• Bukhara, Uzbek opticians and new glasses

    I can relax a little.  I’ve made it into Uzbekistan, and with that comes a thirty-day visa, clean(er), cheap hostels, friendly people and less suspicion.  I’ve been told I still need to be wary of the authorities as police can be pretty corrupt across all the ‘stans’, but for now I’m just ecstatic to be …

    More
  • Hitchhike to India leg 48: Ashgabat to Bukhara

    I’ve arrived back in Ashgabat around 1 am from my trip to the door to hell.  This is of course the last day on my visa, so I’ve got until 5 pm today to make the border – after that it’s closed for the night.  With this in mind, and the fact that I had …

    More
  • The door to hell

    Now this was one I’d been looking forward to for a long time.  You’ll have all seen it before – it’s one of those tourist oddities that crops up in lists of strange places you won’t believe are on this planet.  Or things to see before you die.  Or Sovietfuckups dot com.  Not sure that’s …

    More
  • Ashgabat

    Oh where to begin?!  Ashgabat is just crying out for a lampooning by an eloquent, witty wordsmith with biting prose and scathing humour – but unfortunately I’ll have to do.  Let’s all follow the impeccable brick road shall we?  The insanity starts when you ease into the city from the border checkpoints, on tarmac that looks …

    More
  • Hitchhike to India legs 46/47: Tehran to Ashgabat

    I had finally scored my visas.  There was nothing keeping me in Iran. Well, nothing I’d write about just now anyway, and the time was drawing nigh to depart.  Visas are date specific, so I needed to enter Turkmenistan on the 27th of November and cross is within 5 days.  So at the time of …

    More
  • Tehran and leaving Iran

    I’ve stayed on and off just under a month in Tehran, but had it not been for visa necessity, I probably wouldn’t have stayed more than a couple of days.  Consequently most of the time I’ve spent hiding in my very kind couch-surf hosts apartment while I wait for the powers that be to either …

    More
  • Iranian party bus

    With time in Iran running out I’d still not managed the one thing I was looking forward to the most: riding a camel.  For one reason or another a trip to the desert had eluded me, and was looking increasingly unlikely, as every tour pointed to extortionately outlandish fees to be on the back of …

    More
  • Isfahan, funerals and FIFA 2012

    So I’ve come full circle and I’m back in Isfahan.  Here I’ve returned to my very gracious, hospitable and generous host Amir, who has a passion for tuning cars and talking total shite when it comes to playing FIFA on the X-box.  With most of the sightseeing done, we basically spend hours locking horns and …

    More
  • Yazd, Chak Chak, and hitchhiking with Aussies

    Following the mixed bag of experiences in Shiraz, I turn my attentions towards Yazd, a desert town that is slap bang in the middle of the country.  So much so that you can’t actually see it on the google map because it’s covered by the ‘I’ of IRAN.  Rest assured it’s there though, and it’s …

    More
  • Shiraz, Persepolis and a negative couchsurf reference

    I’ve been neglecting my duties of late and for this I hope you will forgive me.  This is due in part to recent world events, of which more anon, but aside from this and for reasons I know not, I have recently lost all my mirth.  I’ve been having a very interesting time in Iran, …

    More