Ant-aircraft Missiles, Sweat and Esfahan
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...