This is it. The final push to Bandar Abbas. My train leaves tomorrow at noon. In the predawn cool I hit the road east, setting a fast pace for what will be the longest day of this ride. But before long I spot a bakery churning out fresh sheets of lavash onto a cooling rack on the roadside. I stop and buy a loaf for breakfast, and the interruption makes space for me to remind myself that speed is not the essence today. Miles go by when time in the saddle is maximised, and often that means dropping the pace to sustain… Continue reading →

I let myself out and am down at the beach before dawn. The town’s name, Bandar‑e Aftab, translates to ‘Sun Port’. It’s obvious why: this little south-facing stretch of coastline is bathed in its rays from sunrise to sunset. Being a mediterranean sea, isolated from the Indian Ocean by the Straits of Hormoz and just fifty metres deep on average, the Persian Gulf hosts one of the calmest coastlines I’ve ever seen. A hundred yards away, some fishermen are dragging a boat across the sand towards the water, but aside from that, all is still and silent. I experience the kind of… Continue reading →

It’s already bright when I wake, yet everything is coated in a thick layer of dew. I pack more quickly than ever before. Having so few belongings is a luxury in so many ways. I ride the final couple of miles to the pass. A man-made chasm in the final wall of rock gives way to the most surreal of views: a coastal panorama from on high, but one in which a blanket of humidity renders the sea itself invisible! Below me, illuminated in fragments by an ascending sun, the road drops away in a squiggle of switchbacks, an unbroken descent… Continue reading →

The wind is low, the road quiet, the shoulder generous. I pedal through the bottleneck of the valley, over the hump at which the river starts flowing east, rather than west. It could technically be called a ‘pass’, but it’s so insignificant I barely notice it. Roadbuilders have been hard at work here, transforming an old thoroughfare between farming villages into a dual carriageway for yet more goods traffic. For the time being, though, it’s quiet. I’m flying now, my body and mind back in the riding groove, odometer ticking ever upwards. Flow. Bliss. The air has warmed noticeably since… Continue reading →

It’s half past two in the afternoon. I thank Amin profusely and ride away with an enormous sense of relief. It’s been a weird kind of fun, but now it’s time to cram in as many miles as I can before sundown, and probably a few after dark to make up for lost time. I start back towards the road at a brisk pace. I have only a couple of hours to cross into the next valley, and I’d rather not be grinding up a mountainside when the sun disappears behind the crags in a couple of hours’ time. As… Continue reading →