Sunday, November 27, 2011

Day 148 Zanjan - Abhar

I caught him! Some days ago in Bostanabad I was told about a swedish
cyclist going to Oman just two days ahead of me.
We met on the way to Soltaniyeh - worlds greatest brick dome. Yannik turned
out to be swiss - not swedish - but the other details were correct.
I had started in Zanjan after goodbye-breakfast with Mahdi and Elohe. Arya
was still sleeping. Maybe this made the farewell a bit easier - yesterday
he did not really want to let me and Trabant go.
According to the weather report it was the coldest day so far: -8° in the
morning. But there was no single cloud and the sun made it bearable. I was
focused at the huge dome of Soltaniyeh in the distance when I heard someone
shouting from the other side of the road - Yannik had already visited the
sight and was on his way back to the highway. He waited for me while I was
visiting the huge tomb and in the meanwhile befriended some people who
consequently brought us lunch and fruits.
The long way to Abhar was not very exciting - we just followed the street
through a very wide valley. But it was fun to cycle with someone else again
after a long time. Fortunately a parallel highway took most of the traffic,
so we had a chance to talk a bit while cycling. Yannik is an experienced
long distance cyclist - he went from Switzerland to Shanghai 5 years ago
and even once crossed Lake Baikal in winter!
In Abhar we checked in at the only hotel in town - everything went well
until we wanted to go to our room: suddenly there was no room available
anymore because some other guys wanted to have it. It took us about an hour
of discussion until the problem was solved: we got a room with only one bed
and the guys at the hotel carried another bed - which was not an easy task,
so about another hour later we could finally enter our room. We spent the
rest of the evening comparing our travel plans, joking with the hotel staff
and with a short repair of Yanniks bicycle before we went to bed very tired
- after all we both had cycled around 100km in the very cold.

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