“Dad, how did you meet mum?” “Well son, it was like this; I yelled at her through the windows of a moving car while doing 40 mph in heavy traffic until she relented, pulled over and we could talk in front of her girlfriends and three lads I was with.” So the story must go for much …

Tehran is a rather large city. I’ve been here about a week and I still can’t get my head around it. Not only that, but it’s filled to the brim with Iranians. There’s around 8 million of them, but they seem to take great pleasure insisting that there are much more. It’s a city with …

After due consideration (and owing in part to spending far too much time hanging out with good people here) I have decided to turn directly for Tehran. Hitching north was proving something of a difficulty. As yet I had no confirmed couch-surf host, it wasn’t a direct route, the weather was pretty bad, and from …

I’ve spent the last couple of days being shown around the wonderful town of Zanjan by my couch-surf host Roham and his friends. It’s been a joy. Ever apprehensive as to whether or not I’m on the same page as the people I stay with, sometimes it takes a little time to get to know …

There’s no rest for the wicked or indeed on one’s laurels, and when you’ve only got thirty days to see the 18th largest country in the world, you’d better get your skates on.  So I depart post, post-haste. I’ve spent the previous night attempting to catch up on writing about the insane hitch from Yerevan, …

I’ve slept the sleep of Hypnos, so much so that when I wake for a moment I don’t know where I am.  My eyes adjust, and I’m sleeping on the floor of an Iranian family’s guest parlour.  I think parlour is an apt word for it, with plush sofas and chairs, a chandelier or three, …