Category: Bikepacking Southern Iran 2016

I very much hope you’ve enjoyed the last couple of weeks of daily blogs from the road! While I wanted to keep the focus on the writing (and on stimulating your imagination!), it’s also nice to look at a few retospective visuals. This selection represents this best of this short but much-needed jaunt across southern Iran. Do come and join me on Instagram for the coming year, won’t you? Continue reading →

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 →

A greasy egg sits on a plate, next to a small basket of flatbread and a single-serve packet of carrot jam. This is clearly not a breakfast designed with a hungry bikepacker in mind. For my £25, I feel like raising the point with the waiter, who I have little doubt would bring more food in a flurry of apologies. But for some reason I can’t be bothered – perhaps, again, that die-hard British tendency to avoid disturbing the status quo, manifesting itself now on the tiniest of scales. I hit the road earlier than ever, though I’ve missed the… Continue reading →

Today, I cock it up. I’m woken at 5am by the mo’azzen and his call to prayer, a singular amplified wail filling the quiet valley with high-pitched tremor. I roll over and am snapped awake by the classic 3rd-day-of-riding thigh burn. As I pack my gear, I decide I am going to make today a half-day of riding and take the afternoon off. Giving my legs a rest and my body a proper feed, I reason, will pay off over the following days. I scan the maps I’ve downloaded. The nearest decent-sized settlement is Firuzabad, big enough to have a university and… Continue reading →

In haste, I have misread the map. Far from being an easy detour down from the central Iranian plateau to the coast, the scenic route I’ve chosen is a rollercoaster of mountains and valleys at altitude. When the asphalt peters out and I hit the dirt, I peer again at the satellite imagery and realise my mistake: while the river canyon I’ve been following meanders off to the west, whereas my route strikes out south east, crossing several watersheds before rejoining a bigger artery heading directly south for the coast. It’s a stunning ride, but my body complains at the assault.… Continue reading →

Southwest of Shiraz is a big green splodge on Google Maps, reportedly the ‘Maleh Galeh’ protected area. Running through its heart is a road of the smallest designation. Satellite imagery depicts rural asphalt becoming dirt, weaving along the scoured valleys of the tail end of the Zagros, a scattering of villages promising basic provisions. Though by no means the quickest route towards the coast, I have not come here to fight with trucks and buses on the highways of Iran. This road appears to fit my standard criteria of being the most obscure-looking alternative to the highway – my tried-and-tested… Continue reading →