Turkmenistan - the crossing

What to say about a country when you lived it only for 74 hours?
Say that it was flat, it was damn hot. And that we cycled all day long.

Give it a second thought: finally, we had more things to share about this country. But above all, we cycled really all day long :-) :-)

So here is our story.

Wednesday, may 20th + 84km, 5h30 of peddling

7AM, we were the first to enter the border gate, Iranian side. We even had to wait for the custom service to arrive. They were a bit confused about our Arktash visa, probably seen for the first time.
Things were more complicated at the Turkmen side. I had entitled to the question " What is your nationality?" (hey dude, you have my passport in your hands) " oh, but you don't look like French" (sorry dude,  but one can be black, red, yellow and French!!!). They made us wait for a loooong time without any apparent reason before letting us in, without any further question. Then, they scanned all our luggage. All the Turkmen passing before us had seen their bags open, their belonging looked through carefully, minutely: all the clothes were unfold, all the boxes opened, all the medicine checked.... We were a bit annoyed: if they did so with our tons of bags, it would take the whole morning.

Fortunately, the beautiful young woman at the Custom Service was just interested in our pictures (which were not so many because I loaded most of them before on my computer), insisted on our (non) purchase of medicine and nargileh in Iran.

Curious about our trip, she bursted to laughter when we said " We worked hard to save money" and asked, amusedly "but how old are you?". We felt at the same time pleased and also vexed a little bit :-) :-)

10AM, we finally entered for real on Turkmenistan side!!!! Yupiiii!!!! It was not that bad!!!!
The first statement about Turkmenistan: women are beautiful. At first, it was a bit strange for us to see women without hijab and with dresses which enhancing their forms rather than hiding them, like what we were used to in Iran. I had to wait to get out completely of the border service to put away my hijab. It was good to feel free again!!!

After lunch break, just to confirm that Turkmen women were all gorgeous, we put ourselves seriously at work at 1PM - not the best time to cycle, it was indeed so hot, around 40C. We took a short cut, which would save us some 40-50km on the way to Mary. But the road was bad, we were warned. Well, we knew what bad road is, and 50km was a heavy argument!

(this cute school boy tried desperately to drink out of the empty tap and emptied haft of my bottle!)

Actually, the road was real bad. But that was not the point! The point was the wind. Strong. Not completely on our face but most of the time at 3/4. Normally, at windy time, I try to take refuge behind Alessio. Which I couldn't do this time. Because of bad roads. There were full of potholes, big and bigger, and deep. And randomly "distributed".

We rode for some hours to realize that we were lack of water and there was no way to supply. We took a "desert" route, no shop, no village, even cars were rare. We tried to filter some water from a pond by the road: pffff, the water was salty!!!! What the hell a salty pont does in a middle of desert? After that, we saw very often white trace on the road side, a proof of salty water and had no more idea to filter any water anymore.

We grew more and more concern about water. When we were almost alarmed, we saw a firm beside the road. Yupiii, we were saved!!!! We filled water with everything we had. It added more than 10kg to our luggage, but who cares, now we have fresh water :-) :-)

We stopped around 6:30PM, at a rare place by the road, protected from the wind. But infected with mosquitoes.... We had to set up the tent, prepare dinner quickly, more than quickly in order not to get eaten by those agressive mosquitoes.

(a beautiful wheat field, that changed from the desert)

Thursday, May 21st. 145km, 7h40 of peddling

We got up at 5AM. It's better to cycle early, so the body could get used to the heat. Also, we could have more time: we had a long road ahead. Some mosquitoes had succeeded in infiltrate in our tent and had a feast on us.
Quiet at first, the wind started to "wake up" along with the sun. It blew of course on our face. 8AM, after one hour and a half, we finally got back to the flat asphalted road: what a pleasure for the arms, and bums. Our bicycles felt relieved too I guess.

We made a breakfast stop at the first sign of "civilization": a small stall by the road's side.

The scene reminded me a bit of Vietnam. Here, we tasted "samsa" for the first time, after some endless 40 minutes of waiting - we were too early. We loved them right away!

The asphalted road, unlike we expected, was some parts good but some parts in very bad condition. We cursed (this time, we had enough strength!!!) against the President and his megalomania: instead of building all those luxurious marbres palaces and monuments,

(like this one)

(or this one, with his big picture in front...)

it would have been much better that he would invest some money on roads....

We realized later that almost we were not the only ones (cyclists) to do that :-) :-)

At Mary, for the first time, since long, we saw women working outside - cleaning the streets, removing weeds..... Did I tell you that Turkmen women were gorgeous? They all had beautiful asian features, were all svelte with generous forms. Unlike men in their ordinary T-shirt and trousers, they all had colorful slim waist dress which emphasized even more their form. It was almost a revelation to see bare silky arms here and there.

(schoolgirls on their uniform. They are beautiful, aren't they?)

Lots of them covered their hair. Not under a hijab but a beautiful headdress, of course of matching colors with their dress, the whole made them so pretty, graceful and proud. And they got dressed this way even to work in the fields.

Here, we practiced our poor Russian with some Turkmen: they were all so nice and cute and polite and funny. A great pleasure!

We took off from Mary at 3:30PM, always with this opposite wind. We had some way up at 12% but it was a joke: we know what real 12% is! In our opinion, Armenia, after an over-production of road signs, had offered some (of the 12% sign) to Turkmenistan who just put them in the stiffest roads they had....

Otherwise, it was quite monotone rolling in the desert: it's flat, sandy, with lots of bushes. Sometimes it changed a bit: you have yellow bushes on one side, and green on the other.

(a rare attraction when dromedaries crossed our path) 

We stopped around 6:30PM, after 145 km, happy at we just made a new score of rolling without exhausting ourselves. The two young men living near by welcomed us warmly and showed us a perfect spot to camp. They spoke very little Russian but we could see how they were eager to help.

Friday, May 22d, 170km and 9 hours of rolling from 6:30 PM to 6 PM

We got up at 5AM,the two young men were still sleeping in their simple little house. As usual, we left a little postcard to thank them before hitting the road.
We rolled quite fast, around 20km/h. Anyway, there was nothing else to do nor to see. The scenery was as flat as what Benoit - my fellow from the old time used to say " your dog ran away and three days later, you still see him....".

From time to time, we looked at each other, nodding pensively "so, this is it, rolling in the desert. What is the fun? Why on earth there are people want to run in the desert? Why Tim and Karina would want to roll on Taklamakan desert? Maybe after the Turkmenistan crossing, they would have changed their mind?" (Did you change your mind by the way????). We did change our mind and don't want anymore to go Nukus and give up altogether on suffering one whole week in Uzbek desert.

Lunch break, we gave ourselves this little luxury of having it in a Camping-Hotel's restaurant. It was kinda "chic": the restaurant was made of several distinctive yurt-like tents, with aircon and richly decorated.

The price was reasonable so we had 2 "corba" (soup). Delicious. And fat. As we love :-) :-).

Very kind, the guys from the Camping-Hotel offered us a free shower but Alessio put his veto on my 10mn shower break's request (it's no good on having a shower now, you will get dirty in 10 mn). Very annoyed, I finally agreed to hit the heat and the dust again. Hum, who ever said that I am stubborn???

(cyclists globetrotters to be)

We crossed some dead snakes on the roads, smashed by vehicles while trying to cross. Brrr it meant the were much more of them somewhere in the sand, under the bushes (moreover, they all had this sandy color which made them very difficult to be distinguished...). So we decided not to camp on the sand,  which, on the other hand, meant "there's no place to gooooo". We kept rolling over and over: 130km: no spot, 140km: no spot possible, 150km: not a dam spot to camp, 160km: where in this %$#@*%$ desert could we set our #@$%&^ tent!!!!

Finally, at 170km, we saw some tiny house near a railroad. Oufs!!! We set once more a new record and we were quite exhausted. My wish of the day was not to break never ever this record again!!!

So we went till the railroad and got greeted by a troop of barking dogs. Grrhhh. We were not afraid but unlike wild dogs, home dogs could spend the whole night barking at intruders whom they think are invading their space.... Finally, we set the tent a bit further, right behind a what we thought at first an abandoned house.

The owner, answered to our request (we always try to ask whether we and our tent would bother someone) by inviting us home, offering us tea, fruits, bread cheese... and sausage!!!! We didn't expect this "answer" nor the "pork". Turkmen definitely were not very religious. The neighbors, as the two young men the night before, hastened to help me bringing the water, showing the way to the bathroom, to enquire whether we needed anything... At the same time, they stayed discret and gave us our needed space "Turkmenistan is soooo relaxing after Iran", one cyclist fellow had said.

From our camping spot, we had a wonderful sunset, unfortunately, our photography skills are not good enough to capture all these magnificent colors.

Saturday, May 23th, 188km and 11h of rolling from 6AM to 9:30PM

The alarm rang at 4:30 AM, it was still dark but we were determined to cross the border in the morning and to reach Bukhara as soon as possible. We expected to make some 150 km that day (but as you see, we under-estimated the distance a great deal!)

(some encounter on the road)

After a "breakfast for champions" of 400gr of pasta (!!!!) we set our peddle at 6AM. It was fresh, no wind, the road, as usual, was flat but I felt weak with a horrible chest pain. It got better slowly but then, the wind rose and to change a bit, we had it right on the face (The wind rises, we must try to survive!!!). The last bit to the border was really challenging and we got there only around noon, after covering some 90km.

(a village on the desert way: flat, hot and dry)

We got stuck at the Turkmen border because the man in charge of the X-ray machine was at lunch break!!!! What a limpid explanation that the young solder gave us. But we didn't accept to wast two hour waiting and protested and protested again. In English, in Russian, with hands, facial expressions.... until he got bored and went looking for some superior. The man, apparently annoyed to be disturbed, asked a few questions "do you have drugs? guns?" and didn't even bother to open our bags but was surprisingly interested in our tiny Holy Bible in Russian - a gift from Vlad's family in Armenia. He checked over and over again, probably afraid that we would be some Witnesses of Jehovah under cover (we met some of them near Mary and ran away as soon as they introduced themselves... ).

The custom service on the Uzbek side was more into medicine stuff and checked all my pills.... But everything was smooth and we finished all the blablabla and entered the Uzbek land only 2.5 hours later.

Here ended our Turkmenistan experience.

We spent the rest of the day rolling and rolling and rolling till 9:30 to reach Bukhara. We were quite skeptical about our goal when we saw "Buxoro: 97km" outside the border. But we kept going on.

We cheered ourselves up by asking mutually "hey baby, where do you want to sleep tonight?" "In a hostel, with a real soft bed" "yeah baby, what do you want to do tonight?" " I want a real fresh shower and a COLD beer!!!!".

I guessed the beer was the biggest argument for all our efforts!!!!

We ended the day, completely exhausted but we took time to savor every drop of our cold beer. Anyway, my wish of the day was to NEVER EVER break this record again!!!!

Stay tuned for more Potatoes coming updates!!!

Mythical Iran

Tuesday, April 7th

We crossed the border quite smoothly. The custom service on Iranian side greeted us with a big smile " Welcome to Iran", the second one added " How do you find Iran?" "Eeeeuuuh we don't know yet!!!!"
The change between Armenia and Iran was radical. The day before, we were in the mountain with snow and cool air. Now, we were stricken with the heat and the dry air. Desert here you are!!!!
Even the sceneries changed fundamentally. We loved the combination of ochre mountain, blue sky and green field along the way.

On the other side of the river, we could still see Armenia and also (a part of) Azerbaijan. Some Armenian soldiers were so enthusiasts when we showed them our bag with the "Forget-me-not" flower (symbol of the genocide 100th anniversary) that we still heard their greetings for a while.

The first two days in Iran drained the last force out of us: the road was a successive chain of 10% up and down, then up and down again... which was much more energy consuming than a big pass of 10%, even 12% for two hours. Remember, we were already exhausted from our last adventure in Arktash a from the Meghri pass. Moreover, we had strong opposite wind. It seems like Eole doesn't like us much: so far, he kept challenging us much more than helping us. The heat didn't help neither. And no fresh food.... The moral was down, especially mine. I even didn't feel the strength to curse the road or the wind (as I did sometimes in Armenia!!!).

The second evening,  we arrived at Marand. We had been warned long before so we were not surprised when a guy approached and invited us home. Akbar, from Warm Shower, indeed catches all the cyclists, as he is connected with millions of truck drivers who "stalk" any cyclist coming to Marand.

After 3 years, Akbar had greeted more then 500 cyclists - we were the 538th and 539th on his address book!!! AND I AM THE FIRST VIETNAMESE EVER!!!! YEAHHHHH

Akbar sent us to a English class where his friend taught a bunch of young boys. We didn't expect it and didn't really know how to "behave", especially to sensitive matters such as "you wear the hijab (not because you respect our rules but) because you have to" or "what do you think about our Supreme Leader?" (as we saw later, his pictures were just omnipresent)  or "what do you think about the Americanization in Europe?". Most of the questions were more "gentle" but also difficult i.e "how much was your salary in Paris?".

Our first statement was apparently, Iranians like titles and diplomas. The first question to which we were entitled was "what is your educational degree?". The fact that Alessio didn't go to University confused the assembly a bit but my 2 Masters reassured them. It is very common for a Iranian to introduce himself as a "businessman" whatever tiny shop he owns. And a cyclist friend of us, bicycles mechanics in real life, saw himself be called "Mr Engineer".

The second statement, confirmed along our stay, was that Iranians seemed to have a kind of complex about their image: they are persuaded that people outside Iran think Iranians are all terrorists and definitely not of good acquaintance. We remember this guy from Hamedan, asking what we had known about Iran before our arrival. We talked about the long history, richness of culture, people's generosity... and he exclaimed out loud " No no no, you didn't know that!!!! You though we were all dangerous terrorists". Hey man, do you think we are crazy enough to put consciously ourselves in danger?

Thursday, April 9th

All I could think about to cheer myself up was "We will have some days rest in Tabriz". On the road, a car stopped. A family got out, offered us "chai" which we accepted with joy. Then they offered us their home in Tabriz. Which we accepter with a greater joy. Their kindness made us fell better. Little did we know by then that we would spend wonderful time together and that they would be our Iranian family.
We felt right away comfortable in their lovely house, in the uphill part of Tabriz. Arash and Ashkan were so sweet, open-minded and fun. So were their parents. It was such a great pleasure doing nothing but staying in the salon or in the garden, talking, laughing, playing backgammon, feeling cared and loved.

Arash was a bit addicted to his phone (like I am) and his mom liked to joke "his phone is his family". We would never forget the moment when Arash excused himself before leaving the table to charge his phone "I'm sorry, my family is tired" :-) :-)

It was with a pinch at heart that we left them for Tehran. We still stay in touch as regularly as possible, hearing their laugh on the phone is always a moment of relieve for us.

Monday, April 13th

We arrived to Tehran with the night bus - very comfy. And started struggling. Cyclists usually don't like big city. Tehran is damn huge! As expected and feared, the traffic was simply insane!  Our hosts, one by one, let us down. The first one, at the very last minute, sent a SMS "Sorry, I have an emergency and am out of town now". Reza, the bike shop owner where we were at, had pity of us and brought us home. The second day, his friend, also on Warm Shower (should we call a warmshowerer or warmshowerist???) who agreed to host us, realized that we couldn't fit his schedule, we had an another night running around with just a tiny bag for changing clothes and towels - Reza, once more, organized an emergency crash plan for us.
It was only from the third night on that we had a proper place to stay, with Farnaz from Warm Shower who kindly accepted my SOS last minute request. Such a relieve to have to fix place to sleep in, and what a place: in a big, comfortable apartment in Sadaat Abat - a nice area, with a lovely host.

Tehran, the big hub for visas, is also a big hub for cyclists to meet up. Day by day, we met news cyclists, heard about some others... while queueing up at Embassies. We had four visas to apply for: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan and China so yes, we spent a lot of time in front of those Embassies gates.
By the way, our "Golden Palm" went to China Embassy for their service: quick and easy process, friendly staff.

- We didn't have to fight with travel agencies and their 50 passports each on the waiting list like in Uzbekistan Consulate Service - the security guard even asked them to let us pass before.

- We didn't have to fight and queue in front of a minuscule window as in Tadjikistan embassy but had a large waiting room (where women could even take off the hijab - we were in Chinese territory anyway!!!)

- We didn't have to go back again. Unlike from Tadjikistan embassy, Mr Consul never changed his plan, the employees were never too busy chatting, laughing to put the stamp on your passport.

The visas pilgrim was stressful and expensive but we finally had them all. The good thing was that we met a whole bunch of nice cyclists (all cyclists are nice hehe). We often had picnic at lunch time in the Niavaran park, at mid way between Embassies.

(with Tim and Karina and their bamboo bikes, from Germany to China, Gilles and Anais, ready for a 4, 5 years trip )

(Alexia and Daniel one year travel from Brussels to Kyrgystan , Stephania and Alessandro,on their tandem to China, and Maxime, le cyclochard)

It was also in Tehran that we met up again, 8 months later,  with David - my travel buddy from Panama - Columbia last summer. I was so happy to see him again that I forgave him not being a cyclist :-) :-)

(at my birthday (small) party)

POTATOES PLAYING THE TOURISTS

Tuesday, April 21st

We took a day bus to Isfahan - to take a look at the desert. And we were happy not to cycle: it was flat, dry, monotone and of course, super hot!

Isfahan was a very nice city, green, quiet, not so much trafic. We felt suddenly so relaxed that we loved it right away.

(Iranians LOVE to take pictures with tourists)

(the park was decorated with quotes from the Holy Q'ran"

(Beautiful Mosque at the Imam square)

(Entrance of the Friday Mosque)

(It's not common to see decoration with flowers and animals in a mosque)

As everywhere else, foreigners have to pay at least 5 times the price for locals. Iran became quickly an expensive destination, even not to visit every monument.

We spent the night at a Couch Surfing host. He asked me "Do you smoke?" " No, and you?" "Yes. Sometimes. Something". Ah ha!!! Actually, we thought he had taken some funny stuff before because he was kinda febrile while talking with us. Finally, it went OK :-). 

Officially, alcohol is forbidden in Iran (excepted for some local Christian Armenians) but under the table, you could find everything everywhere. Homemade beer and wine were quite popular because the "real stuff" was quite expensive.

The next day, we took a night bus to Shiraz: Tim and Karina were there and we could spend some time together. Karim kebab (he was very proud of his kebabs and advertised about it all the way) was our wonderful host who took great care of us during our stay. 

Karim took us to Persepolis. Such a  WOAUHHHH. worth every cent of the 150 000 rials!!!!

to Margoon waterfall

to his "garden house"

And of course, he prepared kebab for us. 

Indeed, it was among the best kebabs we ever tried in Iran!!! Karim, we miss you, and we miss your kebabs!!!!

Sunday, April 26th

We celebrated Alessio's birthday in Yazd, the city of  Zoroastrianism, one of the worlds oldest monotheistic religions. 

We loved Yazd, the mosques, the old town - classified "World Heritage" by UNESCO, the wind tours - a genius system since thousands years, to keep and ventilate fresh air in the desert.

 the Zoroastrianism temple with the eternal flame

and vestiges: here the tours of silence, where Zoroastrians used to let the dead bodies to be taken by the vultures

NATURE, PLEASE GIVE US SOME NATURE

Thursday, April 30th

We went for a 3 days trek with Tim and Karina, starting from Karaj. It coincided with a big weekend so we had all the troubles to get out of town. Fortunately, a guy, passing by, was intrigued with our presence, and decided to send us a van - to go where ever we wanted!!!
The only point was that, too worried to take care of us (maybe also to show off a bit), he stopped the van a little bit everywhere to show us some sightseeing, while all we wanted was to be alone with nature

At the end of the day, finally, we could fulfill our wish and be on our own

It was great to escape from the crowd, from the noise, from the sometime invading Iranian hospitality 

Our planned trek at the end was more like a big relaxing picnic but we enjoyed every moment of it

We were especially happy to share those moments with Tim and Karina, we knew that it would be long before we could be together again. It was hard to say goodbye, but such is life. 

KURDISTAN

Monday, May 4th

The night bus dropped us at Sanandaj at 6AM. It was fresh. We were glad to be on the bikes again, it had been a while and we did miss the peddling. Our first statement: Kurdish people are kind, very kind. They offered us tea, food... They invited us home without the confusing traditional taroof but we were too impatient to cycle to accept. 

The road was stiff. We expected it, we were in Kurdistan. But the wind was so strong. We hardly ever had such a powerful wind right on the face. But we insisted and kept going. 

Arriving the next day to Marivan, a guy stopped us and invited us home. Impossible de decline, especially when the police came and checked our papers, they noted everything down and asked "where are you staying in Marivan?" the guy jumped on his feet "my home, right?" " No, no, we would like to camp at the lake".

We had to promise him that if we don't like the lake, and we would go to his home. To be sure, he showed up at the lake and we had to be almost impolite to refuse his invitation. 

For sure, we would prefer to be alone sometimes

And the lake was peaceful

Did I say that the road was difficult? And very often in bad conditions. We made roughly 45-50km/day and were exhausted. But the sceneries were worth every effort

I cycled slowly at my pace and sometimes, Alessio had to wait for me 20mn at the top. At least, I made it :-) . At some point, approaching the top, gasping for breath, I saw a small crowd. Indeed, it was a bunch of 4 cars' passengers surrouding Alessio, the men on the first row, the women and kids were on the second circle around.

Seeing me, they all came next to the road, welcoming me with applause. Wouah!!! What a greeting, I smiled with all my teeth, forgetting my sweating and suffering. And in one second, the group was divided into two: the men came back to Alessio, women and kids grasped me. Camera flashed around. They all laughed when I took off my sunglasses. Yes, my tiny Asian eyes were source of amusement for them. A little girl, speaking surprisingly good English, was polite "You have beautiful eyes!"

(half the assembly) 

(Alessio, always seekeing for new friendship)

(Another encounter on the way)

We love Kurdish people, always joyful an generous. And we love their costume, much more colorful and sophisticated than what we could usually see in Iran

 Do we look good in Kurdish clothes? At least, it's much nicer than our cycling gear

Kurdistan was really a highlight in our stay in Iran. Probably because we could cycle around. But also because we met so many nice people, Jallah in his brothers, Neghrin and her family, Maria and her family... and above all, Rozhin, Siler and their sweet parents in Paveh.

THE END

Back to Tehran, we spent the last days, at Farnaz and Gael's place again. We were so grateful they hosted us with so much kindness. Gael, cyclist himself, gave us some useful advices for our trip.

Sunday, May 17th

We took the night bus to Mashhad, the last town one could reach with public transportation. Due to a miscalculation of my part, we only 2 days (and not 3) to cover the 180km to the Turkmenistan border. It's doable just a bit harder than expected, especially that, once again, we had Eole on the face.

We just though, maybe we could catch up with Gilles and Anais, as they would enter Turkmenistan on May 21st, just one day after us, and surely, they didn't miscalculate like I did... that we heard someone hailing on the other side of the road. As a French would say: When you talk about wolves....

The wind was strong but the road was quite flat. And empty. That's why we had to stop right away around 6PM, after some 80km, as soon as we spotted a "campable" place, well protected from the wind

The next day, we started with the rising sun to cover the 100km left to Mashhad. We camped in a park but the police came and "chased" us to the local of the Red Crescent - the place where almost all cyclists end up in Mashhad.

Here ended our Iranian journey. We hope to go back there one day and to cycle more in this beautiful country.

Stay tuned for more Potatoes' updates