Good News - Setting off on an 18 Year Adventure

We promised the people of Asia that we would do the trip, and then go home and have babies. We have delivered on that promise, or at least Georgie has delivered. All is well with us, Georgie is smiling after the ordeal and the baby is well.

Simon and Oscar

Georgie started labour last Friday morning, we were in hospital at 3.30 on Friday afternoon, just before the snow fell. We tried for a natural birth until 9am on Saturday, when it became obvious that the baby wasn't descending properly - cause unknown - and the baby was starting to get distressed. We decided that a caesarean section was safest for baby and mum. At 10.13am the baby boy - Oscar Baatar McCarthy - was born and the reason for the difficulty became obvious - he was 9lb 15oz (4.5kg) - he was stuck!!

I got to hold the baby (big, blond, blue eyes) for 30 mins while Georgie was repaired. I got to see him open his eyes for the first time - poor soul having me as the first thing he sees!!

Georgie and Oscar

Yawning

Chilled

I have some recovering to do myself, and then some cleaning.

And why the daft names - well Oscar was nick-named 'Ozzy' before birth (Ozzy Unborn) and Oscar seemed to stick well with that nick-name and Baatar is the Mongolian word for 'Hero' (Ulaan Baatar – the capital of Mongolia – is names after Sukhbaatar, the ‘Red Hero’).

Simon (happy and still shaking)

More News - November 2005

We have 2 pieces of very good news we’d like to tell you all.

The most important is that Georgie is now pregnant – the baby has already been exposed to the throb of a BMW engine – got to get that training in early!! The baby is due in February 2006 – we’re both very excited, but scared - this big adventure is more difficult to back out of than the last!

Secondly, the travelogues of our trip to Japan and back have been published as a 360 page book, along with lots more previously unpublished stories, dozens of colour photos, 160 black and white photos, maps, etc. Have a look at:

www.sorebums.net

Thankfully the reviews are good:

“It's an excellent read, very natural and genuine. Recommended!”

“a great read for every real GS'er”

We hope to see you all on a trail somewhere or you can give us a wave as you pass the baby-clothes shop.

Simon and Georgie

Coming Full Circle and Coming Home

Leaving Iran marked the ‘end of the unknown’ for our trip; but not the ‘end of the unfamiliar’. Spending a year and half in Asia had changed us and allowed time for things to change back in Europe. So this chapter is unusual in that we deliberately didn’t write it on the road; in fact it wasn’t completed until almost a year later. Before and during the trip we had talked to many travellers and heard about the problems that they had readjusting to normal life after their travels. Many people couldn’t settle into the hum-drum life at home and would return to the road again. We realised that the story of our journey would not end on our return to the UK but would stretch out until ‘all the strangeness of home seems normal again’. This chapter includes many observations about how we adjusted to the ‘weird life of Europe and home’…

One advantage of having a border crossing on top of a mountain range is you can bump-start your bike when the starter motor has just failed. Such a positive mental attitude was brought on by the knowledge that we were finally on the last leg of the journey and a cold beer was waiting on the campsite a few kilometres away.

That cold beer did greet us, did taste good and did go straight to our heads after six weeks of abstinence. We spent a few nights at a campsite that is famous with overlanders on the ‘hippy trail’ to India. Perched on a cool hill above the grotty garrison town of Dogubayazit (‘Dog-Biscuit’ to those in the know) the campsite hosts many long distance travellers as well as hardy souls about to scale Mount Ararat. We lazed around, visited the local castle and patched up the starter motor that had shed its magnets (just like the previous one had done a year before). The repaired starter managed to spin the engine about 50% of the time and lasted until we got to Milan in Italy where the bike got a very expensive and well deserved brand new starter motor.

The Castle at Dog Biscuit

I started to look for the ‘ghost of holidays past’, expecting a creeping desire to get home as quickly as possible; I often feel a pull as strong as a rubber band once the exciting part of the holiday is over. But this time things were easier; there was little at home to pull us back in a mad rush and we had a fixed schedule of visits to old friends through Europe.

The south-eastern corner of Turkey was significantly different to the parts we had been in before. The area was far less populated and the local Kurds seemed to share the feistiness of their Iranian neighbours. That area was one of only three or four on the whole trip where the local kids had used us for stone throwing practice.

Riding high over volcanic ridges, we headed for two sites called Nemrut Dagi, both supposedly associated with Nimrod, the architect of the Tower of Babel. The first Dagi was a volcanic caldera, providing a scenic campsite and a hot spring to bath in; we were clean again but smelled of sulphurous eggs. Onto the second Dagi to see an ancient temple complex and massive carved stone heads, followed by a steamed apple pudding made with fruit picked from the trees that shaded our tent.

Sculptures at Nemrut Dagi

We knew that the most logical way to get across the huge expanse of Turkey was to follow the southern coast, whilst trying to avoid the belt of holiday resorts. Several overlanding friends had warned us about the shock of seeing towns full of sunburned tourists so we shot along the motorways and bypasses, towards Olympos where we had stayed more than a year before. The guesthouse owners were surprised to see us again; Suliman the waiter was delighted and the owner was as grumpy as ever. I asked about the whereabouts of the owner’s cute white rabbit that we had petted the previous year: oh, what a tragedy... At the end of the previous summer a neighbour’s dog had taken to chasing the rabbit, so Suliman had taken the rabbit home to his village in the hills. Unfortunately a vicious cat took a fancy to rabbit meat and killed the rabbit; subsequently Suliman’s father shot the cat. Life in the raw!

We made our way to the western end of Asia and the port of Cesme where we had arrived sixteen months before. We almost managed to sneak through customs with an expired Carnet document, but a keen eyed official noticed the mistake and after a few hours Georgie informed me that we would have to pay a $5,000 dollar fine. I pretended to hand over the keys to the bike and after a few laughs, the customs officials waded into their rule-books and (amazingly) through the Turkish Customs Intranet pages; I wondered how long we had been away! Throughout the process a quiet old bloke acted as our interpreter and when I told him that we feared that the boat would leave without us, he told us, “don’t worry, I am the Port Manager and I authorise the Pilots to take the ship out. I won’t allow the Pilots onto the boat until you are on board.” We love the Turks!

The Intranet site presented a solution and we paid over a much more reasonable $50 fine. Fate was stepping in again, as $50 was the exact amount we had saved on the ferry tickets by using the bogus ‘Journalist’ identity cards we’d bought in Bangkok. What goes around comes around!

Two days on the boat and we approached Ancona in Italy, which to our delight turned out to be a lot prettier than we had imagined. And then up to Milan to meet Alessandro and Francesca, the overlanding couple we had met in Iran. In the time it had taken us to plod to Milan, they had ridden to India, helped to build a school, visited a family that they sponsor and flown home, leaving their bike to be shipped from Mumbai. Milan was a proper reintroduction to Europe. We arrived on Sunday and had to fight through a traffic queue to get off the motorway, and as if to tell us that ‘some things don’t change’; the queue was caused by people trying to get into IKEA. Our hosts started a trend of friends who were outrageously glad to see us home and sought to make up for the dirt and variable cuisine on the road by washing all our gear and feeding us huge amounts of fine food.

Food fest in Milan

Probably one of the longest lasting shocks involved with coming home was the weather in Europe. We had enjoyed and endured more than a year in hot climates with just a few heavy downpours and a couple of snowy days in Japan, but we assumed that our bodies would easily readjust to the colder climate. When locals in those hot countries had seen us walking around enjoying the odd spot of rain I had joked that “Englishmen are born waterproof and with antifreeze instead of blood”. But from the moment we left Milan and entered the Alps, we knew that our bodies had changed beyond belief. A couple of days in the Swiss Alps brought us back to camping on damp earth and forced us to buy new thermal underwear. The effect of the cold turned out to be much more severe than we had anticipated. Even though the subsequent winter was not particularly severe, we had to keep the central heating on high and I took to wearing a hat around the house.

I had forgotten how beautiful Switzerland is, but we both remembered how arduous it can be walking up and down mountains; we took the cable-car up one hill, walked along the top, picnicked on chocolate and cheese, and then took the funicular back down to the valley below.

Swiss Picnic

To the German border, where we encountered the first and last real challenge to the Enfield’s paperwork. “Where was this vehicle registered?” led to a twenty minute interrogation about the provenance, insurance and customs duty of Georgie’s bike. I had forgotten that the section of the German/Swiss border we had chosen to cross is notorious for giving motorists a hard time. To the west of Lake Konstanz the border twists and turns, with roads repeatedly cutting across the border. Germans often work on the Swiss side and know the backroads that avoid the border crossings and the spot checks often imposed on vehicles from the neighbouring country. We eventually satisfied our German border guard that we knew the law, did have insurance cover (even though the paperwork was still in the UK) and we would be paying the custom’s duty back in the UK.

Southern Germany was another wonderland, with smart people cycling and roller-blading through orchards full of ripe apples. We returned to see my old boss Ingfried and his family. More wonderful food, cycling to a village fair and smoking a Turkish water pipe with their son Marc. I let Marc ride the BMW, and thankfully his parents didn’t explode in fear of the consequences.

Next to Nuremberg, to meet our old friend Sabine and to visit the World War Two memorials. The gods smiled on us again. While Georgie took photos of me goofing off pretending to be Hitler on the platform from where he viewed the Nuremberg Rallies, I put my GPS down so as to get a fix on the platform’s location. And then I wandered off without picking up the GPS. That’s the GPS with all the waymarks and routes we had collected over the past seventeen months: I hadn’t backed it up at any time on the trip! It took thirty minutes for me to realise my mistake and I tore back to see if there was a one in a million chance that it was still there. I noticed a group of school-kids as I ran along, possibly the same school-kids that I’d seen from Hitler’s platform. It was worth a punt, so I ran to their teacher and… realised that I don’t speak German (except for the words necessary for ordering beer, food and petrol). So I babbled in English, explaining that I had “left a piece of electronic equipment up at the platform, and have your kids seen anything?” “What sort of equipment did you lose?” I fell back on the description I had used for the past 17 months “it was an electronic compass”. “Ah, a Garmin?” she asked, correctly identifying the fact that I was oversimplifying things for her and putting a brand name to my GPS; we were definitely back in the west! And lo, one of the lads had found it, and handed it over and in return I gave him the only small notes I had; fifteen Euros, made up of five Euros that we saved at the museum by using our dodgy student cards bought in Bangkok, and ten Euros we’d found on the ground right by the ticket counter. What goes around come around, yet again.

Spot the GPS?

Into Belgium for the first time on this trip, the ghost of Georgie’s old job in Brussels was laid to rest as we visited her old boss Roel and family. That’s where we were struck by a change that had happened while we were away. When we left, dial-up internet connection was the norm, and when we returned broadband connection had been taken up by the professional types we were staying with. Back in Europe we were repeatedly laughed at when we asked friends “can we use your PC to get our emails and can you log on for us” only to be shocked by the reply “just switch on, it’s logged on all the time”. They’ll be making bikes with fuel injection next!

Before the final leap over the channel to England I had a bone to pick with two girls from Gent. Iris and Trui were a major factor in Georgie’s decision to buy a bike and ride it home from Nepal. I decided to ‘let the girls off’ as Georgie and her worrisome bike had made it home safely. Cat and Luc, who we’d met on the way out in Turkey, came for a meal with the four of us; circles within circles.

Tough biker chicks and their ice creams

It was around that time that I realised that the return to Europe was not turning out to be the terrifying and shocking experience that we had feared. For the past seventeen months we had dealt with ‘a hundred bizarre things’ every day. Now the prospect of meeting relatives again, arriving home, getting jobs, etc. just seemed like ‘yet more bizarre events to deal with’; some we would plan for whilst others would jump out at us. But at least future bizarreness would be in familiar circumstances and we’d be able to address it using English rather than murdering someone else’s language.

The only way to return to the UK after a monumental undertaking is to sail into Dover; airports and other seaports just don’t compare to the sight of the white cliffs. Tears and lumpy throats welled up as we sat on the ferry from Calais to Dover.

Fearing that the UK customs officers might pull us for not paying import duties on Georgie’s Indian-made Enfield we had taped over the Nepali number plate on the front, which was written in Urdu. And fate dealt us another good hand; there had been a couple of British bike Rallies over in Holland that weekend, and so we disembarked along with a group of legal British bikes and sneaked back into the country.

Soremums - no more

The next few days were a blur of relatives and fine food. The animosity that Georgie’s mum had felt towards the Enfield was forgotten, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief having fulfilled my undertaking to get Georgie home safely. Let’s say that again. “Oh yay, oh yay, WE GOT HOME SAFELY”. What a good feeling. The total number of falls from the bikes was about eight for me and about three for Georgie, with the fastest being at about 20kph. I know people who would be happy to have so few ‘offs’ during a Sunday afternoon’s dirt riding!

The weight piled on somehow

And finally to Manchester where my house seemed to be exactly as I had left it, except for the balloons and welcome home bunting that the neighbours had taped up a week before. My brother Pad had told them the date that we were due to hit the UK, but omitted to mention that we’d be staying with family in London and the Cotswolds on the way up. So the house had been flagged as ‘they haven’t arrived home yet’ for a week. Luckily the local house-breakers seemed to have been on holiday.

Out with the bunting

And that was it, done. Kettle on, feet up on the sofa, put the telly on. “Job jobbed”, as my Mum would say.

Except that wasn’t quite ‘it’. We had all those ‘getting back to normality’ things to address. So almost a year after getting home, how did it go?

A key reason for getting home when we did was to arrive in time for my Mum’s 60th birthday; we arrived ten days before, which shows that the planning did come together in the end. What we didn’t plan for was my Dad being in hospital, nearing the end of a 10 year struggle against diabetes. A month after our return home he lost the struggle and died in his hospital bed with his wife and all his kids around him. We got home just in time.

The British winter drew in; not a particularly severe winter, but it really cut us to the bone. It seemed that our metabolisms had changed to tolerate the high temperatures we’d endured for the past eighteen months, and we were cold even once we remembered to wear more clothing.

Eating more helped to drive out the cold, but the rich western diet on top of more efficient bodies and a sedentary lifestyle soon drove our weights up. I returned to being the 100 kilogram monster that I was before the trip and Georgie grew heavier than she had ever been before. We faced up to the need for a disciplined approach to food, rather than the ‘eat whatever you can’ approach you can get away with on the road. One exception to the abstinence was an increase in Georgie’s home-made curries, using freshly mixed and ground spices; the trip was an inspiration.

Cars were bought; well actually one was exchanged for a case of beer, and we’re not sure if that was a good deal.

Then into the job market. One pledge that we made to each other was “we will get normal jobs that don’t force us to be away from home”, after five months of trying (and a short burst of working a in a call-centre – arghh!) I succeeded in the quest. Georgie was less fortunate and ended up having to get a consultancy job (which she loves) that takes her away from home (which we both hate).

Being back in the UK and in a work situation made us face one side-effect of travelling. We had become adept at discussing simple concepts in simple language; perfect for feeding ourselves and conversing with locals. But back home we were expected to discuss complex ideas using elegant language, but it seemed that our intellects had seized up through lack of exercise. It took months to get back up to a reasonable speed of articulation again.

The ‘five months off’ allowed us time to get back to some level of normality. We finally paid the customs duty for the Enfield and got it tested and registered for the UK. We organised the 5,000 photos from the trip and learned how to deal with recruitment agencies via the Internet. The BMW got some much needed love and care, but almost a year after returning home, I was still finding areas covered in brick-red Cambodian dust.

So it was time to plan into our next adventure. People would constantly ask us “so where / when are you going next?” We had toyed with the idea of riding down to Morocco during our first winter at home, or possibly to visit the Timbuktu music festival the following winter. But a few weekends away on the bikes proved that the wanderlust had been fulfilled, and that the decision to take a break from serious biking was well founded. Hearing presentations of ‘the joys of life on the road’ from other bikers at rallies did nurture tender shoots of enthusiasm for another trip, but these soon withered when faced with the energy that would be required to make the trip. No, the new big adventure seemed to be to follow our real desire and to get married and settle down.

So we bought two cats and made plans for our wedding. And at the time of writing this part, we have been married for 2 days, pretty much to the minute. Two days ago we gathered our families and few friends together in the English Lake District. I wore a light suit and a pink tie that coordinated with the trim on Georgie’s long slim dress. We swore our love to each other, laughed at the line in the ceremony about ‘…wherever our marriage takes us…”, cut a cake with a model of us on the BMW and danced on a boat sailing up and down Lake Windermere.

The Wedding Ceremony

The cake

The Reception

And that’s where our Big Trip ends and another long, probably-not-planned-enough journey begins. The next time we need to speak slowly in simple English may be to our children. Insh Allah!

The End (and The Beginning).

Iran: A Storm Brewing

All of the travellers we had met said that Iran was a wonderfully hospitable country, with fabulous culture and sights. It sounded like a hotter version of Turkey, with cheap petrol but with just one social minefield; a strict female dress code. Of course our expectations were wide of the mark again; Iran is much feistier, challenging and tiring than we imagined.

Before crossing the border from Pakistan into the far south of Iran we had to get Georgie into fancy dress. Everyone knows that the country insists that women wear ‘the veil’, but what that actually means is not at all clear. We had received mixed messages about the dress code and how much flesh/body shape she could show. We knew that she didn’t have to wear a burqa (a full-length black tent with a face grill to look through) – the only place we saw that was rural Pakistan. But we were variously told to buy a ‘chador’ (literally ‘a tent’ to cover everything except the feet, face and hands), a manteau (a long trench coat), and a hejab (a hood, like a nun’s wimple). Others stated that wearing baggy clothes and some form of head covering (a full headscarf) was sufficient. Opinions were also divided on whether she would have to wear socks under her sandals, to prevent men from being driven wild by her sexy ankles!? At the same time we heard stories from travellers who turned up in the country wearing very modest clothes, only to be laughed at by the locals saying “we haven’t worn anything like that for years”.

The common theme seemed to be ‘wear baggies and some form of head and neck covering’. So to save money, indignity and stupidity (like wearing a trench coat in 44 Celsius weather) we decided to spend as little as possible before hitting Iran; once there we’d buy what the local women were wearing. All we had to do was get across the border without being turned back for indecency. To this end we bought a hejab (‘nuns on the bike run’) to go over her head and neck.

One thing we couldn’t work out was the logistics of ‘taking off the crash helmet and putting on a head covering without exposing your hair’. Our two female biking friends from Belgium (Iris and Trui) pointed out that exposing your hair like that would be like ‘someone taking off a T-shirt showing naked breasts in a shopping mall in, say, Stratford-upon-Avon’. Obviously a shocking prospect, apart from on a Friday night where in Stratford (like any English market town), girls getting their breasts out is a common occurrence. So the horrible nylon hejab was worn under the helmet!

So we crossed the border with Georgie wearing my pyjama top (the baggiest thing on earth), baggy hiking trousers and hejab. No complaints and no laughs; only a ‘boil-in-bag’ Georgie, gently simmering. Our passports were checked 10 times, the carnets 4 times and then out onto good roads as promised. The first police checkpoint showed a marked change from the laid-back approach in Pakistan. All of the police were young lads who brandished their Kalashnikovs skywards, butt on the hip in a much more threatening way than in Pakistan, where people just carried them like a handbag, either in hand or over the shoulder,

Gently simmering - Florence of Arabia

Into Zahedan, which set the scene for most other Iranian cities. The roads were full of Paykan cars; exact copies of the British Hillman Hunter from the 1970’s. They were boxy and crap then, and they’re boxy and crap now, but it did give the Iranian roads a strange time-warp effect. Many Paykans are shared taxis, which pull over at the drop of a hat and cause traffic chaos. And most roads in Iran share a common set of names – how many ‘Emam Kohmeini Streets’ did we to go down during our visit?

Back to the future in a Paykan taxi

Six hours into the country and Georgie was already pissed off with the dress code. We had heard that is was not acceptable for women to walk around their hotel corridors without the proper dress. So every time she wanted to go out and use the shared toilets (cheap hotel) she had to get dressed up again. What a faff!? She got really tearful and depressed and we started to consider getting out of Iran ASAP. But we decided to give it a few more days and buy some cooler cotton clothes. If after that time Iran was not so special, we’d shoot off to wonderful Turkey and go ‘on holiday’ there.

Next morning we discovered that the BMW had been tampered with overnight. The comical ‘Dog Horn’ that I’d bought in India (it sounded like a clown’s klaxon) had been stolen, one pannier had been forced and the petrol stove taken; all in a supposedly safe, locked area of the bazaar. We’d need to be more careful in Iran. Then I was off to the bank, as Georgie was disinclined to go out in the veil. Whilst faffing around for an hour I worked out how the Iranian financial system works. There are no credit cards so people who want to send money through the post have to buy ‘promissory notes’ from the bank; just like old-style Postal Orders in Britain. I bet you could buy a 1970’s Hillman Hunter copy with 1970’s style postal orders.

Then off towards Bam after filling up with that lovely cheap petrol, which turned out to be a really difficult thing to do. REALLY!! We eventually found a petrol station at the back of a truck stop, and there was a 100-car queue waiting for fuel. And you had to pay for the fuel before filling up - just like in Russia. Luckily we skipped the queue and I eventually got the hang of how much to pay. But why the queue for heavens sake? There can’t be a petrol shortage in Iran!

Queuing for petrol

Well there is no shortage of petrol, but there is a shortage of petrol stations. With petrol being 8 cents (about 5p) per litre, there is no profit to be made from selling petrol, so nobody opens petrol stations. Perfect logic. And to exacerbate the situation in Zahedan, there is a problem with petrol smuggling. People buy petrol in Iran and take it over to Pakistan and sell it for a huge profit. So the petrol station we visited has to record the registration number and fuel usage of everyone who buys petrol, to make sure they’re not smugglers.

And the problem with paying for the petrol? A curious Iranian custom in pricing caught me out. The currency is Rials, but most retailers usually quote prices in Tolman. A Tolman is equal to 10 Rials. So when a petrol pump man writes down 2600, he could be asking for 2600 Rials or 26000 Rials. It’s easy once you know how much things actually cost, but a pain to learn. We were to spend a couple of weeks trying to work out where this silliness originated. We discovered that there never was an official unit of currency called a Tolman, and the reason for using the Tolman was to cut down the number of zeros in prices. But causing all that confusion just to get rid of one ‘0’! It’s like saying that a £6,000 bike is ‘600 £10s’; daft! And reading the Lonely Planet guidebook, it seems that some market traders use Tolmans that are 100 Rials or 1,000 Rials. As clear as mud!

Onto the highway and 320kms across desert mountains and then a long pull through our hottest desert plain yet. We got the thermometers up to 52 degrees in the shade – that’s 126 Fahrenheit! And Georgie was still wearing that damned nylon headscarf under her helmet. Not surprisingly at one point she keeled over and the scarf came off for good.

At a lunch stop, Carsten and Katrina, a German couple on XT600s who we’d met on the KKH, caught us up. I'd left an old back tyre for them in the guesthouse in Quetta, and when we met up again it was mounted on one of the XTs.

The roads were fast and smooth but we only rode at 65 to 75kph, so as not to stress the Enfield’s engine. Loads of trucks and pickups overtook us, a pretty safe thing for them to do as the visibility ahead was generally about 15kms. For a country that officially hates the USA, there are many American products in Iran. Many of the trucks have long wheelbase, long bonnet MACK tractor units. There are numerous Chevvy and Ford pick-up trucks whizzing around and fire hydrants are copies of US ‘stick up from the sidewalk’ models. Dollars are easily changed, and most people dine out on burgers and pizzas.

The food in Iran was one of the biggest disappointments. Along with the weird burgers and rubbery pizzas, the standard offerings were sausage sandwiches, tough kebabs and baguettes filled with veggie stuffing. Almost like being back in Manchester! We were delighted to find that ice cream parlours are popular, but crushed when we found that the ice creams are all heavily flavoured with rose water, making even the chocolate coloured ices synthetically perfumed. On the up side though, there is always a plentiful supply of black or mint tea, and the fruit was superb, especially the grapes and plums. When we arrived in Bam we discovered that it is famous for its dates; the place is full of date palms with red dates ripening. But they were not in season and the dried dates were so sweet that you could only eat one before needing a gallon of tea to wash it down.

The other attraction of Bam is the old town and citadel (fort). The place is hundreds of years old and only made from unbaked adobe (mud and straw). This says a lot about the climate! It’s an amazing sight, but we were surprisingly unamazed. And we had the same feeling when we visited other sites in Iran. JADED! We had been out on the road for too long, losing the will to see the ‘10 million and tenth amazing thing’, and lacking the energy to deal with and enjoy interactions with challenging locals. I was tired of trying to work places out, just getting one place ‘sussed’ before moving onto another, even more confounding place: I wanted to live a simple, obvious life for a while. We both knew that it was time to go home, so our itinerary in Iran got butchered, bypassing places of minor interest, leaving only the juiciest morsels to tempt our spoilt palates.

Bam citadel - everything built from mud and straw

After a few days in Iran we were getting the hang of the women’s dress code. In traditional towns they wear the chador, basically a black sheet draped over the head and held tight at the front: it covers everything and looks swelteringly hot. Chadors seem to be designed without fastenings, so wearers have to hold the front together with their hands or teeth – “dooh!” Younger traditional women wear baggy trouser suits with a hejab; they look so much like nuns that when we got back to Italy I thought I saw an Iranian woman get off a bus, before realising that the woman REALLY WAS a nun. In modern towns the more rebellious girls push the rules and dress like 1950’s cleaning ladies – a light overcoat and a headscarf, pushed as far back on the head as they dare. Often they show enough hair to allow a pair of designer sunglasses to be perched on their head. I’d regularly see women in cafes walking around with their scarf and coat on, as though they’re ‘just off out’ for a cold autumnal walk down to the shops.

Wall to wall static cling

Armed with this information we went shopping for an Iranian outfit in the bazaars, only to have another 1970’s retro-experience. All of the clothes we found were horribly synthetic made from nylon or acrylic; not a stitch of cool cotton anywhere. So having realised that the dress code was not enforced with a rod of iron, Georgie rebelled and took to wearing her shalwar kameez and scarf. The nylon hejab was discarded (actually it was kept for fancy dress at home) and rather than wearing a scarf in a ‘Mrs Mop meets Jackie Kennedy’ way (hot and restrictive) she took to wearing it like a Bedouin turban. This is tied to give a tail that can be pulled around the neck and shoulders in public, but can be left to dangle at other times. Although we got looked at lots (as do all foreigners, especially big bald ones), there seemed to be no problem; the police never batted an eyelid and various people complemented her for brightening the place up. The issue of ‘taking the helmet of and putting a scarf on without exposing her hair’ also turned out to be a non-issue. She just took off her helmet and put a sunhat on pretty sharpish and nobody minded.

What she got away with wearing

Next a three-hour run to Kerman and gradually the BMW starts to feel even rougher than usual. I had problems keeping up with Georgie’s Enfield up the hills and couldn’t even manage 90kph down hills. But as usual the BMW was still running, so the problem could wait until we arrived in town.

The happy hookah

Into a very mixed bazaar – the usual dreadful clothes, some wonderfully huge cooking pots, beggars who’d ‘square up’ for a fight if you refused them, and a visit to our first busy teahouse. The function of Iranian teahouses is similar to that of cafes in France and pubs in Ireland; they’re a place to relax and socialise. Like Irish pubs, there are some really beautiful traditional buildings (which attract the well-to-do and tourists) and plain, utilitarian places where working men go to meet. All share three common themes: Tea, smoking and conversation. Tea, black or mint, is drunk sweetened from small bulbous glasses. Skilled Iranian tea drinkers don’t put the sugar lumps (chipped from huge sugar loaves) in the tea; they hold a lump behind their lips and drink the tea through the sugar. I can feel my teeth dissolving as I write! Smoking involves water-pipes, the smoke from fruit flavoured tobacco drawn through water so that even non-smokers like us could enjoy the experience. You barely taste the fruit flavour as you inhale, instead you get a burst of perfume as you exhale; mulberry flavour was in season during our visit – very pleasant.

Tea, chat and smoke

And then to our first up-market Iranian restaurant and thankfully it is possible to get decent food in Iran; you just can’t get decent street food. The olives (finally) and spiced aubergines were outstanding along with a lamb stew called ‘abghust’ or ‘dizi’. This gets cooked and served in a small clay pot. You strain the gravy off to slurp with bread, and then pound the meat to a paste and eat that with rice. Hurrah, we found a way to eat Iranian bread, which is disgusting, unleavened and sold folded like a newspaper. Bread is a fairly new introduction to Iran – somebody needs to sell them a giant pack of yeast (maybe disguised as a brewing industry?).

Next day a turn around the city’s 800 year old mosque (which somebody has restored to look like a 1960s comprehensive school in England) before bumping into a couple of German overlanders (Kai and Ulrike) and then getting to grips with the sickly BMW. The bike was showing the classic symptoms of perforated carburetor diaphragms; running rough, no power but idles OK. And I was showing the classic avoidance behaviour of not being able to remove the diaphragm chamber top from one of the carbs; cleaning the fuel lines, checking the spark plugs, changing the ignition unit. Eventually I bit the bullet and got into the one accessible carburetor and found that indeed the rubber diaphragm was perforated. No problem as I have a spares..... bugger!....wrong size. I had carried these spares for over a year and they were the wrong ones! There was no chance of buying any locally (especially as it was Friday) so a choice of bodges came to mind. Maybe a repair with a puncture patch, or perhaps fabricate one from a condom. Finally I settled on sticking the holes over with brown parcel tape, which actually held well enough until we got to a BMW dealer in Milan 6 weeks later. Three months later (back in the UK) I eventually got the top of the other carb and found that the diaphragm in that one was perforated as well – bloody unstoppable these Beemers!

Dinner with the Germans was useful for all of us. They sucked us dry of information about which roads to use in Pakistan and road safety in India (!) and in return they confirmed that we were not being unduly cranky in thinking that the Iranians were a bit on the feisty side. They also confirmed that Turkey and the Turkish are a lot easier to get on with. I sighed with relief, glad that my observations had not just been intolerance and fatigue. In all of the previous Islamic communities we had felt safe and respected, people acknowledging us with a smile, a nod and “assalam alaikum”. But in Iran we would be stared at and then assailed with a “hello... hello mister... hello” and various laughs from behind, and when you turned to see who was shouting, nobody would acknowledge. It was like being a pretty girl walking past a building site; shouts and catcalls and it SUCKED. The problem was reduced in bigger towns (further north) where a few more tourists visit, but we were never really comfortable in Iran.

Three more cities to do on our cut-down itinerary; a few days in Shiraz first. Yes, Shiraz is where the variety of grape originated and yes, mentioning the name did make our mouths water for a glass of wine, but a glass of beer would have been more welcome.

In Shiraz we started to interact with Iranians who wanted to practice their English. Two female students chatted to us. The one I spoke to was amazed that 'they' let Georgie ride her own bike, and I said that 'they' would find it difficult to stop her. When I asked about the overcoat and hejab she seemed genuinely at ease with it, saying that Iran is a hot place whether you're wearing it or not. As we sat in the gardens at the Hafez mausoleum a spirited 18 year old girl came to tell us that Iran is the best place in the world and talked about the wonders of Hafez; Iran’s favourite poet. She was so boisterous that when she asked the usual question about our religion, I gave her a full blast of atheism and ‘big bang theory’. “Why are all Europeans atheists?” she complained, reminding me of argumentative teenagers in the UK.

Other chance meetings highlighted the political tensions between the supporters and opponents of the country’s religious leaders. Luckily this gave us time to read up about the issues, we were to need the knowledge later....

A major reason for visiting Shiraz is its proximity to Perspolis, the ruins of a 2,500 year old palace complex. It was hidden in the hills until Alexander the Great came along 2,300 years ago and trashed it. Historians can’t decide on whether he deliberately destroyed the place in retaliation for the destruction of Athens, or whether he burnt it down during a drunken party! I prefer the ‘Rock and Roll’ theory; makes trashing your hotel room look a little low budget. The bits of architecture and statuary they have dug up managed to impress us. We were equally impressed with a couple of overlanders we met there. Francesca and Alessandro from Milano were on their honeymoon, riding a BMW F650 to India, intent on using money given to them as wedding presents to build a school for underprivileged kids!

One city down, two to go. The long ride to Esfahan was surprisingly cathartic. We were heading north-west – directly home. I dialled ‘Go to Home’ into the GPS and it told me that at our speed (75kph) it would take 74 hours to get home. That’s just 3 days!!! Unfortunately the GPS was assuming all sorts of silly things, like our ability to ride for 74 hours without a stop, the various towns, borders and seas in the way, and the fact that there’s no straight road from Shiraz to Manchester. Whatever, it did make us feel that finally we were getting somewhere.

More immediately though, we now found ourselves heading away from the sun; bliss. Overlanding raises some curious problems, one of which is discomfort from the sun. If you’re a lazy soul like Georgie and me, you start riding sometime after 10am. This is OK if you’re travelling east, because when the sun really starts blasting in the afternoon, it is on your back. In fact it nicely illuminates things from behind you and the only downside is that drivers coming towards you are blinded, so you have to be more careful. But when you come home (as we had been doing for the past 3 months) the afternoon sun is always in your eyes, and your face is constantly scorched. I now understand why Clint Eastwood had screwed up eyes in the Spaghetti Westerns; it was all that ‘riding off into the sunset’. Of course the way to avoid the problem is either to keep going east, or when you’re going west get up earlier and get your riding done in the morning. Neither of these suited us and so our turn towards the north was most welcome.

To me the name Esfahan sounds exotic, but it turned out to be the most normal place we had been for ages and had us feeling much more positive about Iran. It was all so modern, with real shops and more western attitudes. We had fewer ‘walk by hellos’ and more informed friendliness. People were calm and helpful rather than acting like overexcited kids. But still the driving was anarchistic. To add to the general buzz, we arrived at the weekend and the place was full of Iranian tourists, keen to visit the mosques and madressas, which we also enjoyed even though we were ‘mosqued-out’. For us the highlight was the riverfront where everyone goes to promenade in the evening; wonderful after six weeks in the desert since our last real river in Pakistan.

The waterfront in Esfahan

More than a week into our visit to Iran I was getting on top of my Iranian faux pas. It’s not mentioned in the guidebook, but this one is of Monty Pythonesque stupidity. In Iran, if you give someone the ‘thumbs up’ sign, it has the same meaning as giving ‘giving someone the finger’ Europe or the USA, the same as sticking 2 fingers up at someone in Britain. Just think about it for a moment, I’m a British biker communicating with all sorts of people on the street, finding my way, finding food, buying petrol. I speak no Farsi, so all communications are done in sign language. At the end of a conversation when someone has gone out of their way to be helpful, I say “thanks mate” and give him the thumbs up. And surprisingly his face falls or he looks really annoyed; and why shouldn’t he because I have just told him to F*** off. And the thumbs up is so ingrained in my habits, I can’t help doing it. Petrol pump attendant, thumbs up; hotel foyer bloke, thumbs up; little old lady selling food, thumbs up. Aarrgh; it’s no wonder they’re aggressive to foreigners, we keep giving them the thumbs up!!

And so onto our final city of Tabriz, breezily by-passing the legendary traffic chaos and superb museums of Tehran. We’ll take in Tehran another time, when we’re not driving and when we can face another museum.

The desert highway turned to motorway at Qazvin, and the motorway had lots of signs saying that motorbikes are forbidden, but there seemed to be lots of locals on it so what the hell. We were a little worried when we got to the end of the motorway and came to a toll booth manned by 2 blokes and a policeman. They were just interested in where we were from; in retrospect I think we might be the only people to have used that last kilometer of motorway, as all Iranians turn of the motorway and head across the dirt roads to avoid the toll.

More greenery as we headed north, adding colour to the open plains and distant mountains that we’d seen for the past two weeks.

Then it was the turn of Georgie’s bike to get sick. First it wouldn’t start very easily, but I put that down to her being so tired that she couldn’t kick the engine over fast enough; I could usually get the bike going first kick. And then it would cough and splutter a bit out on the road. But the problem wasn’t bad enough to stop out on the road – ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’.

The crazy Iranian driving was increasing noticeably as we entered the Kurdish area of the country. One guy in a pickup undertook me and then, smirking broadly, pushed me out into the middle of the road. I booted the back of his pick up, but he didn’t hear it so I accelerated and kicked his driver’s door. The next 10kms turned into a battle royal as the van driver tried to make me stop so that he could beat me up. Eventually we got into a town were the road was too wide to cut me off; the tussle ended with him throwing his water container out at me across the road. We hightailed and hid in a car repair yard for 10 minutes to make sure he wasn't following us. After that, of course, we saw nothing but blue pickups in our mirrors!

We wondered if we would ever get to Tabriz when a freak windstorm covered the polished tarmac road with a layer of dust from a disused cement factory, and then a cloudburst turned the road into an ice-rink; the dust, old oil and rain forming a soapy froth. I was terrified and carefully pulled Georgie over to ride on the hard shoulder where the tarmac was unpolished.

We looked forward to the old bazaar in Tabriz, kilometers of alleyways and hundreds of courtyards that used to be caravansari. Instead Tabriz was a highlight because of the weird interaction we had with the locals.

As often happened on this trip, things got weird when one of us was out on their own. I left Georgie sleeping off the effects of 940kms over the previous two days and went to an internet cafe where I tried to coax my brother to get some insurance for our bikes and told the rest of the family that we were still alive. A very lively, young local guy came in and after a few moments chatting with the cafe owner, came over and introduced himself as an English teacher... what do I think of Iran and Iranians... what do I think about Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm’... would I like to come to talk to his class that evening... A million questions in rapid order, his English was good, but so fast that I lost 2/3rds of the words. I accepted the invite, aware that we’d not spent enough time with locals. He then went onto more politicised questions about the Iranian Government, whether I thought that it would be replaced soon, did I think that Iranians would be willing to die defending their country... Phew, not lightweight chitchat, especially in a cafe full of unknown people, any of whom could have been secret police. Before he left I told him that we’d come to the class, but we wouldn't welcome political chat, as we didn't want to end up in an Iranian gaol!

Evening came and the teacher (I’m not giving his name for reasons that will become even more obvious) came to pick us up at the hotel. It’s his first meeting with Georgie, so does he ask the usual ‘how are you?’ ‘how’s the trip?’ type questions; no, straight into “what do you think about the situation for women in Iran” and “how can Iranian women improve themselves’. She was shocked, dumbfounded and a little concerned. A taxi to the suburbs and up to a set of small class-rooms on 2nd floor of an anonymous building. Gradually the students arrived: a PhD computing student, 18 year old twins into technical subjects, a 16 year old technology student and a 43 year old engineer who was also a 4th Dan in Karate!

The meeting turned out to be a real ‘Loius Theroux’s Weird Weekend’ experience. Yes the lesson was about learning English, but the main topic for discussion were political dissent! We asked everyone to introduce themselves; the conversation turned to politics. They asked us questions, all about politics. The teacher would interject with quotes from ‘Animal Farm’ and explain how it compared to Ayatollah Kohmeini’s speeches before the revolution. The teacher was hugely excited and talked so fast that we couldn’t understand it, let alone the students. The thrust of the conversation was ‘we hate the current regime; what can we do about overthrowing it?’ There we were sat in a non-secure environment, talking about revolution with a bunch of Iranian students!! We expected masked policemen to burst in at any moment and drag us off. One of the students had already noticed that I share a surname with John McCarthy, a journalist who had been held hostage for 3 years in Beirut! It was so scary that it was funny!

After a while I got a bit heated and asked if they always talked in such way. They all agreed that political discussions were the usual fare! The whole atmosphere was revolutionary. I told them that it reminded me of the radical talk in Russia during the early 1900s, amongst students in 1960s France and in British trade union meetings in the 1970s. And the group’s feelings reflected those of the people we met in the street. They ALL asked the same question:

"What do you think of Iranian people?"
To which I’d diplomatically reply “Iranians seem to be very lively and emotional.”
"Yes” they’d say “the Iranian people are good, only the Government is bad."

As the meeting calmed down we were asked about Britain, but with a political edge.

“Why was David Kelly murdered?” which was news to us as we’d heard that he’d committed suicide. We explained about the political processes we knew about behind the decision to go to war with Iraq.
“What can you tell us about Bobby Sands?” Bobby Sands!!!; now there’s a name from the mists of time. He was an IRA terrorist who starved to death during a hunger strike in 1981, and these Iranians wanted to know the full story, right back to William of Orange. What a ‘wake up call’ for us! Luckily we could make analogies to various Muslim factions fighting each other.

The meeting broke up, but no end to the hospitality. The school’s secretary wanted to be hospitable and practice her English a little, so it was back to her flat for beans and meat while we watched illegal satellite. Is there anything more surreal than watching the Jeremy Clarkson’s Top Gear while sitting on the floor eating stew and talking Iranian politics.

Next evening we were invited out again, this time to a posh restaurant in Elgoli Park.
The park was swarming with locals enjoying the night air, and was still busy as hell when we left at 12.30! Our arrival at 9pm was ‘too early to eat’ so we sat outside on the terrace and drank tea. PhD man was there with his wife and 16 month child (born about the same time we set off from England and now walking and talking!). A journalist friend had joined us, just back from covering the Gulf war. His line of questioning was even more political than the others, starting with questions about Britain’s support for the ruling Iranian clerics.

After half an hour of trying to unravel the difference between Iranian ‘conservatives’ and the British Conservative Party, I got a bit fed up and had a go at the whole group for assuming that we were at all interested in political discussions. They were amazed but understanding when I told them about the British saying that you should ‘never discuss religion or politics with friends’. Again amazement that someone from a place where politics vaguely works can be disinterested, but I pointed out that the stability is the reason why normal people don't have to bother with it.

The questions still kept coming. “Will the US and UK come in and do a ‘regime change’ in Iran like they did in Iraq?” The rest of the group realised that the political questions were getting to us and spent the rest of the night keeping the journalist under wraps. But not before I spent twenty minutes winding him up with my false ‘Journalists ID Card’ that I bought in Bangkok.

Next day the run up to the Turkish border. Georgie's bike was now running rough when hot, and she was getting slower and slower; like down to 60kph. So we stopped to clean the carburetor. No effect on the burbling. So it must be the ignition; changed the condenser and points with instant results. Thank heavens for the spares we bought in India.

A full tank of cheap fuel, through the confused Iranian procedures and waited to get the gate to Turkey open. A final conversation with the border guard, practicing his English; the usual things; where are you from, where have you been, do you have children? No children sir, do you have a problem?

“The only problem I have is that you won’t open that bleeding gate!”

The gate opened, press the starter button; click, nothing; click nothing. The starter motor had failed again. So I pushed the bike over a second border, the previous being between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan a year ago.

Two glasses of Efes beer beckoned us from Turkey.

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Number of weeks = 2.5
Miles in country = 1,800
Kilometres in country = 2,880
Total miles so far = 29,677
Total kilometres so far = 47,483

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Pakistan: A Land Where Men are Men and Women are Invisible

My real regret with buying the Enfield is the state of exhaustion and pain it would leave me in each evening. One of the victims of this was my diary. Since Nepal, the entries were few and far between, to the extent that unfortunately I gave up early in Pakistan. So the sources of this newsletter are memory (oh dear) and photos.

As we travelled through countries, I would often muse over how I would portray them in our ramblings to you. Very early on in Pakistan I knew EXACTLY how I would open up this newsletter - DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. Virtually every local we met expressed how worried they were about how the whole was nation being portrayed in the press - extremist, reactionary, pro-terrorist, Al-Qaeda harbouring and anti¡Vwesterner. What struck me so vividly in Pakistan was that you cannot, and should not, judge people by the politicians that supposedly 'represent' them. The everyday Pakistani that we met could not have been more happy to see us, they were respectful and polite even when WE pissed THEM off.

Our safety, as usual, was paramount, and not once did we feel threatened when owning up to being British, even though the Iraqi war had only ceased 2 months before. It was a tough decision in the first place whether we would cut short the trip by by-passing both Pakistan and Iran for 'safety' reasons, shipping the bikes out of Mumbai (Bombay) directly into Europe. Ever since Japan I had kept an eye on the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office website which gave super-cautious advice on travel all over the world. It recommended that only people on essential business or 'non-white British' people should visit Pakistan. It also warned that if we got into trouble, the British Government could give little assistance as the British Embassy in Pakistan had closed. All in all it didn't look that hopeful but we decided to approach it from a different angle; we applied for visas to see if the Pakistani authorities would think it safe to let us in. We were relieved and amused when the Pakistani official in Kathmandu, inevitably aware of most visitor's misgivings, announced "I think you will enjoy our country". And as it turned out ... he was bloody right.

Leaving India (having avoided the monsoon and various of sources of premature death) we realised that we were about to enter a country that only half a century ago was part and parcel of that near hell until Partition became reality in 1947. I reckoned this would make excellent material for a nature vs nurture study. Could the Muslim Pakistanis really be any different from their Hindu neighbours? The answer was immediate and our judgment remained the same throughout - thankfully YES.

The tension between Pakistan and India has been evident ever since the bloody Partition. Recently it has eased as the two sides resumed talks. Unlike other international land borders there is minimal cross-border trading. The import/export that does exist has spawned a strange border ritual, where colour coded porters on either side meet and handover goods across the border line, and guards on each side make sure that Indians don't sneak into Pakistan, and vice versa. So a stream of blue pyjama'd Indians shuffled single file to the border gates carrying boxes on their heads and passed them over to their Pakistani orange pyjama'd counterpart who walked away in a mirror image.

International logistics in action

I wondered how long we would have to wait at customs and if we could avoid our first bribe. Word on the street was that a sweetener was required to prevent a long drawn out inspection of our baggage. Bossman eventually turned up, apologised for the heat then asked us 20 questions about how the guarantee on the carnet worked and why when he put in claims to European Automobile Associations they were never honoured. His speech and movement were laboured, I mentally diagnosed Parkinson's disease, so I helped him fill in the customs ledger and we were sent on our way - no inspection, no bribery - a result (question to self, why does it never happen to us, are we just nice people?)

During the short ride into Lahore we were befriended and escorted by several bikers. We entered a city suffering from heinous air pollution, the filthy 2-stroke tuk-tuks being the main culprit. Several years previously Bangkok had seen the light and only permitted 4-strokes, I hoped Lahore would go the same way. The old walled City with its bazaar and fort was a highlight. We spent several days wandering around the alleyways. Pakistan was our first really Islamic state and I endeavoured to dress accordingly. The shalwar kameez (cotton baggy trousers, long tunic and scarf) that I had bought in India was an immediate success. I was flattered to receive compliments about my attire from young women.

We were equally astounded by the number of people who approached us just wanting to welcome us to their country. Children would be sent to shake our hands and requests for photographs were at an all-time high. During a Sunday evening stroll in the Shalimar Gardens we meet dozens of children vying for our attention, inviting us to meet their parents. Though ridden with hair lice and suffering from skin complaints it was hard to ignore their gorgeous green eyes that reminded me of the famous 1984 National Geographic front cover of the Afghan girl.

Surprisingly a very common opening question would be "Are you a Christian?" Muslim Pakistanis were keen to know, and many Christian Pakistanis would actively seek us out. Simon, being a devoted atheist, caused a few shocked and offended reactions and we came to realise that it was safer admitting to being a Christian than an atheist in the Muslim world, since a belief in some God is better than no God at all! So Simon had to pretend to believe in God for the rest of Pakistan and Iran. It was refreshing to meet two proud lovers, escaped from their chaperone - he was a Muslim lawyer and she a Christian school teacher. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall when those two families met.

During our visit to the Fort I became aware of a group of young girls who were taking a great interest in me and it didn't seem anything like the zombie curiosity of the Indians. I bumped into them again and so took the opportunity to practice the general Muslim (Arabic) greeting of "Assalam alaikum" (Peace be with you). The girls were agog and seemingly asked me if I spoke Urdu. I was sorry to disappoint them. Little did I know or appreciate that the liberal city of Lahore would be last time that I would see women in this country wandering freely about and eager to interact with us. After that we would be in the countryside, and there we would only meet men - the only women we would see would be working in the fields and desperately avoiding contact with foreigners.

Hospitality in a bike shop

The Pakistanis are huge in comparison with their Indian relatives. Some of the men were the size of mountains - we got scared by one gentle giant (Bernard Breslaw lookalike) who couldn't understand why we weren't planning to visit his village 'in the back of beyond' - if he had really insisted we visit, we could not have fought him off. The fact that the Muslims eat meat and their Hindu counterparts are vegetarian must have something to do with it. The Pakistanis do prohibit the consumption of meat on 2 days every week, but luckily chicken is not considered meat (!!), so on those days you can still get your protein fix in the form of a fabulous chicken jalfrezi. My mouth is just watering at the thought of it.

In preparation for the imminent Iranian visit I realised I needed to buy myself another shalwar kameez outfit. Bagginess and modesty are a must in Muslim countries. T-shirts and standard trousers are out since the showing of skin or the mere intimation of the shape of a woman's body is a big no-no. I would never claim to be a shopaholic, but choosing a shalwar was great fun. There were literally thousands of backstreet boutiques selling DIY outfits in the form of pre-matched lengths of material that would combine to make the trousers, tunic and scarf. All I had to do was sit back whilst a group of boys ordered me a Coke then showed me hundreds of combinations, the choice was mind-boggling.

Shopping

I settled for a bright red/yellow/black tartan-like outfit; I wanted to make a statement. A tailor was summoned to measure me up, since we left the sewing machine at home, and the next day I picked my little number up. I was later mortified to read in the Lonely Planet that wearing red was in Iran is dangerous because it is associated with the enemy of Emam Hossein - Mohammed's nephew. Would I get lynched wearing the new outfit?

A little red number

Not to be outdone, Simon bought the typical male kurta pajama. He wasn't convinced by the shop keeper's assurance that he didn't need to try it on because "the size is perfect". However, the trousers turned out to have a waist of 245cm (96 inches) so he could get the bike in the trousers too. Hours of fun were had playing at being MC Hammer, and our fancy dress outfits are organised for the next 10 years.

STOP! Hammer time

"I'm 75 you know" perked up an elderly Pakistani gentlemen in the market "and British. I was born during the Empire, so therefore I'm British. By the way, Churchill was a great man". It's funny how our war-time politician has been so highly praised throughout our journey. And as for him wanting to be British, I did find that strange.

We tried to learn a little about colonial India and its subsequent partition in 1947. There was great bloodshed in the country as Muslims fled to the north west and north east corners of the region where Western and Eastern Pakistan (now independent Bangladesh) were created. I'm not quite sure how they ever thought the two geographical parts of the country could be ever be governed as one with India separating them.

Most people know of Gandhi, the Hindu figurehead during the Partition. Less well known is the Muslim leader at the same time. Ali Jinnah who remains Pakistan's number one hero. After the release of the multi-Oscar winning epic film Gandhi, Pakistan was unhappy with the portrayal of Jinnah, and in fact the film is still banned. To redress the balance, a film of Jinnah's life was released in 1998, but the project was plagued by controversy. Christopher Lee was cast as the lead causing arguments about whether a horror film star was the right sort of person to portray the national hero. Then rumours were spread that Salman Rushdie was to write the screenplay and finally the critics were incensed that a Hindu was cast to play the Archangel Gabriel (although no one seemed to mind that an Archangel turned up in 1940s Indian politics). As coincidence has it, I watched Christopher Lee being interviewed on Breakfast television only this week, to hear him claim that his acting role in Jinnah was the most challenging of his 50 year film career ¡V the DVD comes out soon.

Time to leave open-minded Lahore and marvel at the contrasts of modern structured Islamabad (the capital) and its sprawling chaotic neighbour of Rawalpindi. We hoped to enjoy safe passage on the new motorway, and we ignored the signs banning motorcycles and were encouraged by the gun clad policeman waving us onwards. Bliss, three empty lanes of asphalt all to ourselves - until we reached the toll booths where a female police official unceremoniously broke the spell. We pleaded with her in the stifling heat to allow us to use the motorway where we would be much safer away from the lawlessness on the Grand Trunk route. This she took completely the wrong way thinking we were accusing the Traffic Police of being on the take. "Sir, we are the only department who are 100% incorruptible". I suppose this didn't bode well for the rest of the country. Without the special dispensation to use the motorway ("you can go into Lahore and ask the Head of Police") we were forced to rejoin the mayhem on the Grand Trunk route.

Pakistan was another country with a distinct lack of road signs even on the main road to the capital. Stopping to ask policemen was a double edged sword; they were helpful and knowledgeable ("the road you need is behind you"), but keen to show off their power ("Sir, if you turn to go in that direction I have the power to fine you as you make that illegal turn"). When Simon remonstrated that we didn't have a reverse gear, the policeman donned his white gloves, stopped the traffic and allowed us to break a few rules.

Further on down the road we were pulled over yet again by an inquisitive doughnut brigade. "What now?" we thought. "We'd like to invite you to take a Pepsi with us". This was a case of wrong place, wrong time, it's not you, it's me. We had already lost so much time faffing around at the motorway we couldn't afford any more passing the time of day with strangers. We plugged on only to suffer another attack of hospitality at a petrol station where we stopped for a wet-down. I suppose my hanging out in the tiny patch of shade outside the gents toilet wasn't good PR. The manager lured us into his air-conned office with yet another drink and told us he'd seen us being turned away at the motorway toll booths. We all reminisced over curry houses in Rusholme since he regularly visited Manchester where his girlfriend lived. Small world!

Foreign bike alert at the next checkpoint. German number plate, XR250, lo and behold it was Ulli who we'd met seven weeks ago outside the Pakistani embassy in Kathmandu. The policemen presented us with a 'homemade orange drink' which we couldn't refuse, though dearly wanted to, then suspiciously questioned us on how we knew each other. The three of us agreed to ride into Rawalpindi together, but the presence of a slow moving police car in front of us seemed to suggest we were being given an unwanted escort. We kept our cool and waited for them to get bored. They eventually allowed us to overtake them, but in no time at all I looked in my mirror to see that they had mysteriously pulled Ulli over. When he was eventually allowed on his way, he explained that as motorcyclists we were being reprimanded for not driving to the left of the yellow line which was basically a gutter area full of debris and highly dangerous holes. Our monster bikes were supposed to follow the same rules applying to putt-putt mopeds. We appeased the jobs-worth officer until he was out of sight and out of mind, then we reverrted back to the main carriageway.

Our only reason for going to Islamabad was to obtain our Iranian visa. This was the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle for our big trip and traveling through Iran would complete the full circle back to Turkey. Our stress levels were kept to a minimum by making use of an internet visa agency in Iran. For a reasonable charge of 30 USD each, the agency made the initial application on our behalf for the visa directly to Tehran. This meant that picking up the visa in Islamabad was a doddle and avoided us having to hang around the Iranian embassy for days on end, like several frustrated tourists we met. So here I shall shamelessly plug the Pars Tourist Agency at www.key2persia.com.

Visas in hand we waved good-bye to Ulli who had been our dinner companion for a week and wished him well for his adventure into Afghanistan on his bike. And yes of course we had been curious about such a detour ourselves but never really tempted to stray, because of the dangers involved. A week before arriving in Islamabad, an Italian motorcyclist had been killed near Kandahar in Afganistan. Fortunately Ulli managed to survive his transit through the country.

Ulli joins us for a Pakistani dinner party

We were now to embark upon one of our major goals - ride the Karakoram Highway, aka the KKH. The KKH is a 1,300km road jointly built by the Pakistani and Chinese armies during the 1960s and 70s. It connects the Silk Road market of Kashgar in China with Rawalpindi. Its highest point is the Khunjerab Pass at 4,730m which acts as the border between the two countries and this would be our terminus since getting the paperwork for visiting China on motorbikes was beyond our budget and timescale.

We were pleasantly surprised at how quickly the metropolis of Rawalpindi disappeared and turned into rolling countryside. We followed the banks of an innocuous river most of the day until bang, we hit what we were waiting for, the 'Mighty' Indus. We could immediately see why the river was dubbed that name. Its force was indomitable and not once during the seven days that we were its companion did we see any vessels or fishermen trying to tame it.

The second day's ride took us to Chilas, a town that invariably we were warned to avoid. Not only was it claimed that the locals would be hostile towards foreign women, but the town was in the heart of a region known as Yagistan - Land of the Ungovernable. Even the British left this area well alone during the colonial period. To be fair though, the waves from men and children along the roadside (the women had all but disappeared) were no less forthcoming than anywhere else. The only oddity was at the frequent checkpoints along the KKH. Most posts were interested to know when you entered Pakistan and what your visa number was. Around Chilas all they wanted to know was when you entered their region and when you would be leaving it.

Every hour we rode the scenery became more and more spectacular. You could never describe it as pretty but just incredibly raw. The area is a collision zone of the Indian and Asian continents and the mountains are still being heaved up. There was very little traffic on the road so every time we stopped for a rest and water the sounds of nature were eerie. Apart from the roar of the river, Simon swore that the rustling of shale falling down the slopes was preceded by a groan and rumble as plates collided and imperceptibly changed the landscape forever. This was geology in motion, with the Indus carving a steep sided valley with fantastic but unstable rock walls that must have daunted the KKH engineers and navvies alike. As we moved further north, snow-capped mountains began peering over our shoulders and glaciers almost crossed the road. I wish I could adequately describe to you the colours, every imaginable shade of mauve, terracotta, brown and grey gave the impression the landscape could only be extraterrestrial.

Raw Geology - The KKH

Halfway up the KKH we were frantically waved down by an oncoming 4x4. "Are you Simmonds?" Spooky! The female passenger was Shadmeena, a female mountain guide, British Council worker and friend of our Belgian biking friends, Iris and Trui. We had hoped to bump into Shadmeena further up the KKH in Gilgit but when we'd emailed her she had explained that she would be flying back to Lahore. Amazingly her flight had been canceled so had to go by car. We were amazed to bump into her, but logically as there is only one road, the chances are pretty high. We were glad to cross paths even if so briefly. Unfortunately our plan to meet her British housemate in Gilgit was blown since she was en route on horseback to the region's most famous annual sporting event - a polo match between Chitral and Gilgit on the world's highest polo ground in the remote Shandur Pass. The BBC and Michael Palin were reported to be there this year so locals were hoping it might be televised live. Polo, believe it or not, has more supporters than cricket in the north of the country.

Gilgit was the main tourist town just off the KKH. Our guesthouse was a haven of tranquillity and travelers from all round the world seemed to congregate there with stories of derring-do. It was obvious through conversations how 9/11 has effected the tourist industry in this struggling region. Even though money must have been tighter than usual we received an unexpected invitation to eat at Yaqoob the manager's home one evening. He laid on a sumptuous feast for at least 7 of us tourists and never asked for a contribution. That act really summed up the innate nature of hospitality of the Pakistanis. Getting to