onward en masse

I was glad of a few nights rest in Mashhad; gladder still of a debrief with the first Europeans I'd met since Christmas. Three nights in a hostel and backpacker company brought out the more dutiful tourist in me. The mountain-village tour with French English teachers was alright; Imam Reza's shrine by night with a Czech astrophysicist was awesome. The mosque complex is immense and mazey, its ceilings drip mirror mosaics and the tomb itself is clamoured around by hundreds of fervent pilgrims. Those who can't squeeze through the crush pass clothes overhead to be pressed against the sepulcher. Surreal zeal. Staff pretend to guard doorways with incongruous plastic dusters while men in indoor cherry-pickers polish discoball walls. I left the following morning and after a featureless two days caught up with William at the Turkmen border.

For a country boasting The Door to Hell and ominously covered, seventy percent, by the Black Sand I found Turkmenistan's landscape surprisingly benign, here and there just like North-Norfolk. It's much damper and flatter than Iran with full rivers and miry mudflats. Salty plains of gorsey scrub. Will had only been granted three days to cross, to my five, but we cycled breakneck together for two so that he could make his visa and I could spend a rare day wandering about Turkmenabat city. The wind smiled on us and both nights we rode late into the dark. A beer, a camp, mutton samosas, pothole curses, a yurt; the country flew. I liked the friendly people, pastel suburbs and city glimpses - felt sorry not to have more time to explore. There's definitely something Orwellian about the place. Humans in all condition pick and hoe fields beneath great posters trumpeting fleets of combine harvesters. They wave at cycle tourists. The Leader smiles beatifically down from billboards everywhere.

I'm in Uzbekistan. A throat-clogging fog of dust almost obscures the landscape. The roads still have a steady stream of Iranian trucks who still pip their horns as though the familiarity is mutual. Single-speed communist bicycles are ubiquitous. The faces are changing; rounder, softer features with an occasional ocular pinch of the Far East. China isn't so far anymore, as crows fly. Yesterday morning I found Will again, asleep beneath the stinking fug of three hungover cyclists. I ate his hotel breakfast and met the other two, Tieme and Laurens from Holland and Belgium. We're all four accustomed to moving alone, now carefully negotiating those group decisions. It's good to talk and nice to slow down. Onwards, en masse, on Tuesday. Meanwhile Bukhara makes for a charming stop.

leaving Iran

Turkmen samosa crew

Turkmenabat

Uzbek border closed for lunch

Bukhara