, and I may need their help getting a cash advance as my cards are gone. My reflex reaction is to get all negative and pouty, but I don’t dare give them any reason not to want to ride with me from Zahedan. I do my best to suffer my horror invisibly.

So I have more on my mind than just my intestines when I crawl into bed tonight. But instead of worrying about reconnecting in Zahedan next weekend, my mind drifts back to the screaming in the police station. What if the young man who stole my money belt was being tortured? I don’t think it was as it sounded like an adult man, not someone in his late teens, but I have heard reports of authorities here punishing thieves by cutting off their hands. The thought horrifies me. My small bit of cash certainly does not justify that, but they don’t play by my rules here. The last thoughts I remember before I fade into unconsciousness concern the young man’s whereabouts. He has such a sweet face.

20 years ago today – Day 266

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Sunday, November 24th – Tehran to Esfahan (bus)

I feel all right after a night of fairly consistent sleep. I woke up hungry at one point but I let it pass. We gather our bags. I didn't unpack mine last night so that doesn't take much effort. We load up out bikes and walk them five blocks to the bus depot, which isn't far from the train station. We buy our tickets for Esfahan. The bus departs in an hour. In the meantime, we visit a café so Coen and Vincent san get some breakfast. It is cold out but not the freezing temperatures we had higher up in Erzurum and Dogubeyazit. There's no snow here. Esfahan is 400 km south of here so it should be a bit warmer.

I dare not eat still but I do buy a ginger ale in the bus depot. Ironically, it is Canada Dry, probably what Iranians associate with Canada. The bus driver stows our bikes, rather roughly, in the storage compartment under the bus, and we take our seats. The coach is mostly full but modern and comfortable. I seem to be fine as long as I do not over exert myself, so I appreciate a bus ride over having to cycle. We plan to stay in Esfahan for three days so I should be recovered by then.

The trip is uneventful. The brown barren fields go on forever, like a sea of buckwheat pancake flour. How a succession of powerful empires emanated from this land over two thousand years I have no idea. It certainly doesn't look fertile. The bus rolls on for a couple hours before we reach the city of Qom, which is half way to Esfahan. It's a large city of close to a million, according to our guide. Our bus stops here for a half an hour. I take a stretch and get a picture of the Qom Mosque after Vincent and Coen have their cigarette break.

The bus continues another three hours on to Esfahan. The great and magical city of Esfahan that was once, during the Middle Ages, one of the largest cities in the world between the 11th and 17th centuries. It has been the capital of Persia two times in history, including some of its most prosperous times, and is chalk-full of astonishingly beautiful tiled mosques. It is the place I want most to see in Iran.

The weather is fine, about 12C when we arrive. Our bikes have survived our driver's rough treatment. We load them up and seek out a nearby hotel. Rashid Ahmed is the manager of the hotel we pick. He tells us he is required by Iranian law to hold onto our passports while we stay there. We deposit our bags in our shared room and set out on a walk towards the main square.

In the first block we run into two Brits who Coen and Vincent had met in their first week in Alexandria, Greece. They are a couple, Stephen and Kate. Vincent introduces them to me. Stephen gives me a nod of acknowledgment but Kate doesn't. She's doing all the talking, telling the Dutch boys about their visit to the city of Bursa while we were in Istanbul. She doesn't ask them anything about what they have done or seen and never once says anything to me.


We continue onto the Nagsh-e Jahan Square, the main square, which our guide says is one of the biggest city squares in the world. It is massive, about the size of four football fields. It is surrounded by coloured-tiled mosques and palaces. Huge portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and his present successor hang from the Ali-qapu-rooz Palace that stretches along one side of the square.

My queasiness has returned and I am feeling shaky again. I tell the Dutch boys I have to return to the hotel to lie down. They ask if I am OK and I tell them I should be if I get some rest. I leave them there are return the four blocks to our hotel. When I return to my room I find a young man in his late teens working on repairing a faucet in the bathroom, which I did not know was leaking. Perhaps one of the Dutch boys reported it. As soon as he leaves, I lock the door and crawl into bed. I wake briefly when Coen and Vincent return a couple hours later.


PHOTO 1: view from the bus
PHOTO 2: Nagsh-e Jahan Square
PHOTO 3: entrance to the mosque
PHOTO 4: Ali-qapu-rooz Palace

20 years ago today – Day 265

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Saturday, November 23rd – Tehran (train)

I didn’t get any sleep last night on the train. I am trembling with weakness from that and from shitting my insides out in liquid form eighteen times during the night. It hasn’t been a pleasant trip. The good news is that I probably don’t have anything left inside me now that we are in the station in Tehran. I have taken a couple Imodium tablets and haven’t need to ‘go’ for almost an hour.

Coen helps me with loading my bags onto my bike, after Vincent gets my bike off the train. I have heard horrific stories about aggressive traffic in Tehran, rumours that our guide book doesn’t dispel, so I am freaked out at having to merge with it to find a hotel. The street we are on isn’t too bad though, if one keeps his eyes open, and my state of alarm gives me enough energy to make it to our first hotel four blocks away. Given my frail state, the boys decide to go no further. We lock our bikes in a storage room and take an decrepit but greatly appreciated elevator to the sixth floor where our room is.

I collapse on the first bed. My insides have settled down at least for now. Coen feels bad because it was the samosas he bought me that caused my illness, but he and Vincent had them too and they did not get sick. My good luck, I suppose. I tell him not to worry about it now that I have all of it out of me. All I need is a few hours of sleep to restore me and to eat very lightly for a day or two. They decide to take a walk to explore the vicinity and let me sleep. They offer to bring me back some ginger ale before they leave.

I sleep for about four hours and feel considerably better when I awake. Coen and Vincent’s have waken me when they re-enter our room. Coen hands me the promised ginger ale and I drink it with the hopes that it might give me more energy. In guts still ache when I press on them so I decide not to press on them. They have purchased us tickets for a bus to Esfahan tomorrow morning, giving me the rest of this evening and tonight to win more of my strength back. I am confident that it will, since I already feel better than I did the day after I got sick from food poisoning in Sagres, Portugal. (Day 15)

Tehran is one of the largest cities in Asia, about the size of Istanbul, I think, but the part I see is a quarter kilometre of a side street in the urban core. It doesn’t show me much, even from the sixth floor, and I am not up to going out to see more. Coen and Vincent don’t seem eager to go out again either. They fix their sandwiches for dinner and pour me some water to help rehydrate me. They are nurses, after all, when they are working in Holland.

My insides feel a bit better in the evening and I spend most the evening and the rest of the night in bed, getting ready for tomorrow’s bus trip to Esfahan.

20 years ago today – Day 264

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Friday, November 22nd – Dogubeyazit to Maku, bus to Tabriz

I am a little anxious this morning about the coming day. I don't know what to expect at the Iranian border. It will be a whole new world and potentially a dangerous one. There is a heavy frost on the grass and a thin fog in the valley as we load up our bikes. I have on my tights, my sweater, jacket, gloves, kafia and two pairs of socks because it is still below freezing. It is the first morning of my trip that has been below freezing and that too adds to my anxiety.

We set out slowly, conscious of the risk of ice and that any wind caused by our speed increases the cold. It will take a few minutes for our muscles to warm up. Mt Ararat is catching the morning sun while the road and meadows are still in shadow. The view is stunning, like Dorothy and her companions getting their first sight of the Wizard of Oz, but so incredibly large, beyond anything I have ever imagined. The excitement of its immense beauty becomes part of my nervousness. The mind cannot differentiate between negative and positive anxiety. It is just a state of being.

We reach the road that leads to the border. We pass farmers with rakes and hoes on their way to work. There must still be something they have to do on their frozen fields. There isn't much traffic and no wind. If anything, the elevation is gradually dropping. We pick up speed as we warm up. The sun reaches the fields and the road. Like the sun that melts the frost to water, the motion of cycling melts my anxiety to a joy that basks in the beauty of the new day. The challenges ahead now feel like a wonderful adventure.


I have been moving at 20 km/hour for almost half an hour and my view of Mt Ararat has scarcely changed. If there was a road circumnavigating its base, I doubt I could complete it in a day. I have never seen a mountain this large. Little Mt Ararat, a side cone on its eastern side, is 3,800 m high, higher than any mountain I have climbed, but it is no more than a shoulder pad on the side of the main mountain. Vincent says he wants to return to climb it. Its big challenge is its snowy top and the lack of oxygen at 5100 m. The climb itself is not steep. Ropes would only be needed for the ice, but it is higher than any mountain in Europe, which is what excites him.

The road bends south-east, away from the mountain, but I keep turning back to photograph it. At one of my stops I remove a couple layers as I have begun to sweat. I have fallen behind Coen and Vincent, who are now half a kilometre in front of me. I hustle to catch up but it will take a while. To my right, I see a shepherd boy in his late teens running towards me to greet me, I assume. A few metres away I see a flash of a hunting knife and I realize he is intending to kill me for whatever useful items and money I might be carrying. I speed up as fast as I can and manage to outrun him, but not before he comes within five metres of me. That was a frightening scare and a wake up call. I keep up the full-tilt speed until I catch up with the Dutch boys and I am sticking with them. I decide not to relate the incident with the shepherd boy so not to cause worry. We are only five kilometres from the Iranian border at this point.

The Iranian border crossing looks like any other I've been through. They question each of us in turn. I am last. The stern guard I am sent too asks what I am carrying with me and I tell him. "Do you want to open my bags?" I ask him. He looks at them for a second, and says "No". I can see he doesn't know how to open them, but instead of asking me to do it for him he waves me through. That was easy. I had piled my dirty laundry, underwear with skid marks included, at the top of my bags just in case.

So we are in Iran. It is a further 20 km to the town of Maku where we hope to catch a bus to the city of Tabriz. The road, after passing through a narrow pass at the border, continues across a flat plain until we reach Maku, which is set in a valley sheltered by treeless brown hills on all sides. It's a sizable town with perhaps 20,000 inhabitants or more. It looks exotic, like something out of a historical movie out of North Africa, with stone and plaster houses, tents and a chaotic market place.


We find a bus depot and buy our tickets for Tabriz. It will be a six hour trip. It is past noon already as it has taken us four hours to get here, so Coen picks us up some samosas from a vendor in the market by the depot just before we board. I am hungry and eat the two he has bought me as the bus rolls out of town.


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The bus rolls through a dry canyon for twenty kilometres and then onto an open plain. The bus stops for 15 minutes in a town called Qarahziyaeddin an hour later. Then we continue on to the town of Marand two hours further along. It is here that I first realize that something is wrong. I start to burp up sour gas. I have a delicate digestion so this often happens with spicy food or when I eat a larger quantity of unfamiliar food. It is unpleasant but I don’t let it ruin my trip.

The last leg of our bus trip to Tabriz lasts an hour and a half. We unload our cargo and use Vincent’s Lonely Planet “Guide To Western Asia” to locate the train station. It is on the opposite side of town from the bus depot, eleven kilometres along the same main street. We load up our bikes and ride through the heart of the city.

The Dutch boys want to catch an overnight train to Tehran, if there is one, to save on a night’s accommodation here. It is a pity. This is Iran’s fourth largest city and has served as a capital city for different countries in history, including a regional capital under Alexander the Great of Greece. The Garden of Eden was once rumoured to be near here. I especially wanted to see the Kabud Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque, which the city has slowly been rebuilding for forty years. When it was completed in the 1400s it was considered to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. I am fortunate enough that our route takes us past the mosque and at least I get a photo of the outside.

There is a train leaving around nine pm arriving in Tehran around sunrise. We buy our tickets and walk around for a bit, but it now too dark to take good pictures. The city looks fairly modern but I don’t feel much like walking far. My stomach gas is worsening and my energy has drained out of me.

At one point when Vincent and Coen are discussing where to go, a beautiful young woman in her mid-to-late 20s runs over to us, her hair flying out from under her hijab in the process. “Can I help you?” she says with a perfectly American accent. Vincent tells her where they want to go and she directs them. We are all surprised by her behaviour. We expected women in Iran to be more repressed than anywhere, but we rarely saw women in Turkey, except in the cities, and when we did they could not look at or speak to us.

I am definitely feeling sick by the time we board the train. I find my seat and wish the day away. I even try to sleep but my insides are much too uncomfortable for that. An hour after the trip begins I have to dash to the toilet. I make seventeen return trips to the toilet before we see Tehran.


PHOTO 1: farmers heading to their fields in the frosty morning
PHOTO 2: Coen and Vincent, warming up at 8 am
PHOTO 3: Mt Ararat, with telephoto lens
PHOTO 4: Little Ararat
PHOTO 5: the Ararats, from closer to the Iranian border
PHOTO 6: the Iranian border crossing
PHOTO 7: Maku
PHOTO 8: canyon leading out of Maku
PHOTO 9: the Kabud Mosque, Tabriz

20 years ago today – Day 263

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Thursday, November 21st – Ezurum to Dogubeyazit (bus)

The morning air bites me as I step out the door of our hotel. There is a dusting of snow on the higher patches of ground and frozen puddles in the lower parts. The hills outside the town are white with snow down to the edges of town. My nose hairs are freezing together.

The three of us walk around to the rear of the building with our many bags in hand to the storage area where we collect our bikes. I am always worried that mine might be stolen since I only have a cable now instead of a U-lock, but Coen has locked his and mine together with his U-lock, Vincent has U-locked his to a railing and I have entwined all three together with my cable. It's a mess to sort out in the frozen dawn with bare fingers, but it works.


We coast over the dirt strewn roads to the bus depot, which we have directions to from the hotel staff. The bus to Dogubeyazit leaves at 9:30, in two hours. We buy our tickets and then look for a breakfast place where we can get something to eat and a coffee. It's a shabby looking city with few to no Western fast food outlets. Still, we find a café that offers something similar to a Western breakfast and strong Turkish coffee. Coen and Vincent are still waking up. They sit quietly assessing the situation on the street outside.

Erzurum has been inhabited for thousands of years, long before London, Paris or Rome. In spite of its great age, the guide says there isn't much to see here: a remnant of a Roman tower, the foundation of a Hittite ruin, an eighteenth century palace outside the town and a Seljuk holy school with twin towers from the 1200s that stands in the centre of town. The latter is the most famous landmark in town. We have time to ride by it and to visit the courtyard of the medieval citadel nearby before boarding our bus to Dogubeyazit.

The bus is heated, thankfully, and quite crowded. Fortunately, it will only be a five hour ride. Shortly after we leave Erzurum, sleet begins to fall but it only lasts half an hour. Our highway leads back into the mountains but after a brief climb it begins to descend. The route is mountainous most of the way, rising and dropping over and over, but it clears up and much of the snow disappears.

The bus stops in many small towns along the way. We are sitting near the front where it is easy to get off and on. The driver tells us how long we will stop when we ask so we are able to get off and stretch, always leaving one of us on board to watch our bags. At several stops there are messy arrays of market tables with food, clothing and souvenirs for sale. As we move east, it seems to warm up a bit and there is less snow.


I first see Mt Ararat half an hour before we reach Dogubeyazit. It is a mountainous region but Ararat is a good 2000 m higher that the surrounding mountains, so it sticks its white, cone-shaped head up from behind the other mountain tops whenever we are at the top of a hill. According to my detailed map, there are no mountains close to it. It is a massive shield volcano with gentle sloping sides, like the volcanoes on the island of Hawaii. It must be 150 km around at its base. Seeing its peak so far away above the closer mountains really exemplifies its incredible height of 5,100 m.

Ararat disappears when our road drops down into the valley that leads to Dogubeyazit. We only see it again when we arrive in the town. It doesn't look nearly as high now, since its slopes are so gentle, but it is still 15 km away and is much more massive than it first looks.

Dogubeyazit is smaller than Erzurum, but still a sizeable town with lots of retail. The retail is largely open air markets and small street kiosks and stalls. The inn we find a room in is a ramshackle affair badly in need of a paint job, but it works. This is Asia, not Europe.

The people here are mostly Kurds, unlike the Armenian-murdering Turks of Erzurum. In this cold, damp season I keep my kafia around my neck at all times. It is here I am made aware that the kafia, made in Kurdistan, is a symbol of solidarity with the Kurdish independence movement. Kurds here are especially grateful to foreigners who seem to be sympathetic. Here I thought they are just super friendly people.

Kurdistan is a large region divided up between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, with the largest part being in Turkey. They have their own language, which is not allowed to be used in Turkish schools. They are the last major ethnic minority that the Turks are still oppressing. This is one of several reasons why Turkey's repeated applications for admittance into the EU have been rejected. The Kurdish political party, the PDK, is not legal here but practically everyone in this region of the country supports it.

I have heard this cute story but I doubt it is true. The colours of the independence movement are green, yellow and red and the government tends to crack down of any symbolic displays of these colours. I was told that traffic lights here have been changed in some regions of the SE corner of the country to blue, yellow and green. They are definitely green, red in blue in this town.

This will be our last night in Turkey. Tomorrow night we will be in Iran, which only has been letting in foreigners like Canadians for the last three years since the revolution in 1980 when the Shah of Iran was deposed by the Ayatollahs. We plan to ride to the border from here, which is approximately 65 km. I am very excited about it, and a bit anxious about crossing the border. If we are going to have trouble, it will be there.


PHOTO 1: the Citadel at Erzurum
PHOTO 2: snowy hills above Erzurum
PHOTO 3: on our way out of town
PHOTO 4: Selchuk Bridge
PHOTO 5: Vincent shopping at one of our stops
PHOTO 6: one of the canyons along the way
PHOTO 7: outdoor market in Dogubeyazit
PHOTO 8: Mt Ararat and Little Ararat

20 years ago today – Day 262

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Wednesday, November 20th – Kayseri to Ezurum (train)

I am always a bit anxious when I have to travel by plane or train on any given day. I worry about making connections or running into unexpected complications over which I have no control. Yesterday, on the way to the train station I had some of these anxieties even though nothing I was worried about would have been hard to work around. Today I not only know the price and departure time of our train, but I also have a ticket in hand and we have located the train station and have brought plenty of food with us, enough to last for the next couple days.

We leave the hotel before 8 am so that we can check our bicycles and find our seats twenty minutes before departure in case there are any problems. There are none. We choose two pairs of seats that face each other so we can play cards and talk. The train isn’t full as we pull out of Kayseri. I watch the scenery as we leave. It is often exciting to enter a city by train but usually anti-climactic to leave. We move away from the interesting parts of the city into the uglier urban sprawl of suburbs, stadiums, airports and factories.

Kayseri is a medium-sized city and the sprawl gives way to open fields in a matter of minutes. The crops are in so the fields are now exposed dirt of fields left to fallow with grasses or brown and gold. There are no forests in this dry steppe plain. We roll on at a steady pace without much to look at. We play cards for the next hour or so. The train stops for 15 minutes each in the towns of Gemerek and Sarkisla before continuing onto Sivas. Just before Sivas there is an interruption in the plain as we pass through a low canyon onto an adjoining plain. We arrive in Sivas just after noon.
Sivas is a major centre a bit smaller than Kayseri. I hope to catch something of interest through the train window entering or leaving, but trains pass through the ugliest parts of every city. More accurately, the ugliest parts of cities grow around them. We are stopped for half an hour here, but we aren’t aware of how long the stop is. We could use a stretch but we don’t want to leave our seats. Many more passengers are boarding here and the train is full when it leaves the station. A mother with a young baby takes the last seat in our pod. She carefully avoids looking at us. Since it is inappropriate to chat to married women in Turkey, we keep to ourselves, and when the baby falls asleep we are obliged to remain quiet. Coen and I watch the passing scenery while Vincent reads his guide book and a novel.

The scenery is improving slowly. Distant snow-capped hills come into view as we glide through the second valley – a reminder that winter is just around the corner. We stop briefly in Hafik and Zara over the first hour and a half out of Sivas, and shortly after Zara the train enters the mountains, climbing a thousand metres to a pass. Suddenly, the snow is all around us. Winter was literally right around the corner.

Progress during the climb is slow and at points we wait on a side track for on-coming freight trains to pass. We briefly enter another valley but within a few minutes begin to climb into the mountains again. After another half hour we emerge onto a flat plain that is as flat as a lake but surrounded by high mountains. Within minutes we enter the city of Erzincan, another city the size of Sivas.



Coen and Vincent take turns stepping out to stretch and smoke cigarettes here – they are desperate by this point. The sun is steeply in the west by now and some of the city is in shadow. Many passengers disembark. They are replaced by locals on the way to Erzurum. Several of them are carrying bags of produces or other market items that they pile in the aisles, rendering them almost impassable. I never do get my chance to step out.

The last four hours of the trip are the hardest to bear. The sun sets not long after we leave Erzincan and over the next hour the outside fades to black. Our car feels especially stuffy and the baby has decided she is fed up with the trip and begins to cry. I sympathize with her. I try to sleep but I can never really do that in a moving vehicle.

By the time the train rolls into Erzurum with its wheels complaining, it is 9 pm. I am groggy and not looking forward to collecting our bags and bikes. It is freezing outside at this height of 1900 metres. I am ill-dressed for it so I don’t stay groggy for long. “Netsimukelut,” (‘piece of cake’ in Dutch) Vincent says as we set about our unpleasant task of finding a hotel in the freezing dark. The biting cold and hunger are all the negative reinforcement I need to keep me moving. Thankfully, most of the hotels are within a few blocks of the train station and the first one we try has reasonable prices and storage for our bikes at the back.

Vincent and Coen are stoics who never complain, but they are as happy as I am to collapse on the bed when we get into our room. I thought I’d pass out as soon as I hit the bed, but the cold and hunger has revived me. The town is mostly dark and we have no interest in leaving the hotel anyway. We put together sandwiches from the food supplies in our bags and talk about our plans for tomorrow.

I have been curious about Erzurum for a long time, partially because of its ancient roots dating back to the Hittites, but mostly because it was a major deportation and execution centre during the Armenian genocides of 1894-5 and the spring of 1915. The city was historically part of Armenia and a large percentage of its residents were Armenian before WWI. Fewer than a hundred of them survived the war. The mass genocide and coinciding property theft by the Turks was used as a model by Hitler in his genocide of the Jews. The Turks got away with it. No one much cared about the Armenians who were mostly rural mountain people. The Turks have never officially acknowledged or been punished for their crimes against humanity here.


PHOTO 1: the farmland NE of Kayseri
PHOTO 2: near Sivas
PHOTO 3: hills growing nearer
PHOTO 4: snow capped mountains and the Erzincan Plain
PHOTO 5: Esence Mountains near Tanyeri
PHOTO 6: Karasu River valley between Erzincan and Erzurum
PHOTO 7: in the mountains
PHOTO 8: Mt Koroglu