Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

The next morning we found our German, and took him to the park for a chat.     We went back for another peek at the square in the day-time, and it was very peaceful and quiet (despite an overweight 8yr old dressed entirely in pink bouncing a football off the sides of the mosque, causing mindshattering echoes…) We watched a fight ensue between a street-junkie and a shopkeeper, and bought ourselves five flavours of icecream.   We found another, smaller mosque, even more stunning in gold tiling and stood in the corner and stared at the ceiling for a while.  An odd gate-keeper turned up, possibly slightly deranged but very friendly, and, using a scrubby note in English he kept in his pocket, asked for stamps or postcards from Britain.  He was really nice and I would have given him large numbers of them, but I sadly had none.   We wandered the bazaars and the spice-stalls, feeling like we had properly reached exotic climes.   Later that night we visited ...

We rode 380km from Tehran to Esfahan.  It was up to 65 degrees, and desert all the way.  It was amusing to stop to allow the sweat to accumulate, and then race off so the breeze cooled the sweat down and made you shiver.  There were no people anywhere.  Occasional mosques with tin rooves, little mud huts, other things which sort of suggested human habitation, but not one person.  What was it… mad dogs and… oh yes. There were barbed wire compounds with soldiers pointing anti-aircraft missiles into the sky- ancient dilapidated things, but fully loaded.  We saw automatic, unmanned ones too.  It was a little perturbing.  A police-man stopped us to check what we were up to.  We smiled innocently and tried to look as little like spies as possible.  (Try it.  It instantly makes you look really suspicious…) I saw a real-life tumbleweed.  It pleased me nearly as much as the tortoise. There were little dust-storm eddies blowing abo...