salām, Iran

I broke camp at 5am on New Year's Eve, wide awake anyway with that sense of something outstanding. There was snow and ice and I had to really coax the coffee from my stove and frozen bottles. Ten miles through a steep, foggy gorge to Kajaran, coughing into a freezing headwind, I've rarely felt so unfit for task. The climb itself, slow and unsteady, was better than its anticipation. Halfway up the countless switchbacks I cleared the valley shadow and my beard defrosted in the sunshine. Just over the top I stopped at a roadworkers' shack and, asking for chai, was given lunch, glasses of something akin to schnapps and Happy New Year. I like the asphalt-men - increasingly respect their efforts - and having run out of Snickers and all else the food was magic. Then downhill! I didn't dare go too fast for the ice but it was shout-out-loud stuff losing 2km altitude in no time at all as the views thawed around me - Iran appearing in warm hues. I sat around in Meghri an hour eating pistachios, pensive, then hit the border.

After its two years on my Bristol wall and eight months carefully panniered, last night I finally dug out that big Silk Road map. The first impression of Iran is of scale. This is big country and the landscape immediately reflects that. The mountains give each other breathing room, vast plains over which to recline and stretch out their foothills. None of this Caucus clutter; space is left for flattish roads to describe directish routes along which exhausted I rejoice. I am quickly in Tabriz and resting. The second impression is of care. I have a pervasive sense that I am to be looked after here, that I can - probably ought - trust my care almost entire to strangers. Examples abound already.  First night first town I am entreated to eat and sleep at some kind of workers' base. When I wake long after the men have silently gone to labour the housekeeper has breakfast waiting. Second day second town the pharmacist refuses payment for my cold medicine, instead gets me lunch while his friend arranges me an Iranian sim card (incidentally the sim requires passport and fingerprints). Third day third town young Akbar, tipped off by one of his petrol station lookouts, cycles out to catch me up bearing snacks, drinks and contacts in Tabriz, Tehran, Esfahan and Yazd (a couple of whom have already text me warm offers of anything they can do). I posed a photo with him for the album which he'd brought along - cyclists from all over the world; greeting them his hobby. Constant, daymaking little episodes. The food is good, too. Saffron cookies, sour cherry juice; simple stewed mutton with fat, chickpea and potato...

I'm happy to stop a little in Tabriz. I'm staying with a young couple, Nasrin and Payam, who enthusiastically attack my cold cough with boiled turnip, expectorant, basil-seed tea and sweet starched milk. I'll stay a couple more nights - visit the grand bazaar and the famous Saeed who gives cycle tourists a free service - then East to Tehran for the onward visa game.

Kajaran

new year's dawn