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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
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