We’ve spent longer than expected in Shiraz, notching a few tasks off our ‘to do’ list. Andrew’s shoes have been repaired. They were literally falling apart and a fellow customer at the shop said they should be in a museum. We are hoping they’ll last another six months! Friedel has a new rim on her back bicycle wheel (replacing the cheap Chinese one we put on in Syria when the original Mavic gave out). We finally got our application in for a letter of invitation for a Uzbek visa and amazingly in between all this we managed to fit in a visit to Iran’s most famous archaeological site, Persepolis.

Actually we really lucked out, meeting a wonderful tour guide Arash a few days earlier. He was going to Persepolis anyway and invited us along. Normally you have to charter a taxi to get there or for us we’d have faced 60km of motorway cycling. Now we’re free to plan a different route to Yazd without missing this amazing site. We’ve worked a few pictures into the post but our gallery has many more from Persepolis.