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Zen godverdomme

Two and a half weeks ago we arrived in Chengdu, and funnily enough we are still here. It’s been good to settle into this megacity for a while and to feel like a local instead of a nomad. The reason for our stop was not so nice unfortunately.

Chinese medicine

Cyril got an acute hearing problem and needed to be treated in the hospital. Two weeks ago we went to Huaxiba International Hospital where Cyril got diagnosed with sudden deafness, a weird condition that needs immediate treatment to have a chance of recovery. Luckily the hospital and the prescribed treatment were excellent and his hearing is almost back to normal. A special big thank you to our new friend nurse Zhang! She performed the daily injections and invited us for a lovely day out with her family last weekend.

Going to a Chinese hospital is (just like traveling on the train) an interesting experience. On the first day we ended up in a chaotic A&E. Waiting times of a few hours, nobody who spoke English, a confusing system of payments, receipts and other procedures we didn’t quite get. Cyril got the medical advice to come back for daily medicine transfusions. In addition to this he got prescribed the more holistic advice of cheerful demeanour, a lot of sleep and no more meat, only vegetarian food. Luckily he could continue treatment in the International Hospital next door. Staff here speak English so we could actually understand what was happening. This is the place where important government officials, rich people and Western long-haul cycling bums go if they need treatment.

Since the treatment only took an hour every day and Cyril was not in pain we got the opportunity to kick back and relax for a while.

Zen, godverdomme!

So there we are, forced to stay in Chengdu for one week. Forced to slow down to an absolute standstill after months of being on the move. We feel we are both quite tired so we listen to the doctors advice and sleep a lot. As one of Cyrils friends says: Zen, godverdomme!

It’s a gigantic city but there are not that many tourist highlights, which helps a lot with our mission to do as little as possible. Since I am recovering fast from my cold I tick off the not-to-be missed highlights in the mornings while Cyril gets his treatment. Panda’s, temples, Tibetan culture and more great food. I do eat a ducks head but don’t feel brave enough to try the chicken claws.

After one week Cyril gets the advice to continue the treatment for another week. This is good news because it means the treatment is working, but it is bad news because we were eager to get going again. We settle in for another lazy week at our hotel. We have stopped over in cities before but never before have we been this slow, we were always out and about, trying to do and see as much as possible.

Chengdu highlights

Giant Panda Research Base

The panda’s are much cooler than I expected. I get up at 6am, to be there for their feeding time and to beat the tourist hordes. The Giant Panda Research Base is beautiful, with lanes meandering through bamboo forests. I wander around until I’m eye to eye with two panda’s who are munching on bamboo. Later I find more, climbing trees and playing, rolling around and pushing each other. They are super entertaining.

But I think I love the bushy tailed Red Panda even more:

Little Lhasa

Most people in the West know of Tibet and the Dalai Lama. The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army annexed Tibet in 1951 and came to an agreement with the then 15 year old Dalai Lama. In 1959 however the Dalai Lama fled, denounced the agreement and established a government in exile after Tibetan uprisings against the oppressive Chinese rule. Some 6,000 Tibetan monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and thousands of people died during the Great Leap Forward and the retaliation after the Tibetan uprising of ’59. For most Westerners it would appear that the Tibetans are virtual prisoners of the Chinese government ever since.

It is strange then, to see a whole tranquil Tibetan neighbourhood in a quintessential Chinese city. Most of the 60.000 Tibetans living in Chengdu’s Little Lhasa are not from the Tibetan Autonomous Region but from Tibetan prefectures in the surrounding Chinese provinces. They are one of the 56 recognised ethnic groups living in China and as such free to practice there culture.

There are shops selling Tibetan buddhist paraphernalia, monks wander around, restaurants serve momo and yak butter tea. The same thing however happens in these Tibetan provinces as in Xinjiang: Han Chinese are encouraged to move to the Tibetan regions, roads are being built, their culture gets ‘disneyfied’ in a similar way as we saw in the Kashgar Old Town.

For non-Chinese it is difficult to obtain visa for Tibet, but Chinese are of course free to go. It is popular with Chinese bicycle travellers. Our warmshowers host Zhu has cycled to Lhasa, and we are envious when we see the pictures of her trip.

Local nomads

In the evenings we meet up with some great locals, mostly other cyclists who stopped over in Chengdu and decided to stay for a year. They are earning good money for the rest of their trip by teaching English. Scott & Sarah, Rae, Sean and Robin make us feel like locals by providing a great instant social life. We see some of our cycling friends from the Pamirs come and go as well.

Time

It is very odd to be settled into some sort of urban routine for two weeks after half a year on the road. We have never stopped this long before, and never before have we done so little. This does something strange to our sense of time, and after two weeks it is hard to tell how long we have been here. Cycling feels like a lifetime away. I am tempted to stay here too and find a job, if only the air pollution wasn’t so bad. Eventually we decide we will move out of our Hotel California and go to a warm showers host, to get off our lazy butts and to get closer to the cycling vibe again.

Traversing megapolis Chengdu

We cycle 20km South and find we are still very much in the city. Since Chengdu is home to about 14 million people it takes a while before you reach the edge of the city. Amsterdam is a quaint hamlet by comparison. This is the first time we physically experience a megapolis. Cycling through a city of millions is quite different from merely reading about it. Without the physical experience it is so hard to comprehend the consequences of this big scale urban fabric. It is exhilarating to cycle through the landscape that Le Corbusier envisioned: endless rows of high-rise apartment blocks stretch towards the smoggy horizon, surrounded by small patches of green, intersected by highways with separate lanes for cyclists and pedestrians. At the foot of the apartment blocks are eateries, gaming arcades, beauty salons. There are shopping malls. The lanes are wide and well organised but busy, it is noisy and the air is dirty. As we cycle South along such a high-rise highway we see a building frenzy going on all around us. New blocks are being erected everywhere, new houses for the millions. It is a breathtaking sight, it would be futuristic if it wasn’t happening right here and right now.

Small town Chengdu

Parallel to experiencing the enormous and seemingly inhuman scale of the city it is getting less intimidating as we are getting to know it better. We can now find our way around by bike, by taxi or by metro. We get a feel for the different neighbourhoods and find pockets of quiet and old fashioned living in-between the highrise. In our neighbourhood we start seeing familiar faces who we greet on our way to the metro station. We develop a taste for certain dishes and cafes. In one little park we see old people playing classical Chinese music. I try to dance along with the people who exercise some sort of line-dancing in the park every night. Every night we hear the particular chime of a street vendor when he comes through our street.

Streetlife nightlife

Chinese conversations

Chengdu is also the place where we meet some locals who speak good English. We make some friends and get some small but interesting insights in Chinese life at individual level. Just like in Iran it is not at all surprising that there are many contradictions and nuances. Even if we will never grasp all of this gigantic country with its many cultures and the consequences of its long and complicated history, maybe we got a tiny bit closer to understanding.

The government is widely supported and can take credit for making China an economic superpower. Many things have improved for a lot of Chinese people since Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution: literacy has increased enormously, as has life expectancy. There is now a middle class of 300 million people who gets to travel and enjoy the finer things in life. This stability and prosperity come with a price tag attached though. Crackdowns on separatist movements, severe restriction of freedom of speech, media and internet censorship and other blatant disregard for the basic human rights we generally take for granted. Another huge concern is the high level of air pollution in the big cities, even if China invests billions in clean energy.

When we meet up with nurse Zhang we also get to meet her mother and her mother-in-law. Nurse Zhang is our age. They are both lovely ladies and they are enjoying the time spent with their grandchildren. Nurse Zhang has brought her two children along; Parker is 9 years old, and Mei Mei (little sister) was born after the one child policy was lifted in 2015. We talk about how different China is today from what I saw 16 years ago. I mention I notice the prosperity and nurse Zhang says, yes, not so long ago there was hunger. Her mother and her mother-in-law experienced hunger during the economic reform (read: disaster) of the Great Leap Forward. It wasn’t just the Tibetans who suffered during that time: all of China did. It is estimated that between 18 million and 40 million people died during the campaign. I look at her elder family differently now, they have been through so much.

A few days later we meet Zhu, our twenty-something warm showers host. I try to practice my Chinese and tell her about our siblings. Wo you mei mei, wo you didi. I have a younger sister, I have a younger brother. Zhu and her flatmate tell me they have no siblings; they are from the one child policy generation. Together we watch the crazy news about Trump being elected president of the USA. They are the internet generation and very well informed. They do not agree with the strict internet censorship of the Chinese government. Apparently 70% of the Chinese people still lives in the countryside and doesn’t have more than primary school education. As a consequence they are quite easily led by the state controlled media. Educated people however know very well about news and opinions in the rest of the world and they are hoping for a gradual change in China.

China for the win

All in all I really like the China of today, even despite the obvious objections I have against a non-democratic government that violates human rights. There seems to be a renewed national confidence after the hardships of the last century and the future looks bright. Chinese culture is back en vogue with the Chinese after much of the classical imperial culture was stamped out during the cultural revolution. You can see this revival in the fashion, with detailing referring to classical hanfu and cheongsam clothes. Confucianism is experiencing a comeback. There are fancy tea shops where elegant hostesses perform a tea ceremony and you can find a tea that is fertilised with panda poo. Ultimately the rebuilding of previously destroyed Qing and Ming era neighbourhoods show this new nationalist reappreciation of the pre-communist past.

When I was here 16 years ago there was none of this, only some classical art forms such as calligraphy, Beijing opera and Chinese medicine had survived the cultural revolution, and of course there were the cultural treasures of the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors. But in everyday life on the streets it looked as if everybody wanted to emulate Western culture and not in a good way. It looked a bit cheap and not at all creative or interesting, as it does today. Of course this interest in Western culture and products is still here, with Starbucks and Zara in the highstreet and a Swiss watch and a BMW being the ultimate status symbols. But the Chinese are on a roll. They really no longer need our Western products to have an edge, they are making their own Chinese brand of cool.

The above observations are of course only applicable to life in the cities as we observed it in the last few weeks. I am really curious to find out about life in the countryside. That is where the majority of the Chinese still live, despite the rapid urbanisation that is happening here as it is in the rest of the world.

On our last evening in Chengdu we celebrate the birthday of Zhu’s flatmate. We sing Dutch birthday songs and we watch Chinese superstars sing on tv. We feel at home here. But, tomorrow we go back to our nomadic lives, on the road again, and into rural China.

When people ask what bike travel is all about

Asalom Tojikiston

The Tajiks speak a form of Farsi but it sounds a bit different from what we heard in Iran: Tajikistan becomes Tojikiston. Another difference from the Iranian Farsi is the fact that they use the cyrillic script, which is nice because now we can read the street signs. Russian is widely spoken but outside Dushanbe there are many local dialects.

When we were thinking or dreaming about Tajikistan we would always imagine the Pamirs, our skin crawling with fear and excitement. Pictures on blogs and instagram accounts of other cyclists showed desolate mountain peaks in crystal clear thin air, cyclists camping on endless high plains of barren earth, villagers in remote valleys. The Pamir Highway is not really a highway. It is a potholed gravel road which runs from Khorog on the Tajik-Afghan border to Osh in Kyrgystan, scaling several passes and reaching 4562m at its highest point on the Pamir plateau. It is the second highest road in the world, after the Karakoram Highway which runs from China into Northern Pakistan (not an option at the moment due to political unrest and kidnappings). I had never heard of the Pamir highway until we hosted Taneli through Warmshowers, and he put the idea of cycling this route East into our head.

Dushanbe

I don’t think we ever thought of Tajikstans capital Dushanbe when were dreaming about the Pamirs. That is, any thoughts beyond the need to do our food shopping and some other practical errands there before heading into the Pamirs. As we have found out before, discovering a place that we had zero expectations about is a really nice experience. The weather is lovely, warm and sunny during the day and cool at night but not yet cold. There are shops and bazaars that sell everything we could possibly need. There is beer! Very nice after our dry month in Iran. Dushanbe is small for a capital city and not too busy traffic-wise, with wide tree-lined avenues. The main drag Rudaki Avenue is lined with pretty and mostly well-maintained buildings, an eclectic mix of Asian, Soviet and Muslim influences. An airy open summer chaykhana (teahouse) overlooking a Persian style garden with a small pond in the middle, with a colourful cassette ceiling and almost muqarna-like capitals topping the high pillars. A modernist Soviet theatre that wouldn’t be out of place on Berlins Karl Marx Allee. A few Brutalist Soviet housing blocks, small enough to be actually quite charming. There is a cluster of neo-classicist university buildings plastered in the most brilliant shade of swimming pool blue with white hammer and sickle reliefs. There are also modern buildings going up, but fortunately they are well proportioned, not too outrageously kitsch and even despite the use of the ubiquitous horrible dark blue glass not too much of an eyesore. Because of the upcoming 25th indepence day celebrations there are Tajik flags and banners everywhere, depicting president Rahmon who appears to be (somewhat constipatedly) contemplating grain fields, stroking kids’ heads, inspecting the industry… you get the picture.

The Tajik people look decidedly different from the Iranians. Finer and slightly more Asian features, slender people with thick black or dark brown hair. The man mostly sport lego style bowl cuts, the women have long hair. Some still have uni-brows, once considered a sign of beauty. The school boys wear smart black trousers and slim black ties on pristine white shirts (prohibited in Iran!). Many women wear traditional garb: loose trousers, tight at the ankles, under a long loose tunic in the same fabric, with short puffy sleeves. The womens garments have very colourful prints, either in traditional ikat weaving or new synthetic designs embroidered with little pearls. They wear equally colourful headscarves tied around their hair but leaving the neck free. To me they look more decorative than restricting. We meet up with our friends Steven and Saule from Caravanistan, and from Saule I understand that not long ago modern Western dress was more prevalent on the streets of Dushanbe. But as many educated people leave the country more traditional (village) people are left to dominate the dresscode in the city. Traditional dress is further encouraged by the government in an effort to forge a strong and clear national Tajik identity. Not an easy task in such an ethnically mixed country and I don’t really like the idea of an imposed reactionary traditionalist nationalist dresscode. However I do like the clothes, so I have a set made by a tailor in the bazar.

One of the people of Dushanbe is Vero, a French woman who works for the EU. She has a wonderful house, surrounded by a large walled garden. We arrive here after dark, emotionally and physically exhausted after a long an stressful day. Completely drained from the effort to get our enormous pile of luggage from Tehran to Tajikistan. We did make it, but not without the generous help of two cycling Iranian brothers and the lovely staff of Tajik Air. When Vero’s night guard opens the gate for us we think we have arrived in cyclist heaven. A small collection of rose bushes and fruit trees on a grass field, a hammock, a house with a kitchen and bathroom generously offered to the cyclists who are welcome to camp in the garden. There are some Koreans, a Catalan couple and two French guys who show us around. Two turtles and a speaking parrot live in the garden. In the next few days we share beers and nerdy bike travel conversation with more cyclists who arrive. Some have done the Pamirs already and they give us useful tips about hot springs and road conditions. Verena and Jean we have met before, Steffi and Adriano are a Swiss couple we meet a day later, and we make plans to cycle the Pamirs together. Crossing the high peaks we have dreamed about for so long seem a little bit less scary at the prospect of doing them together with friends.

Independence day

We end up spending almost a week in Dushanbe. Not because we have things to do, but because we want to see the parades for the 25th independence day celebrations. The parade is a deception. No one knows when it will happen and in the end it transpires there are two parades; one military and one civilian. Rumours abound: the parade is delayed because Putin couldn’t make it on the actual indepence date! Putin never shows up, we would have known if he had as the presidents dacha is around the corner from our ‘home’ and there are no snipers on the roof. We find out when the parades are on because they are shown live on tv. We rush out to try and catch the second parade after we miss out on the 7am military parade. We miss the civilian as well and see its tail end disappear into the distance of Rudaki avenue. Later we find out that we wouldn’t have been able to get close to the parade despite several security checks we passed. Only a small number of vetted Tajik loyal supporters of the president got a certificate that allowed them to line the route of the parade. The whole operation (16.000 soldiers, 25.000 civilians) is put on to please president Rahmon and to look good on tv, and not an actual celebration for the people of Dushanbe. In fact, the involuntary participants of the parade have to fork out quite a bit of their own money to pay for their compulsory costumes.

Soviet spa

After having missed out on the chance of seeing a totalitarian dictator display his charade we go on an interesting excursion. Khodja obi Garm is a former Soviet sanatorium some 50km North of Dushanbe, in use since 1935. The spa is a stunning Brutalist complex nestled in a gorge almost 2000m above sea level. The spring waters are hot and naturally suffused with the radioactive radon gas. This is supposedly curative, but radon is in fact poisonous in large doses and a fairly common health risk as it is everywhere around us. We go with our new Swiss friends and check in. First we get served lunch in a big communal dining hall by traditionally dressed Tajik women. Veggie soup with lots of fat floating on top, dumplings in sour cream, even the menu here is vintage. I then start with a rough Russian massage. Kneading, slapping, knuckle grinding, scalp scratching, hair pulling and some really good vertebrae cracking. Then, into the hot radon pool.

It is quiet in the resort so we have the pool to ourselves, apart from Moheddin. He is a jolly Pamiri mountain man who used to sail the big seas and proudly shows us his sailor tattoo. The treatments are very relaxing and in the afternoon we get lulled to sleep by president Rahmon who on tv, endlessly droning on in front of an audience that manages to stay awake.

We are greatly enjoying ourselves in the sanatorium, especially when we discover a basement bar with beer and a pingpong table. After a good nights sleep in the spartan little room and a simple breakfast of baby porridge, bread and tea we do one more treatment. Steffi and I pick the ‘tsirkulyarniy dush’. This is a circular shower contraption spouting needle sharp jets of water from all around and apparently good for the circulation. As a bonus there is a chair with a hole in the middle and a jet underneath, so all our bits get the circulatory treatment. Cyril and Adriano disappear into another room and get to torture eachother with a superstrong jet stream, managed with a cool looking 60’s control panel. According to Cyril it’s the weirdest thing he has ever done with another guy. There are more interesting looking rooms where for instance you can have your head pulled back by a torturous looking helmet and leather strap contraption, but we have to head back to Dushanbe. I can definitely recommend this place to cyclists who come back from the Pamirs and need some regeneration.

Dushanbe, a small capital city of a small and remote country. What a nice surprise.

Persian conversation

(posted with a small delay, we have already arrived in Tajikistan and are spending a few days in Dushanbe)

We are currently speeding North on a luxurious sleeper train, from Shiraz to crazy hectic Tehran

From there we will fly to Tajikistan. Booking and paying for the train online went really well with the service of iranrail.net, highly recommended. The trip takes about 15 hours and we are sharing our 4 person cabin with a relaxed middle aged Persian couple from Shiraz. The man speaks a little English which he picked up during his studies as an electrical engineer some 40 years ago. We see the sun set over the desert, we share some of the food his wife has cooked and we talk a little bit. Apart from the usual questions about where we are from, if we are religious, if we are married and have children they are strangely preoccupied with what kind of sunscreen we use. Which brand? In which country is it made? Another question: do I wear any make-up? What do I do about my eyebrows? It´s a hilarious conversation full of misunderstandings. I end up pulling out my bag of toiletries, showing my minimalist make-up collection of powder, mascara and eyebrow pencil (hey, a cycling girl needs to feel she´s not entirely ´sauvage´ every now and again) Marzieh doesn´t use make-up but she tries my Chanel perfume, much to her husbands delight. Is it for men or for women? How much does it cost? Who from the two of us is French? Not French? But Chanel is from Paris?

Apart from chitchat we have some time to reflect. It´s been quite a month, traveling around this special country. On the one hand we are sad to leave. The people and the overall vibe have been amazing. The Dutch are always proud to have the word ´gezellig´, meaning something like conviviality. Well, the Iranians have the concept of ´gezelligheid´ down to a T, and much more so than the Dutch! We have stayed over at the houses of strangers who have quickly become good friends. We have had many short conversations in the street, starting with a smile and a hello and sometimes ending in great conversation about politics, religion, life, everything under the sun. Discovering beautiful nuances and contradictions in the many different ways one can be muslim. For instance the girl I speak to on the bus who squeezes her preference for hejab and a love for all things Hollywood and Taylor Swift into one sentence. We have had cups of tea with a family camping at a bus station and carpet sellers in a bazaar. We have been invited for lunch and an afternoon nap with another family. We have camped in a park between other camping families who were all cooking enough food to feed an army. We have been flirted with, whispered, ogled, laughed and smiled at as we were wandering around the busy bazaars or hanging out in the parks. Some people approached us because they could speak freely with us, without fear of being reported. They would launch fierce critical attacks on the government and religion. There have been some beautiful moments where it was possible to communicate without any words at all; when an older woman during prayer time at a mosque expertly rearranged my awkwardly adjusted chador before taking it off me with a big ´nah, why even bother´ smile and a hug. We have enjoyed the gentle and polite curiousity and ease of connecting with people enormously.

Marzieh has more questions, her husband translates. Your rings, what are they made of? We got two (fake) wedding rings in Tblisi. I tell her they are made of bronze. Not gold? Hmm. No gold ring, but my husband has a heart of gold, I tell her with gestures. Awww. Her husbands heart is made of iron, haha.

The nighttrain from Shiraz to Tehran has a restaurant car and we see a Persepolis rock tomb glide by from behind purpe velveteen curtains and plastic tulips. We end up being interrogated by a group of teachers who are on their way to a conference in Tehran. They are great fun, apart from the serious advice to spend one hour every day reading the Koran. In between the hundreds of questions (Dutch taxes, salaries and pensions etc etc) and selfies one of them recites famous Persian poetry for us, beloved by all Iranians. Something along the lines of ‘your hair makes me cry. Your eyebrows are like fire. Your eyes pierce my heart’. We will miss these people who are rightly proud of their rich history and culture.

There are also some things we will leave behind that will be quite a relief. I will not for one second longer than is absolutely required by the Iranian law wear the headscarf. I will not miss being treated like a second class citizen. As a woman I am often ignored in conversation, not allowed to shake hands or directly speak with men, required to sit in the back of the bus and to use different entrances and spaces in mosques. I never expected the hejab to be such a nuisance until I was obliged to wear it every moment I stepped outside. It is hard to explain what is so annoying about a piece of fabric around your head but just the fact that it is always there, how it subtly limits your hearing, vision and range of motion and how you are forever checking if it is still in place. Especially this last bit really got to me. I was constantly checking if my head was covered even though I do not agree with the patronizing idea that women are like delicate flowers that need special protection. Or sweets that need a wrap to protect them from flies, as one hejab promotion poster showed. From our easy lives in the West it is so nice and easy to think you will be the rebellious and the brave one when push comes to shove. Then when I do find myself in a situation where the law requires me to give up some of my precious personal freedom I do so with just about zero resistance, apart from writing a blogpost about it. Grrr. The opinion about hejab in Iran is divided; some people love it, as one male taxi driver confessed after he asked me how I felt about it. Other people, men as well as women, hate it and even go as far as to apologize to me for having to put up with it in their country. There are as many different ways to wear it as there are women. From a gauzy piece of nothing over a heavily made-up face to women wrapped in an all black head-to-toe chador, held with the teeth so she has her hands free to carry the shopping underneath her tent. Apart from the monitoring of my appearance we will not miss the monitoring of our internet use either, which we worked around by using a VPN tunnel with the excellent ExpressVpn app. Despite us pertinently not agreeing with it, actually experiencing the dark force of state control has been an interesting experience.

In the morning Marzieh is fervently praying, whispering koran verses. Her husband looks pained and complains his wife is way too religious. He says it would be better if they were more of a match in this respect. Marzieh offers a beatific smile to her husband with the iron heart.

Marziehs husband also wants to talk. He, together with many others we spoke with, is concerned about his country. People worry about the ever worsening drought and the poor economy caused by the sanctions. People everywhere tell us that the dry riverbeds we see would normally have some water at the end of the summer season, but that the water is becoming less and less every year. Climate change is a real problem here, but at the same time everybody uses airconditioning and polluting cars. A lot of people mention the state of the economy and how it affects them. The sanctions have serious implications for the lives of normal people here. The sanctions mean for instance that it is impossible to use (American) bank- or credit cards, so trade is virtually impossible and the carpet sellers cannot export unless they have a trustworthy foreign partner who can take payments for them abroad. People complain about the poor quality of goods they have to buy, such as Chinese made cheap plastics and Iranians pride Paykan cars. Customer service, insurance and state support are at best unreliable if at all existent, leaving people stressed out and overworked. Men are trying to provide for their families as best as they can by working mutiple jobs. Considering the difficulties the Iranians face in their everyday lives it is even more amazing to experience their incredible warmth and cheerfulness.

When we get off the train in Tehran we say goodbye to Marzieh and her husband. Another fabulous couple who have made us feel at home in Iran. We are on our way to meet a couchsurfing host in Tehran and then we will finally be reunited with our bicycles. They have been peacefully resting at Hoseins place, our first host in Iran. Soon we will be done with the easy life and get to work. The Pamirs are waiting!