I met Saed on the bus. Everything about him was dodgy, and he looked like a stereotypical junkie. He tells me that Bushehr was uber dodgy, and that as a tourist I would probably be bashed, robbed, and left for dead. He offers to show me around town and says I can stay at his house as he lives just outside the city centre. Stupidly, I agree. We get off the bus outside Bushehr and jump in a taxi. I ask him how far it is to his house. "Thirty-five kilometers" he replies "and I haven't got any money, can you [View Full Entry]

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The overnight bus trip from Kerman to Shiraz was awful. Buses are not my preferred place for sleeping, I prefer a bed. Sitting next to me was Iman, a top bloke and Chris De Burgh fan (of course). On arrival at Shiraz bus terminal I was besieged by taxi drivers, and being tired and grumpy, started telling them to f*ck off. Eventually I gave in, and was dropped at the guest house which was owned and run by the Sepah militia aka the fanatical religious police. Shiraz is a beautiful city, and I manage to check out a few sights on [View Full Entry]

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Hello all! Two weeks ago we left Turkmenistan and crossed into İran... Bit of a shock! We hit Tehran fırst and had an interesting tıme gettıng around. We dıd manage to see all sorts of nıce sıtes and then headed off ın the truck. Here are the cıtıes we stayed ın: Tehran Yadz Shıraz Esphahan Bush Camp near Zanjan Tabrız The people of Iran are very frıendly. Everyone wanted to talk to us and ıt was sometımes dıffıcult to keep walkıng! The locals always wanted to know what we thoug [View Full Entry]

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Since arriving in Iran, I have noticed a strange phenomenon - Chris De Burgh, the man who penned that old chestnut "the way you look tonight", is like a god to the Persians. i started to play a little game - every Iranian I have met, i ask them if they like Chris De Burgh. The answer is ALWAYS the same "Chris De Burgh? I love Chris De Burgh. He did a song with a persian band, its really famous, oh wow how do you know about him?" and on it goes... In every city its always the same, and is [View Full Entry]

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The bus pulls into Bandar Abbas about 6am. The first thing I notice is the heat - its around 30 degrees and the humidity is about ten million percent. Danial and Iman meet me at the station, and as soon as I see them I know Bandar is going to be loads of fun. While the town itself is unspectacular the islands, and the company prove to be first-class. Our first mission is to Hormoz Island - myself Danial, Kamil and Anna take a speedboat across. The heat is almost unbearable, and there is very little shade on the island. We [View Full Entry]

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Since Tehran we have been travelling west across Iran . Everywhere we go the people are wonderful, usually greeting us with 'Welcome to Iran'. I have had a man stop the traffic for me and a family invite me to their home in Northern Iran if I am in the area! After Tehran (which was fantastic) we stopped in Yadz. Yadz is one of the oldest regions in Iran and we spent the day following the walking tour around the old city. Lots of little laneways so we pretty much spent the day getting lost, finding ourselves again and then getting [View Full Entry]

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We spent the night in Zahadan locked in the hotel with a load of truly terrible films on American tv. The one we watched was called the Art of Dying, the high point of which was when the villain turned round in the middle of the climatic chase scene and whinged 'Stop shooting me!' I guess you had to be there; I was quite amused by the idea that we were literally MST-ing (a term derivng from the '90s tv show Mystery Science Theatre 3000, where a man and teo robots are locked in a sattelite and forced to watch terrible [View Full Entry]

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On the way to Bam we stopped off at the market town of Kermar, the gardens of Eram, which reminded me in a really weird way of Annec Castle, only with middle eastern influences, like trees being arranged to provide shade and different architecture. The fountains running aown the slope, flanked by two rows of steps was almost identical. After the gardens we moved on to an old mud city called Rajen, which we had fun climbing about on. I was massively relieved to find an internet terminal at the hotel in Bam, because we weren't allowed to leave it and [View Full Entry]

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Day Twenty Six did not start well. We eoke up to find a message from the tour leader, written at 3:45 that morning, saying that she'd had to take a passanger to hospital. Amazingly the bus left only two hours late, which is a testament to both our tour leader and the passanger in question. After a horribly long bus journey (the front of the bus is a very boring place) we got to Kerman and basically had time for dinner before going to get some much needed sleep. [View Full Entry]

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We manage to get ourselves a driver to take us to the desert town of Abarqu. We strategically load all our gear into the car, and get the hell out of Yazd. The drive to Aberqu is much longer than anticipated, and quite boring apart from the imaginatively named Eagle mountain. We arrive at Aberqu around lunchtime, and what can I say about this town? Well if Mansour thought Yazd was a shithole, its just as well we didn't bring him to Aberqu. I immediately feel out of place for not wearing a black shirt and tight black slacks, which despite [View Full Entry]

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