Tabriz
On the road to Tabriz:
Arriving in Tabriz, we found a nice park in the city where you can camp for free, with showers and everything!
It's also very popular with cycle tourists, so we met a lot of other cyclists there: Robin, Arlen and Firmin from Switzerland, Everhard from The Netherlands and Jörg from Berlin!
The park is the perfect place to get some rest and exchange information!
Also many many thanks to Alireza from Tabriz, whom we had met somewhere in the streets. He showed us around the whole city, helped us with all our problems, and relaxed with us in the park!
Some city impressions:
The famous bazaar:
More city impressions:
Replacing a broken spoke on Jörgs bike. Both of us had never done it before, but it went surprisingly well!
While staying in the park, we tried to find a solution to our visa problems.
Usbekistan is no problem to get, but would take a very long time. Usbek visa is a prerequisite to apply for the Turkmen visa, where the chance of rejection is about 50%. There was now the risk that we wouldn't make it into the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan before it gets too cold. We had been looking forward to cycling the Pamir Highway for years now, and we didn't want to miss it for anything. There was also some new information: It was possible again, to get the Chinese visa in Tehran, but you have only 30 days to enter the country.
Considering all the options, a new plan was made: Go to Tehran as fast as possible. Get the Chinese visa. Take a flight to Dushanbe. Cycle the Pamir Highway. Enter China before the visa expires. Extend the visa in China.
It was not an easy decision, because it would also mean we would stop cycling for a while. But the Pamir mountains where just too important for us. So the next thing we did was book a nightbus from Tabriz to Tehran.
Goodbye photo with Jörg and Alireza:
