The one thing that stands out to me in your travellers tales of woe (thankyou for posting gave me a little giggle) is this amazing way of screeching to a halt in a pub..... now if i had managed that in Iran i would of declared myeslf the new ayatollah and started a new trend of drunken cross dressing motorcycle bandits through the middle east. But no my friends no for me, no wine,vodka, whiskey.....whats petrol like? Surely all those millions of bums accross the world cant all be wrong.

A day in Tehran looking for Tranny no fun. How about the one where the guy who can speak no english manages to say he has got the part it will "pesch hundred millions toman" I asked him to write down what he meant and he wrote a five and just kept adding zeros, he had no fing idea what he was writing and when i said toman he said "no Dollar, dollar"

Yeh right bro, Im not a person I am a western dog or a dollar sign at best.

And then there is beutiful Mr Ali who has not stopped looking for the part for two days. He has closed his shop and has not seen his family and probably not eaten, but i think he has the part.......... inshallah

I was riding with a Swiss guy who had major problems riding his Enfield through Iran (problems with an Enfield? surely not!) losing compression etc. After a few trips to various mechanics to fix it, he got fed up somewhere on the road out of Tehran, pulled over and set it on fire, hitching back to Tehran for a flight home. Did you see any burned out Enfields nearby radioactiveangel?
Sean

Best crash !!!
Out for a blast early one morning in the Sultanate of Oman - early morning beautiful weather, no dependant relatives so I decide on jeans, t-shirt, XTZ750 and a gravel road.
I overcooked it at abour 100km/hr into a corner and slid for ages. Ouch. I waited, bleeding at the side of the road for about an hour when a brand new LandCruiser arrives. It is a local man with several wives and many children - we have slight language difficulties but when he leaves I guess that he will come back. He does, minus the wives, children and all the back seats. Into his new LandCruiser he single handedly lifts my Super Ten which leaks oil everywhere and I leak blood everywhere in the front seat. He is cool with that and very happy to be helping. We drive for a couple of hours when I nearly pass out, before stopping at his cousins for Friday lunch. There despite the crippling heat, flies, loss of blood and enormous pain, the family insist I am treated as a celebrated guest. Lunch takes several hours. Eventually another cousin arrives in a pickup to take me and Super Ten the remaining 300km back to Muscat and my house. Cousin unloads bike, checks with expat neighbours that I am okay and refuses any cash for petrol, time, cleaning the inside of his cousins LandCruiser.
The thing that makes me so sad is that the current politcal climate makes many Europeans suspicious of Arab Muslims - yet any one who has travelled in the region will have similiar stories to tell of enormous friendship, legendary hospitality and kindness that no other European stranger will ever have come close to have showing them.
And there is another story of an Arab who led us out of the Wahiba sands when we where hideously lost before he then walked...walked the 40km back to his house. And thats the truth and another story

Very true, Dick. I met a local on the Masirah Island ferry this week who left his brother's pick-up to join me in my car and show me the way through the Wahiba sands.
Stephan