Friday 21st June 2013<\/p>\n
Wake early as planned. Breakfast early as planned. Don’t leave early as planned, the Hildefender won’t start. Atle weaves his usual magic on it and solves the challenge, alarm will not send fuel to engine. Fancy electronic cars! We change plans, as we are leaving later. Won’t go to Ashqabad, so no beer. Head straight to Mashhad, the pilgrimage Centre of Iran, so no beer. <\/p>\n
Climb another 900 m. Scrubby grass and thorny trees. Rolling clouds over mountains. Stop for fuel. Man talks to Isabel, welcome to Iran. Finds out she is from England. “God bless your Queen. Queen Victoria”. Both sat navs say turn right, but the on board map shows turn left. Fancy electronic gizmos. Need to check which country we need malaria tablets for. Climb higher, large plateau, no trees here. Shame we are missing detours to see famous sights\/sites, but we now fully realise we are visa driven and all have different deadlines. So if we want to stay together we have to forge ahead. Hilde is a harsh task master. <\/p>\n
Stony desert now. Houses and mosques being built out of mud. Little boy on back of motor scooter, wearing Ronaldo shirt. 39 degrees in afternoon. Stop often to get cold water from fridge. Rationing the Coke. Miles and miles of windy, dusty conditions. Play silly games to keep each other awake – I spy something beginning with S, guess this tune Isabel is tapping out on the dashboard, and my head with an empty bottle. I am rubbish. Definitely a transportation day. I fill my Tilley hat with water to cool my head down.<\/p>\n
See camels grazing, so must be in the desert. Just driven 7,000km since leaving home. Can’t believe we will be in the first of the Stans tomorrow. Dead fox (desert). Atle asks several times during the day “How many foreign number plates have you seen?” And the answer is always the same. We still have millions of Iranian Rials, what can we spend them on as we can’t take them out of the country? Are there underground wells here, wheat is growing and there are fountains of water bubbling up in huge concrete troughs. A police caravan, several steps up from their usual hut or even portakabin. The thousands of photograph displayed in every village, town and city must be fallen heroes. Iran\/Iraq war perhaps?<\/p>\n
Maybe the Landy is full of flies because of the forgotten courgettes. Have to have windows open, and Isabel’s scarf keep blowing off. Asked her this morning if she minded wearing it. She said no, but it made her neck hot and squished her hair flat. Whole family on scooter. CB crackles “Who would like a beer so cold that condensation is running down the outside?” <\/p>\n
We stop at services. Full of families, pilgrims going to Mashhad this holiday weekend. There is a large pond with paddle boats in. We buy frozen water and lollies like Magnums. Yum. We attract a large crowd, who want pictures of the car, themselves and us. Decide not to go to Mashhad, we would probably not get a hotel room anyway. Feel ok to carry on near to border, and maybe even cross tonight. Will have to wash the cars before we can get into Turkmenistan, by law. What would they make of Hereford or Cornwall mud?<\/p>\n
Not many people travelling in our direction now. Light is softer, temp cooling down and we are dropping below 1,000m for the first time since we entered Iran. Will be a bit of a shock if we leave tonight, not prepared for it. May stay in Sarakhs. See when we get there. Only 100km from an old Soviet Bloc country. More military presence as we near the border. Run out of fuel in main tank, on steep hill. Fill from extra tank. Atle says hurry up, he wants a pint across border. <\/p>\n
Sun suddenly goes down. Shepherds here have very weather beaten faces, and look different from other Iranians in dress as well. Stop for last fill up, the lads spill fuel out of each tank. We decide to press on to the border. Hard driving at night. Drive up to border post, SHUT. Never mind, we had driven past the swanky looking Hotel Doosti. They have rooms. The place is like many hotels we have come across – stunning looking from the outside and a time warp inside. But we look at a fascinating scrap book with notes, photos and momentos from people who have stayed previously. Many of them are cycling the Silk Route. <\/p>\n
Sit in parlour drinking tea. No Internet, so can’t update blog tonight. Shame as we have just caught up with ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday 21st June 2013 Wake early as planned. Breakfast early as planned. Don’t leave early as planned, the Hildefender won’t start. Atle weaves his usual magic on it and solves the challenge, alarm will not send fuel to engine. Fancy electronic cars! We change plans, as we are leaving later. Won’t go to Ashqabad, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3bX1q-6Q","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}