Azarbayjan Hotel Tabriz

Po snídani jsme se dostavili v osm ráno na autobus do města Igdir, kde nám policista (!) sdělil, že spoj se ruší a byly nám vráceny peníze. Během pár chvil jsme se ocitli v taxíku, který nás měl někam odvézt. Odvezl nás kolem trhu s dobytkem na autobusové nádraží za městem. Tam jsme nastoupili do menšího autobusu, který za pár minut odjel původně plánovaným směrem, tedy do Igdiru, kam jsme po t ...

After our night of madness we set off early into the desert. Western Iran is a series of huge dry valleys with tall mountain ranges on each side. Fortunately the human habitation follows these valleys and we required only an occasional mountain climb through high flat passes.

Travelling by truck requires compromise planning and negotiation. The trip itinerary is listed with options in each area. Options depend on how long the truck will take to ...

Well the title has probably had most of you guessing as to what happened. It's simple when you travel by overland truck, you need to expect the unexpected.

The roads had been boring and the landscapes vast with decrepit mud villages scattered across huge plains surrounded by steep hills. Nothing but wheat and heat. Our beloved truck Katrina is not good on hills and she does not like too much heat as you might have guessed by now so the days had been long.
Tabriz, Iran mikeandfi

Because it was my birthday, I was relieved of breakfast duties for the next morning, so woke up and put my tent away (well… Shane did it for me) and then started on my birthday cards and gifts. Because it was only 6am I was still pretty merry from the night before (probably too merry to be safely crossing the Iranian border…) The Iranian border was an experience to say the least. It was a lot easier than all of us were expecting it to be. Nobody's bags were searched, nobody ...

Alors, on y est ou quoi ?! Les derničres heures passées en route m'avaient déjŕ enchanté dans la mesure oů défilaient les paysages d'un pays dont l'image, y compris chez moi, est assez desastreuse. Comment ne pas avoir le Hezbollah, les barbus et l'excité Ahmadinejad en tęte lorsque le pense ŕ l'Iran ? Les petits villages, les usines et les gamins courant aprčs ...

I didn't do much in the morning but at 1 pm Ali suggested we go to the post office so I could mail my postcards. I said this would be a good idea but I made him promise that I pay for all the cab rides. He was reluctant but he agreed. I really didn't like the fact that he paid for everything, especially considering he was unemployed. Of course when we jumped into our first cab, he paid for it. This made me extremely annoyed so I threw money into his hands and just would not take ...

I arrived in Tabriz at 7 am. A cab driver approached me and I didn't hesitate to use him as he knew where my hotel was. When I got to my hotel, the staff was still sleeping but the cab driver still woke them up for me. Some old man offered me a double room for the price of a single ($7) so I took it. The place really looked run down. It looked like an old hospital. It had very long white corridors dotted with white doors. There was no decor at all. I could hear my steps echo in the ...

It was pretty difficult to sleep on the bus last night. There was very little room to sleep and the bus stopped every 3 hours to give people a chance to go to the bathroom or eat. If people were fasting for Ramadan, they needed to eat before the sun came up. However, I was told that Muslims were allowed to eat during Ramadan if they were traveling. We were still traveling through Turkey as it is a huge country. We were expected to get to the border sometime during the late ...

... diary, what do you expect? Feeling absolutely shattered after an early rise and a slight 'last beers in a long time' hangover, the first thing we did on boarding the train was pull down our respective bunks to get some much needed sleep. So imagine my surprise and dismay, when half an hour later, having just nodded off, I was jolted into wide-eyed wakefullness by the realisation that one of my most trustworthy bodily functions had just ...