Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

This was it anyway, we were on our way to Pakistan now, well and truly.  I was somewhat nervous to say the least.  Pakistan has recently been statistically proven to be one of the top two most dangerous countries to be in at the moment.  However, I would like to say, I was definitely not as nervous as our German friend.  He was very worried.  I had met the Englishman from Nepal, and his cheerfulness was keeping me buoyant. Our next voyage was to Bam, the tourist spot that was sadly flattened in the 2003 quake.     The road was hot, dusty, never-ending:  the usual Iranian road-trip. And then a ridiculous side-wind blew across the flat desert, kicking up monstrous dust clouds and causing us to wobble horribly for hours.  The sand sort of whipped against my skin, and stung like crazy.    Then road-works started up, just to take away any pleasure we might have been squeezing from the experience.  We had to keep veerin...

A ride to Kerman was uneventful, excepting a very large, very dead camel that we saw on the way, which someone had graffitied on.  I wondered if it was one of the drug-smuggling ones you hear about.  Apparently, 80% of Europe’s heroin comes through Iran from Afghanistan, and one of the key ways to smuggle it through is in camel’s humps.  Camels have handy natural homing instincts, like pigeons (though presumably they aren’t as likely to crap on your head from a tree.)  Anyway, this one was very dead. I got bored on the road.  To keep myself amused I sang at the top of my voice.  Mostly Phil Collins, to my shame.   (Sometimes I fall asleep. This is particularly dangerous on motorways, which is irritating, because that’s exactly when it happens.) Somewhere en route to Kerman I saw a strange and inexplicable sight- there was a pick-up truck whizzing along, with sacks in the back, with what looked like feet poking out here and there, in a manner which...

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...

We rode off on our way to Tehran, where we would need to stop and sort out visas for Pakistan and India, having been refused them so graciously in Ankara.   The roads were boring, in excellent condition, and fast.  We stopped a couple of times to eat.  We managed to get bread, of an unpleasant cardboard texture and, nothing if not consistent, taste.  On the second occasion we were a little more adventurous and attempted to use our Farsi phrases. We tried the Farsi for ‘I am a vegetarian.’  The waiter said ‘No.’.  We tried again.  He shook his head.   This was a little confusing.  We opted for more bread.  By my second day in Iran I had lost a fair bit of weight and my trousers wouldn’t stay up.     Meals there run as follows: Breakfast: Flat unleavened bread with carrot jam or spreadable ‘cheese’. Lunch: Kebab. Dinner: Kebab. Little did we know at the point that bread would become our favourite dish… We...