rear-lamp, the rear mudguard and half the front mudguard have fallen off; the straps tying saddle-bag to saddle have both broken; the left pannier-bag holder has come apart and the right pedal has loosened. Everything is being held together by a system of rope and wire more complicated than you’d believe possible, but fortunately none of these disabilities is serious. The trouble will start when wheels or frame crack up. It’s astonishing that I haven’t had a puncture since leaving Teheran – a tribute to the extreme care with which I’m cycling. But obviously my claim that cycling is the best way to see a country just isn’t valid in this region. I daren’t take my eyes off the road for one second and my ‘seeing’ is confined to the walking intervals and to the frequent stops I make just to look around me.
This village is the most primitive place I’ve hit so far, with not even a gendarmerie barracks. It’s a collection of the usual mud huts, very roughly constructed, and in the tea-house everything is of mud – the ‘counter’, the seats all around the walls and the steps leading up to an attic where men are smoking opium. I went up there to investigate sleeping accommodation and found five braves all in a trance with their pipes – that’s what comes of having no gendarmerie in a place! (My right arm is so stiff tonight that I can’t bend it and the pain is intense – but better that than frost-bite.) The three men now drinking tea here seem to be neutral towards me: they show no friendliness, but no apparent hostility either. I feel it’s just as well I arrived late: the fewer people who know about my presence the better. I’ll sleep on oneof the long mud seats with Roz tied to me and my knapsack under my head with its straps round my neck – though it’s not clear how me being strangled by my own straps will help the situation if someone tries to rob me!
BAGH-JAR, 4 APRIL
I survived last night without incident but despite tiredness slept badly as the sunburn agony woke me every time I moved. We set out at 5.30 a.m. and the whole of today’s eighty-five-mile ride was through the Great Salt Desert with flat sand on either side to the horizon and only one town (Salzevar) en route. This seemed an interesting place but was full of Mullahs and turbaned youths who stoned me and cut my sunburned arm five minutes after I’d arrived, so I departed hastily before a riot started. Salzevar is in the heart of the Mullah-dominated country, where the police are afraid of the clergy and simply don’t appear if there’s trouble, so discretion was most emphatically the better part of valour. I’m now safe with the gendarmerie in a little village, sitting up in my bunk and feeling rotten. My right arm is half the size again of my left and tomorrow all the blisters will burst. I can’t think why it’s swelled so much; that didn’t happen in Spain, where I also had very bad sunburn. Anyway, it’s entirely my own fault.
The road was slightly improved today, except where so much sand had blown over it that one couldn’t cycle without skidding. I feel quite feverish this evening; possibly it’s slight heat-stroke though I didn’t feel over-heated to any great degree.
NISHAPUR, 5 APRIL
I woke up feeling much better, though my arm has not burst yet. We only did fifty-five miles today as this is Omar Khayyám’s town and I’ve stopped here to pay homage. Besides, I think I’ve been pushing myself too hard, so an easy day was not a bad idea.
On leaving Bagh-Jar I had a twelve-mile walk through the mountains on a ghastly road but surrounded by tremendously exciting scenery. Then we suffered more desert until reaching here.
I find the Persian fauna very un-exotic. Bird life round the villages consists of crows, magpies, willy-wagtails, swallows and sparrows. The only unfamiliar birds are little crested chaps rather like thrushes and an occasional fierce, enormous hawk; I’ve also heard a few nightjars.
This village is the most primitive place I’ve hit so far, with not even a gendarmerie barracks. It’s a collection of the usual mud huts, very roughly constructed, and in the tea-house everything is of mud – the ‘counter’, the seats all around the walls and the steps leading up to an attic where men are smoking opium. I went up there to investigate sleeping accommodation and found five braves all in a trance with their pipes – that’s what comes of having no gendarmerie in a place! (My right arm is so stiff tonight that I can’t bend it and the pain is intense – but better that than frost-bite.) The three men now drinking tea here seem to be neutral towards me: they show no friendliness, but no apparent hostility either. I feel it’s just as well I arrived late: the fewer people who know about my presence the better. I’ll sleep on oneof the long mud seats with Roz tied to me and my knapsack under my head with its straps round my neck – though it’s not clear how me being strangled by my own straps will help the situation if someone tries to rob me!
BAGH-JAR, 4 APRIL
I survived last night without incident but despite tiredness slept badly as the sunburn agony woke me every time I moved. We set out at 5.30 a.m. and the whole of today’s eighty-five-mile ride was through the Great Salt Desert with flat sand on either side to the horizon and only one town (Salzevar) en route. This seemed an interesting place but was full of Mullahs and turbaned youths who stoned me and cut my sunburned arm five minutes after I’d arrived, so I departed hastily before a riot started. Salzevar is in the heart of the Mullah-dominated country, where the police are afraid of the clergy and simply don’t appear if there’s trouble, so discretion was most emphatically the better part of valour. I’m now safe with the gendarmerie in a little village, sitting up in my bunk and feeling rotten. My right arm is half the size again of my left and tomorrow all the blisters will burst. I can’t think why it’s swelled so much; that didn’t happen in Spain, where I also had very bad sunburn. Anyway, it’s entirely my own fault.
The road was slightly improved today, except where so much sand had blown over it that one couldn’t cycle without skidding. I feel quite feverish this evening; possibly it’s slight heat-stroke though I didn’t feel over-heated to any great degree.
NISHAPUR, 5 APRIL
I woke up feeling much better, though my arm has not burst yet. We only did fifty-five miles today as this is Omar Khayyám’s town and I’ve stopped here to pay homage. Besides, I think I’ve been pushing myself too hard, so an easy day was not a bad idea.
On leaving Bagh-Jar I had a twelve-mile walk through the mountains on a ghastly road but surrounded by tremendously exciting scenery. Then we suffered more desert until reaching here.
I find the Persian fauna very un-exotic. Bird life round the villages consists of crows, magpies, willy-wagtails, swallows and sparrows. The only unfamiliar birds are little crested chaps rather like thrushes and an occasional fierce, enormous hawk; I’ve also heard a few nightjars.
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