We woke up this morning to the wonders of Merv, an ancient city ruined by Ghengis Khan, on our doorstep. Merv is spread over a huge area and we managed to burn up nearly 20km by the time we were done looking around and back on the main road towards Uzbekistan. Of course we couldn’t […] Read More »
One of the best parts about our trip has been filling in the blanks on the world map for all those countries we had no real impression of. Who really knows what Turkmenistan is like? For us, aside from a few vague ideas about grand statues of a dictatorial president and natural gas, we certainly […] Read More »
You can spot a fellow tourist a mile off in this part of the world so we quickly realised we had company when six fair-skinned young men with musical instruments walked by our campsite. We were eager to find out what their story was so we hurried up with our packing and rushed off to […] Read More »
Today we’re singing the praises of the humble hammam. We didn’t really start to use the public bathhouses until Bijan introduced us to them going across the Dasht-e-Kavir desert but now we’re converted. For only 5,000 Rials – about 50 U.S. cents – you get a scrub up in your own private room. What could […] Read More »
78km Mazdavand to Gonbadli We’re almost to the border but Iran wasn’t about to let us go without a final farewell show of her hospitality at its best. The country’s kindness started in the morning when we stopped at a small shop for some food and asked where the bakery was so we could buy […] Read More »
