Porridge with mutton for breakfast … hmmm .. going local

Breakfast after a very comfy night was the Persian standard with a European twist. We got the usual bread, cheese and tea with the addition of hard boiled eggs but then coffee, orange juice, milk and jam were also available. Carrot jam really isn’t my thing, while sour cherries jam is a good match to the flat bread. I, then, felt obliged to also try the rose jam which was weird but tasty. Enough food talk now.

We left Shushtar to ride to Choqa Zanbil, maybe 30 more kilometres away. Choqa Zanbil is a Unesco heritage site, protecting the 3300 year old ziggurat. From the pictures on the internet, we weren’t really impressed. Being on the site though, our view changed. We’re unsure if it’s the scale of the ziggurat or if it was a combination of the loneliness of the place (we arrived before the tour buses did) with the dramatic, lead-coloured sky announcing a storm. Whatever it was, it was impressive. The whole structure is built of mud-bricks, some of them burnt. It has five levels going up and is being restored at the moment (or rather, for a long time).

3300 years … wow

The first person I ran into, while Flo took the longer way through the outlying buildings, was a restaurateur. His English wasn’t quite that good but he managed to give us some information, guided us for a bit and allowed Flo to get up on the first level of the ziggurat. All that while lightning could be seen in the distance behind the structure (and I didn’t get it in a single picture) and then the thunder boomed overhead.

The information available in English is much better here than in Persepolis, probably because it got some Unesco funding from 1998 onwards. When the first drops started to fall, we tried to hurry back to the bike…unsuccessfully. A German guided tour had just arrived so we talked to them for a bit and shortly entered the ziggurat again with them. At the bike, we answered more questions of locals, took a couple more pictures with them…and rode off into the storm. The wind was incredible. The rain still hadn’t reached its full potential so we decided to play it safe instead of being soaked through to the bone. At the next intersection/check point with a bit of cover, we put on our entire rain gear, this time including pants.

We took the toll road for 38 km – not sure if we were allowed to, but it was fast

Choqa Zanbil was the last point in the low lands of Iran for us so we headed towards the mountains again for which I was grateful. Yes, it was stormy today but yesterday it had been just too hot for me to cope well. So we looked towards Kermanshah as a next destination which we wouldn’t reach today. Lunch was had at a real (real) truck stop where I had rice with yogurt and a salad because all they sold was kebab. It was a slightly weird experience to stop at a real truck stop, I must say.

Parts of the afternoon went by in cruise mode before we stopped to pick up ingredients for dinner. To mix up our usual bread-heavy camping grub, Flo wanted to boil potatoes which could be mixed with the remaining eggplant-tomato-dish from a can. The roadside vendor where we stopped refused to take any money for a handful of potatoes and tomatoes and instead insisted on giving us a watermelon for free as well. No amount of shaking our heads could dissuade him (where should we put a WATERMELON on the bike?) so in the end, we went for the smallest one he had. It got stored in the bag that usually holds our waterproof gear which we were wearing now.

Loaded to the brim like this, we headed into the mountains proper. Already tired, we let one or two promising spots slip before stopping on a meadow with trees that seems to be a popular picnic/camping spot. There was no one else around though so we put up our tent and had a quiet but delicious dinner. By the time we were ready for bed, the now familiar rumbling of thunder was back. The night’s rest was interrupted when the lightning storm started as the strikes could be seen very well even from inside our tent. Luckily, it didn’t cross right over us so we went back to sleep not long after. Earplugs are your best friend in such cases.