by Lois Pryce
I had already learned that, if possible, loading and prepping the bike was best done somewhere quiet and out of sight, before embarking on the tedious dressing-up game known only to the visiting female motorcyclist in Iran. Islamic clothing laws require not only women’s hair to be covered but also the supposedly irresistible curves of hips, bums and thighs, meaning I had to wear my manteau along with my regular bike gear. Combining the practicalities of motorcycle clothing with the impracticalities of Muslim modesty was turning out to be a challenge and my look resembled the end result of a game of picture consequences – a confused mishmash made up of my vintage Belstaff jacket over a shapeless denim dress, itself worn over a pair of faded jeans tucked into my tan leather Frye boots. In my jacket pocket I kept my headscarf, a white chiffon affair that when swapped with my helmet only added to the bizarre get-up, resulting in something that could loosely be described as Steve McQueen meets Benazir Bhutto in Laurel Canyon circa 1972. It wasn’t my finest sartorial hour, but hopefully it would keep the ‘morality police’ at bay.
My exit from Qazvin aroused the usual flurry of excitement and enthusiasm from fellow road users. Horns blasted in greeting, rather than the fury one automatically assumes as a Londoner. A blur of waving hands and encouraging thumbs appeared from every car window and at junctions I found myself constantly and regrettably turning down offers of hospitality.
‘Madam! Do you need any help in Iran?’ called one gentleman from his car.
‘Very good! Very good!’ shouted a woman from a passenger seat, leaning across her husband to beep the horn repeatedly, while he grinned like a madman and swerved all over the road.
‘Please, drink tea,’ insisted an elderly man at a hardware store on the outskirts of town, where I stopped to buy some oil. The tray, sugar cubes and tiny glasses appeared from nowhere.
It was hard to get going in Iran, with so much bonhomie and ta’arof, and I forced myself to resist my compulsive white-line fever. But it wasn’t always easy to be in the present moment, and as I exchanged pleasantries with the owner of the hardware shop my attention was wandering ahead of me, to the mountains, to the changing autumnal weather that was turning more ominous with every minute, and to the usual concerns of the itinerant motorcyclist; where will I sleep tonight, where will I find fuel, what will I eat? I pushed these irritating thoughts out of my mind and brought myself back to the now, trying to remember to let the trip happen to me, rather than attempting to control every detail. ‘One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a private pattern of one’s own.’ Freya Stark had penned these words of wisdom so many decades ago, and I wondered if she had struggled with the same conundrum on this very road.
These days, the route north out of Qazvin into the Alamut Valley was tarmac, starting out as a wide boulevard lined with blocky concrete houses, small shops and wide open drainage channels running with water straight off the mountains. Before long the outskirts of the town ebbed away and although the road remained in good condition, the scenery quickly turned harsh and rugged; not that different, I imagined, from the sight that had greeted Freya Stark as she headed this way.
As the road climbed away from civilisation there were still a few signs of modern life, including, thankfully, a petrol station and opposite, a home-made motocross track where local boys had carved out some jumps and whoops in the hard, shingly earth. This evidence of fun and frivolity was cheering and I was almost tempted to make a lap, but I pressed on up the valley, following a pretty meandering river where the inhabitants of Qazvin were washing their cars at the water’s edge.
Winding my way up the mountain, the temperature dropped as snowy peaks appeared on the horizon and the whole range opened up before me in all its bleak beauty. A vast landscape of jagged black pinnacles stretched away in every direction; a menacing choppy sea of rock, riven with deep valleys and dotted with the occasional patch of green pasture, while dazzling caps of snow disappeared into the clouds. I was the only person on the road except for two young men on a tiny motorbike, its engine straining under their weight. They would pass me with a wave and disappear around a bend before I would pass them a few minutes later, returning the greeting, as each of us stopped at various points to take in the views. They weren’t dressed for a long journey, just wearing jeans, light jackets and trainers, and I wondered where they were going until it occurred to me that maybe they were simply out for a ride, for the fun of it. Eventually, after several miles of overtaking one another, we both came to a halt at a particularly spectacular vista of the valley below. Although they spoke no English we somehow managed to celebrate the simple joy of motorcycling along such a fabulous road, and equally to commiserate over the universal experience of being cold on a bike. There was no need for words; all three of us understood exactly why we were there and why any pain was outweighed by the pleasure. As we prepared to set off again one of the men removed his scarf and handed it to me, urging me to take it despite my protestations. We went through the comical pantomime of insisting and refusing that I now recognised as ta’arof, and although I played by the rules and he kept his scarf, just the gesture itself provided me with a warm glow.
At the Chala Pass, more than 8,000 feet above sea level, the road began its descent into the Shahrud Valley, the Great River of the Kings. I was heading east along the valley towards the village of Gazor Khan, or Ghazerkhan or indeed Qazir Khan, or however the heck each western cartographer over the years had interpreted the Persian pronunciation. With some application, it was usually easy to connect the different spellings to the same location, but sometimes they varied so wildly that I became confused as to whether they were different places or not. As I travelled along the valley road, looking out for road signs, I realised that there was no point in worrying about it anyway; this issue of English spellings was purely academic; all the signs were in Persian now. I would have to rely solely on my maps, which proved especially contradictory and confusing out here in the sticks. A momentary panic washed over me as I imagined getting lost in these wild, isolated mountains, stranded and alone in the Valley of the Assassins – what a place to go AWOL! I had not seen another vehicle or human being for hours and there appeared to be tracks and roads leading off all over the place, some signed, some not. For the first time in my life, I wondered if I should have brought a GPS, but my innate dislike of gadgets and my wariness of depending on technology was too ingrained. Besides, it was too late to change my mind now; this was a strictly lo-fi expedition – paper, compass and asking the locals.
My thoughts turned once again to Freya Stark, who had set off up this valley with a map even worse than mine that named only a few villages and a couple of mountains. She had travelled with two local men as guides and carried an altimeter, notebook and pen in an attempt to correctly chart every route, river and village, and heights of the passes as she went. She soon discovered that in an unmapped world every feature has a variety of names, depending on who is being asked, and I wondered if this was where some of the vagueness of the British-made maps of Iran had arisen. Her method was to consult everyone she met, but this scatter-gun approach produced bewildering results including six different suggestions for one hill, some entirely fabricated names made up on the spot by over-obliging locals, and a mass of confusion about whether Alamut was a village, a castle or a river – or all three. Persisting in her mission with admirable determination, and despite her guides misleading her on more than one occasion, she achieved the results she desired. Her guerrilla map-making skills were eventually employed by the Royal Geographical Society and British Intelligence, giving her the hard-won approval of the establishment that she both desired and resisted.
Employing the simple tactic of keeping the river on my right, I continued east until I was rewarded with the sight of a small settlement that was so quiet it seemed abandoned. This little village had been bestowed with a proper concrete roundabout that seemed both unnecessary and at odds with th
e wild untamed surroundings. Even more peculiar, the centre of the roundabout featured a vast and poorly executed plaster sculpture of an eagle in flight, a clumsy affair that combined brash American imperialism with the clunky Soviet look of state-sponsored art. Iran liked to pride itself on being ‘neither East nor West’, but I was pretty certain that this overblown garden ornament was not quite what Khomeini had had in mind when he coined his famous statement.
Parked under the eagle’s outstretched wing and wondering what kind of unholy alliance of local authority funding and dictator-chic designer had come up with this monstrosity, I spied the first human I had seen in hours. Relieved to see anyone, even this doddering elderly man in his shabby two-piece suit, I waved him down and attempted to wheedle some directions out of him, if only just to establish the name of this strange town.
We didn’t get very far. He understood no English and I couldn’t make out a word he was saying, even when we were both clearly attempting to say place names. I pointed at the map, he pointed somewhere else. He gabbled in Persian, I gabbled in English with a Persian accent. I tried all the names of the nearby towns with varying pronunciations but to no avail. Eventually I gave up on directions and tried to at the very least establish where I was right now. What is the name of this place? I waved my arms expansively, looked around in an exaggerated fashion and cocked my head on one side, in a charades-style attempt to demonstrate I was asking the simple question: ‘Where the heck am I?’ The old man threw his arms up in the air in exasperation and banged his fist against the leg of the eagle with an outpouring of what was obviously disgust. At first I was taken aback, thinking I had upset him in some way, but when he started laughing I realised he thought my gesticulations were a reference to the ghastly eagle. I nodded encouragingly and in response he rolled his eyes, made a spitting motion towards the sculpture and bid me farewell, ambling off and shaking his head. I was none the wiser regarding my location but I felt we had bonded on some aesthetic level.
After a while I heard the rare sound of an engine rumbling in the distance and saw a pickup approaching the roundabout from the opposite direction. It was one of the ubiquitous blue Zamyad trucks that I had already come to know and fear as Iran’s greatest road menace. Driven by every tradesman in the country, these invariably dinged and dented motors had caused me several near death experiences over the last few days. But on this occasion I was overcome with relief to see one hurtling towards me. The driver appeared to understand my pronunciation of Gazor Khan, nodding, pointing and grinning enthusiastically while I waved my map in front of him. Pressing a plastic-wrapped fairy cake into my hand, he sent me off on the correct route, away from the menacing eagle, into a steep-sided valley lined with poplar trees and grassy meadows. The road became rough and muddy with a few small rivers tumbling down from the mountainside, creating splash fords that chilled my feet but added to the sensation that I was venturing into remote, wild lands.
In Freya Stark’s day the ruins of the castle at Gazor Khan had attracted the grand total of roughly one visit a year, including none other than the British ambassador and his wife in the late 1920s. Thus it was considered a great tourist attraction in the region and had been advertised as such to Miss Stark by the villagers who were keen to show her around. Riding through the beautiful but lonely valley eighty years later, it didn’t appear that its visitor count had increased much, but still, the inhabitants tried hard to make you feel welcome. As I turned off the main route and began the ascent up the steep track to the village, I paused at a bridge crossing a deep canyon to read a hand-painted sign. It featured an English translation as well as the original Persian script.
IT ISAGREAT PLEASURE TO WELCOME TO ALL DEAR TOURISTS
TO THEANCIENT VILLAGE OF GHAZERKHA
N
As someone who frequently runs out of space when writing birthday card messages, I felt a fondness for the friendly signwriter whose hospitality outweighed his typesetting skills. With a gladdened heart I continued into the village with plans to spend the night, but sadly the litter-strewn dirt streets and dilapidated houses were far from the quaint ancient settlement conjured up by my optimistic imagination. The village had suffered an earthquake in 2005 and I wondered if this was the fallout, still evident eight years later. Everything was mud coloured, from the roads to the buildings to the stray animals and the spattered cars, and I felt that if I stayed too long I too would end up subsumed by the creeping dirt. There didn’t appear to be anywhere obvious to stay the night, no hotels or B & Bs, but I made a hopeful circuit of the steep streets, dodging loose chickens and piles of rubble, sensing the stares of a few local men as I passed. After coming all this way I felt duty bound to travel to the top of the hill to see the ruins of the famous castle, but they were distinctly underwhelming too; just a few low walls remained surrounded by piles of timber, scaffolding and plastic sheeting flapping in the wind. It occurred to me that in Britain, we are rather spoilt when it comes to castles, and sadly this scene was more Travis Perkins than Kenilworth. As some compensation, the view from the crag was stupendous, but the evening was closing in and I was aware that if I wanted to find somewhere to sleep, I needed to get moving.
Riding further into the mountain range with the great Alamut crag and its battered castle high above me, I felt like a tiny insignificant creature, beetling along the valley floor. There were a few small villages ahead marked on the map and I was travelling ‘hopefully’ once again, this time in anticipation of some kind of hotel or guest house appearing around a bend. But Robert Louis Stevenson’s words rung in my ears; when it came to Alamut Castle, his observation had been spot on. What hope was there for a place to stay on this lonely road? As the sky darkened and the temperature dropped I became anxious about the night ahead. I had my camping equipment with me so I would never be truly stuck, but the idea of pitching camp out here was disconcerting. It wasn’t the cold or the remoteness that was off-putting, but the idea of being discovered by a passing local or the village policeman, or worse, the resident mullah. I stood out like a beacon everywhere I went in Iran and especially so, out here in the backwoods, away from the more modern, cosmopolitan towns. I recalled the guarded stares of the Gazor Khan villagers and imagined the reality of camping in a nearby field – and then being ambushed in my pyjamas, trying to explain myself in the middle of the night to a disapproving cleric or the village militiaman.
Coming round a bend in a steeply walled canyon I found the road ahead suddenly illuminated as two cars appeared behind me. I was riding slowly in the darkening gloom and expected them to overtake as soon as the road straightened out, but they continued to follow me, sticking close together. This continued for some time and, although they weren’t flashing me or driving too close, I couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t make any attempt to pass. My imagination began its usual over-activity. What could they want? Were they going to run me off the road? Rob me? Attack me? Or worse? Who were they? Had the police tracked me and my illegal form of transport down at last? Had the old man at the eagle roundabout called it in, reported a strange foreigner disrespecting the street art? Had my inclusion on the Interpol list triggered some kind of APB? Could these cars be the Revolutionary Guards? Or the Basij, renowned for meting out all sorts of terrible punishments to those who dared to flout the Islamic code?
The two cars continued to follow me for several miles before eventually overtaking, much to my relief. I caught a glimpse of shadowy faces in the back seats, craning their necks in my direction as they passed me on a tight bend, but I didn’t want to make eye contact. I was just glad to see the back of them, whoever they were. The mountain road was dark and lonely but in some ways it was better to be out here on my own.
I rode on through the twisty canyon with a sense of being walled in by the steep rock on both sides and the descending gloom above, all my hopes for sanctuary pinned on the next village, wherever that might be. Then around a corner the two cars appeared again.This time they had pulled over at the side of
the road, engines running and headlights still blazing, lighting the empty road ahead but making it impossible to see inside them. Why had they stopped? To wait for me? It was at moments like this that I was glad to have the autonomy of my motorcycle, knowing that I was able, if it came to the worst, to disappear off down a muddy track or up a rocky mountain trail where no saloon car could ever attempt to follow. My lightweight trail bike with its off-road tyres meant I could pretty much go anywhere, and I could certainly shake off any four-wheeled vehicle once we left the tarmac.
The evening was not working out as planned. I had hoped to be tucked up in the cosy village of Gazor Khan by now but instead I was still on the road, with night falling and no idea where I would be sleeping that night. I was tired, cold and now, with the appearance of these cars, a little unnerved. I decided to keep going, not giving the cars a second glance as I accelerated past them as fast as I dared, trying to make a confident ‘Don’t mess with me’ swerve as I took the next corner a bit too fast for comfort. The road behind me remained dark for a few minutes, but sure enough, within a few hundred yards their headlights appeared again as they continued their tail. I was painfully aware of my bright-yellow GB plate with its alien Roman letters and numerals, acting like a beacon: I’m a stranger round here!
I could see this cat-and-mouse game going on all night, or at least until one of us ran out of petrol. And if it was me, then what? Everything seems more intimidating and sinister in the dark, and I tried to not let my paranoia overtake me, reminding myself that people were forever stopping and staring at me in Iran with no malice or ill intent; they were simply curious. I also told myself that drivers stop at the roadside for all sorts of mundane reasons; maybe one of them needed the loo, or they needed to check the map. It was hard to keep up a good speed on the dark, winding road, littered as it was with potholes and fallen rocks, but despite my decreasing pace, the cars remained behind me in what was obviously a steady but deliberate pursuit. Maybe it was the ghosts of the drug-fuelled Assassins and their victims forever haunting these ancient rocks and routes, but everything seemed menacing to me now, as darkness fell and the black of the mountains merged with the night sky.