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.