5400 - 6400 miles: Mumbai to Chennai

We could scarcely believe it. A 10 mile boat ride across the bay from one of the most populated cities in the world and we found ourselves cycling in some kind of tropical idyll - palm trees, quiet roads with white oxen pulling carts, buffaloes wallowing in the shade and people easily going about their business without a care for us.

Late in the humid afternoon heat we passed through a village with a massive crumbling coastal fort overgrown with jungle climbers and surrounded by coconut groves that cast a beautiful mottled light over everything. Friendly people waved and smiled from rustic, brightly coloured colonial style houses with red tiled roofs. It was the first of a thousand tropical cliches.

We cycled south with the Arabian Sea and setting sun on our right and the distant hills of the Western Ghats on our left. We camped the night on a sandy beach and drank Sean's wine while we cooked, then slept to the sound of the waves and in the morning swam in the sea. Tracey fed the beach cows our scraps of greens and we cycled past sandy beaches, coconut groves and shady villages and then sweated up over rocky headlands and sped down the other side to more beaches, coconut groves and shady villages. We had a fantastic lunch in the small resort of Murud, in the shade looking out to sea with a roost of Flying Fox bats in the pine trees by the shore. We caught the first of many small wooden ferries across a wide estuary, past the island fort of Janjira to the village of Dighi, where dozens of brightly clothed women were carrying tiers of metal water jugs on their heads from the well. It was a very steep climb out of the valley and even in the late afternoon shade we sweated buckets. From the top we could see a long sandy bay flanked by trees and found our way there to watch the sun set. We camped on the beach, washed in the sea, cooked under an impossibly starry sky with shooting stars and slept to the sound of the waves again. Next morning it was so beautiful we decided to stay a day. Tracey caused excitement when she cycled to the nearest village to buy supplies - she paid 70p for a kilo of fresh cod like fish and a handful of king prawns and I gutted and skinned them on the beach and made paella for lunch.

It took us two weeks to cycle the 300 miles from Mumbai to Goa. It was probably the best cycling of the trip so far - the scenery and days seemed to blur into a cycling paradise - beautiful tropical scenery, deserted undeveloped sandy beaches, heavily scented groves of flowering mango and fruiting cashew trees, traditional fishing villages, the hoots and whistles of Coucals and Drongos, friendly people wearing colourful clothes and smiles, making coffee and omelet amongst the pines while watching dolphins out at sea, crossing rivers in a variety of wooden boats and dug-out canoes. Most of the roads were quiet with hardly any traffic, though the surfacing was so bad at times we were being shaken apart. We camped mainly on beaches watching the sunset and cooking under the stars and at the fishing villages of Valneshwar, Malvan and Vengurlu we stayed in lovely simple accommodation overlooking the sea.

It is a mainly Muslim stretch of coast, more bhurqa than bikini. Zuber Amed, a young muslim man invited us to stay a night in his house in the village of Bankot as the canoe to the next village had stopped for the evening - it was an interesting insight into local life and culture - the house had no toilet (a trip to the beach was required) or running water and we were eaten alive by mosquitoes in the night as we slept on the floor.

As we made our way south the hills separating the bays got steeper and higher and the tropical sun was fierce, it was the most physically demanding cycling since the mountains of Turkey. The tops of the hills were grasslands scorched brown by the sun with red rocks and earth, where villagers laid out thousands of small white fish to dry - the stench and heat was nearly enough to knock us off our bikes. In the valley bottoms large rivers flowed down from the ghats to the sea, their banks cloaked in mangrove forests.

I have a diary to record our route and some of the many highs and lows of each day. Looking back, the entry for 1st Feb seems to capture some of the essence of our journey down the Konkan Coast: "Eating 2 dosas each for lunch at Dabhol; washing our clothes & selves in a clear tropical stream when we were so hot; watching the sun set with tea/coffee and bourbons on the beach at Guhagar; new stove is major jet furnace; nearly lost pans washing up in the sea; had to tell two blokes to leave us alone while i was naked after washing in the sea (it was dark); scorpion in kit; v. tired; woken at dawn by thud of coconuts being picked by man up a tree."

Crossing into Goa I suffered shock at Western culture after being away from it for so long - white people everywhere in tiny swimming costumes eating pizza and pasta and drinking beer. Tracey thought it was great, describing it as "like being at home only hot and tropical". We based ourselves for two weeks at Arambol beach (Camden Market-on-Sea), which may have the highest concentration of old hippies and white people with dreadlocks on the planet - they are if nothing entertaining to watch and put on an informal show of yoga, circus skills and bongo drumming on the beach at sunset every night. The sea, beaches, palms and international food of Goa were enjoyable after the madness of India but at times the Goa scene was a cliche of itself that I found both amusing and sad but not in a good way and I left Tracey on the beach for a few days and went inland to the tropical forests of the ghats in search of wildlife and some sanity.

From Arambol we cycled south past the package holiday resorts to the state capital of Panjim, on the banks of the Mandovi River. Having been built by the Portuguese it was quite charming for an Indian city. From Panjim we rode south-east and after a hot and hilly day in the saddle we camped in a cashew grove at the foot of the ghats. We were up before dawn to beat the heat and ascend the 1000m high ridge before us. We had two maps, both showing a major road over the hill but we found ourselves pushing the bikes up a very steep and rough dirt track through the jungle and when we came across a villager with a machete he indicated that it only got worse. It was a major blow and after two hours we found ourselves cycling back past our campsite and spent the remainder of the day riding through the blistering heat amongst hundreds of quarry trucks covering us and everything in red dust, back to the coast.

Cycling on India's National Highways is never pleasant but we had no choice but to endure a day and a half riding south with the noisy and dusty trucks and buses into the state of Karnataka before we could again turn inland to ascend the ghats. When we did it was such a joy to once again share quite country roads with bullock carts and the scenery of wild tropical forests and fast flowing streams as we sweated our way up the winding mountain road was beautiful. Once we had crested the ridge and rode out onto the Deccan Plataux our joy soon turned to disappointment. We had been expecting a lush, green, hilly landscape of forests, paddyfields and estates of spices, tea and coffee but found a hot, dry, brown and heavily cultivated place where once again we were the centre of attention for the enthusiastically friendly and curious Indians whose jaws seemed to hit the floor as we passed and who yelled after us in their Kanada dialect in a primitive manner.

As we made our way south-east towards Mysore the midday heat was nuclear - 40C and increasingly humid. If you wish to recreate our cycling conditions at home then try riding a cycle machine in front of your fire with your central heating on full and a hairdryer on "hot" blowing in your face. We cycled from pop stop to pop stop and were drinking over 3l of fluid a day each, most of which perspired straight out of us as curry flavoured sweat. To make matters worse, Tracey had a heat rash which could only be alleviated by covering her skin from the sun. We sought refuge at Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary in the Baba Budan Hills and the Forest Department allowed us to stay in their Resthouse (for a not inconsiderable fee) - it was basic (scorpion in the sink, tree frogs and geckos in the bathroom) but had a wonderful breezy veranda overlooking a huge lake with layers of forested hills beyond that are home to tigers, elephants, bison and leopards (we saw deer, a wild chicken and bear poo).

Rested and re-motivated we rode through the hills, mist laying in the valleys at dawn, through forests and coffee estates and bright green paddyfields. Out of the hills we tried to avoid the worst of the heat by stopping for lengthy all-you-can-eat thali curries and could barely get back on the bikes after lunch. We were wowed by the intricate stone carvings of the 12th century Hoysala temple complexes near Belur and the 10th century jain statue of Gomateshvara at Sravanabelagula, the world's tallest monolithic statue that looks serenely over the surrounding plains from a temple atop a smooth rocky hill. We had cycled 500 miles in 12 days and were hot and tired by the time we rode into Mysore, through the eye-watering industrial smog in the dark.

We rested and saw the sights but the presence of tourists in Mysore has turned the locals into the most annoying touts we had encountered - or perhaps it was the heat getting to us. We rode south-west from the city and after lunch had reached Nagarhole National Park in the Western Ghats, which is part of a the Nilgiri Hills Bioshpere Reserve, a huge tract of forested hills on the borders of three states. We enquired at some safari lodges about visiting the Park but they were expensive even by London standards, let alone India. Storm clouds built in the heat and we spent two hours sheltering in a small temple as the cooling rain fell in buckets in one of the wettest places in the world.

In fairness everyone told us the road ahead was not safe on bicycles due to wild animals, but then people have been telling us that the next place down the road is not safe since we left home. It was getting dark when we approached a Forest Dept checkpoint at the entry to the National Park. We expected to be told that we could not proceed until morning but they raised the gate and waved us on - which in hindsight was at least negligent if not plain stupid. It was soon clear we had entered a wild forest and decided to make camp near to the edge of the Park hoping there might be less animals about. We pushed the bikes along a muddy path and found a good spot in some bamboo forest. It was after we had pitched the tent that we noticed the elephant poo and the giant bamboo trees that they had pushed over and I remembered that they ate bamboo. We used branches, bamboo and our bikes to create an enclosure for extra security. As darkness fell lightning lit the sky, thunder rumbled and all around there were howls, hoots, screams and whistles of wild animals and birds. If felt like the most dramatic place in the world.

I wasn't worried about the leopards and tigers but elephants were a different matter. We had read several news stories in the local papers of villagers being killed by elephants and a jungle lodge elsewhere had told me that they did not like people and may attack. Unarmed, we would not stand a chance. We agreed that if we heard the pachyderms approaching we would grab the bikes and leg it. Once in the tent the flaw in our plan became clear - if we were asleep we would not hear them until it was too late. I laid awake all night rigid with fear, straining to hear the sound of approaching elephants over Tracey snoring next to me. The forest was full of animals, twigs were snapping, peacocks were crying alarm, deer were barking. It felt like the longest night of my life and I have never been so grateful to see the dawn.

The storm had passed and we cycled through the beautiful dry, brown forest on a "road" that was rubble and shook my front loader apart. As we were carrying out makeshift repairs a Forest Dept Jeep pulled up, advised us to be careful as there were lots of elephants in the area and drove off - they didn't even ask if we were OK or needed any help - every man for himself out here. The forest went on for miles and we saw Spotted, Sambar and Barking deer. At one point we passed a tribal village, many of their homes were small and flimsy, built from mud, bamboo and thatch they looked like they wouldn't withstand the monsoon let alone a herd of grouchy elephants - I couldn't imagine what it must be like living there. Some miles further on we both pointed in amazement as an elephant was lumbering through the jungle almost alongside us. There was a moment of mutual shock as the elephants trumpeted and thundered away from us and we legged it down the road. Once we were at a safer distance from each other we watched the 3 elephants for quite a while through binoculars and they watched us - until the one that had been staring straight at us and flapping its ears started moving in our direction - when we decided it was time to leave. It was an incredible experience and the adrenaline made my legs tremble.

After several hours we reached more tribal villages, where they had built platforms in the trees near their paddyfields so that they could scare the animals without being attacked. Further on we reached a larger village and a tarmac road and then crossed the state border into Kerala and back into wild animal territory in Waynand National Park. We cycled along a forest road that we would return to the following evening on a jeep safari when we watched a bull elephant cross the road and saw a herd of magnificent Indian Bison.

One of the great things about cycling is that you can just make the journey up as you go along. Hot and thirsty we stopped to buy a bottle of water as we passed through a village, in doing so we noticed another shop selling soda and so made it a pop stop in the shade when we noticed a sign advertising a guesthouse 600m down a minor road. I was tired after not sleeping all night and so we thought we would check it out - much buggering about and 5 miles up and down hills later we were escorted by 30 very small and excited school children to the Varnam family's homestay, which was like finding paradise itself.

Their home is on a small estate where they grow bananas, jackfruit, rubber trees, coffee and a list of exotic spices as long as your arm. Elephants and wild animals roam the surrounding forests and the paddyfields of tribal villages. As the heat and humidity of the Indian summer intensifies, hot air rises over the ghats and late every afternoon storms form - sitting on the Varnam's veranda drinking fresh coffee, reading the newspaper and watching the cooling torrential rain was a tranquil delight. Mrs Varnams Keralan home cooking was interesting and delicious, we even had a dish made with banana flowers. We could probably have stayed there forever but eventually and reluctantly got back on our steeds and cycled on in the heat, past hills of bright green tea plantations and down out of the mountains.

Kerala is a communist state and with India holding elections in April every surface was covered in red and white posters of the hammer & sickle or Che Guevara and roads were painted with marxist slogans. Which all seemed slightly incongruous alongside the luminously coloured mansions that lined the palm fringed roads in one of India's wealthiest states. We were passed by buses painted in psychedelic colours and driven by lunatics as we cycled into the coastal city of Kannur where it was 40 degrees and 90% humidity and the food was as spicy hot as the weather.

We went to Chembilode to watch a Theyam ceremony at their village temple amongst the coconut groves. Theyam is an ancient form of religious folkdance where the performers dress in fantastic costumes and make-up. During their ritualised dancing to frenetic drumming the performers take on the form of gods, local people then seek the advice and blessing of these gods. The villagers were wonderfully welcoming to us and we stayed for the whole ceremony which lasted from 7pm until midday the following day. It was an amazing and surreal experience.

We had been trying, unsuccesfully, to find a way out of India for several weeks and had, via email, found a sailing company that would take us from the Andaman Islands to Thailand but the Indian Port Authorities had other ideas. We killed time waiting for the outcome and the heat seemed to melt the days together in a procession of cold showers, laying under the ceiling fan and raging war on the invading ants and mosquitos. The matter was not resolved but it seemed pointless to continue south on the highway in the heat so we took a 14hr overnight train across the Indian peninsular to Chennai on the east coast to see if we could influence things. We travelled 1st Class but only in the warped bureacracy of India is 1st Class actually 3rd Class.

There are thousands of people living rough on the streets of Chennai and thousands more in makeshift slums and the city stinks like an Indian public toilet. We joined the massive crowds lining the sandy seashore for the cooler, fresh air blowing off the Bay of Bengal and we looked hopefully eastwards towards Asia.

On the road in "Incredible India!"

Outside of its wonderful temples, wildlife, beaches and diverse landscapes we found that India can be a hot, filthy, noisy place with distressing social and environmental problems and some terrible roads - what has made cycling in India such a fantastic, eye-opening and at times frustrating experience has been the antics of the Indians themselves. Some of the amazing things we have seen as we cycled 1800 miles from Amritsar in the north to Kerala in the south:

• A man sleeping amongst a rat warren where people put food out for the rats.


• Sikhs drinking water from the lake around the Golden Temple - the same water that people were bathing in.


• A man stood in a lake washing his arse with his hands after having crapped - pointing his glistening buttocks straight at the road (and me) so I could see his balls as well.


• At railway crossings vehicles line up on both sides of the road on both sides of the crossing. When the barriers come up there is an almighty scrum of vehicles and pedestrians that takes 10 minutes to disentangle itself into a semblance of order. This happens at every crossing.


• Jeeps and carts piled so high that they either fall off the road, wheels fall off or the axle breaks.


• Cows are undoubtedly stars of the show. They are sacred to the Hindus of the north. Male cows roam the streets eating the rubbish and crapping everywhere and are allowed to do whatever they want. We saw cows sneakily stealing food from veg stalls, cows grazing on fish put out to dry, cows eating plastic bags, cows sunbathing on the beach, a cow bumping a child and stealing its ice-cream, a cow charging tourists who were shaking their sarong on the beach unaware of their matador-like actions.



• Women in full regalia - bangles all the way up their arms, brightly coloured saris, jewellery on hands, legs and faces - working on road construction sites, digging holes and carrying rubble on their heads. They were often assisted by their children and get paid about 1 pound 50p a day.



• Goats with bags tied over their udders to stop people stealing their milk.


• Tracey getting caught up in a herd of buffalo while cycling and being herded off the road with them.


• A man carrying 3 sheep on his motorbike.


• Barbers cutting hair and shaving clients in the dust and dirt by the side of busy roads.


• Buses, motorbikes, autorickshaws all driving at night on unlit roads without any headlights.


• We went to catch a train to Jaipur from Jodphur and were told it was running 7 hours late.


• 2,000 people leave the cinema during intermission to find 1 bloke serving drinks.


• Watching appalled as an old man opened his 2nd floor window, hacked up a huge greeny and spat it out into the street below and onto my parked bicycle.


• Despairing hand labour - everything in India seems to be built by hand by gangs of workers in bare feet toiling away in the dirt in the heat of the day. We saw work gangs building roads by hand and even a gang of men trying to reduce blocks of pink granite with hammers and chisels.


• Village women standing under a tree to cut a big branch which then nearly fell on them.


• A circus girl performing by the road, balancing on a bicycle wheel on a tightrope 2m above the ground with silver jugs on her head and no safety net - and the crowd was more interested in us.


• A mouse crawling up the inside of my trouser leg and then making its home in Tracey's pannier bag.


• A temple to worship rats. There are so many rats that many are dead, diseased or deformed. Worshippers must enter the temple barefoot and walk over the rat shit and have rats run over their feet and then eat food that rats have been on.



• A stray dog meandering up to a female tourist sunbathing on the beach and cocking its leg on her.


• On the Konkan Coast at dawn every day there is a line of fishermen on the shore seemingly crouching in prayer to the sea, but on closer inspection all doing a dump on the beach.



• Shoes have to be left outside temple complexes and many shops. Emerging from an internet cafe I discovered that my expensive Haviana flip-flops had gone and that I had been left a pair of cheap Indian ones several sizes too big. Half-an hour later the owner of the shop returned puzzled at the commotion I was causing when I noticed he was wearing my flip-flops.


• Monkeys attacking tourists to rob them of their food and drink.


• People going to sleep by the side of busy roads in the middle of the day with their heads inches from the tarmac.


• Bare-faced lying. Indians will tell you anything even when you can both blatantly see that what is being said is not true.


• A man storing his rupee coins in his ears.


• A free hair in every meal and if you are really lucky a bit of insect as well.


• Women wearing black bhurqas and veils in 40 degree heat. Black sheep in 40 degree heat.


• Farmers washing their cows and buffaloes by hand.



• A truck full of seemingly precariously balanced coconuts bouncing along a bumpy road with a man asleep on top of them.


• Dogs eating roadkill dogs.


• A group of women trying out combs by brushing their hair with them and then putting the combs back on the shelf.


• The sound of India is the sickening "KKHHHRRRRRUUUUKKKK, KKHHHRRRRRUUUUKKKK, HYACKKK" of men and women clearing their throats and spitting phlegm. At any time you are no more than 10 metres from someone performing this act.
  
• A camel cart travelling along the road while the "driver" was asleep in the cart.


• Goats painted pink grazing in a field.


• Naked holy men wearing only peacock feather fans.


• School walls with cartoon-like pictures to educate people, that include pictures of people squatting and doing a dump.


• Dodgy fireworks that only ascend 20m into the sky before exploding and showering the onlookers with flares, one of which knocked a man over a wall. (Nick does this sound familiar!!).


• Public affection between men and women is frowned upon so you will never see couples kissing or even holding hands in public. On the other hand it is totally acceptable and common to see male friends holding hands or arms around one-another - army men in uniform do good impressions of Village People!


• India's National Highways are not for the fainthearted. We read an article in the Goa Herald from 10th Feb entitled "Mandur resident injured in mishap:villagers stone bus" which seemed to better capture the madness of Indian Highways than we could ever describe: "A 35 year old man from Mandur was seriously injured in a mishap involving a van and a bus on the Pamjim Highway on Monday morning. According to witnesses a bus was overtaking another bus when it hit the van. The bus driver and conductor fled the scene. Angered by the accident, the agitated crowd stoned the bus which was parked along the road. Old Goa Police who rushed to the site were helpless to remove the damaged vehicles as they had no crane and had to wait for one to arrive from Panjim. A case of rash and negligent driving has been booked against the bus driver and the conductor."


• Street children playing with a dead rat as a toy.


• School children rummaging around in the litter on their way to school and playing with a hypodermic needle they found.
• The vagaries of Indian bureacracy that meant I had to hide behind a wall while a total stranger bought kerosene for our stove, even though it was completely obvious that it was for me.

4500 - 5400 miles: Lahore to Mumbai

We had the shits within 24hrs of being in the city but we had a great time in Lahore and stayed a week. A city of 7 million people, there was no electricity or water for half the time, it was horrendously polluted, so much so that at times it felt hard to breathe and I developed a painful sore throat. Everywhere there was chaos, noise and filth - we could hardly walk on the pavements for the turds. Women were almost absent from whole districts creating a strange male dominated society with odd scenes such as ice cream parlours full of grown men eating brightly coloured desserts. The bazaars of the old city were still medieval and magical; as we squeezed through the narrow dirty streets, overhung by cables stealing the intermittent electricity, past auto rickshaws, bicycles and motorbikes and thousands of people, the street vendors amongst the filth were chopping off the head of a fish or a chicken, blood spurting onto passers-by.

The handful of travellers in the city were staying at the Regale Inn, amongst them several other cyclists and we enjoyed swapping tales of stone throwing children, unpaved roads and scary dogs. The Regale also takes guests to see sufi drumming, dancing and worship on Thursday nights - which consists of well over 1,000 Pakistani men and boys literally crammed into the compound of a famous sufi's mausoleum and getting completely stoned out of their heads on cannabis while two brothers drummed fantastically for hours on huge drums hung around their necks. For our own protection we were seated in an alcove of the shrine to witness what was one of the most otherworldly events I have seen in my life.

We left the city via the Grand Trunk Road which was lined on both sides with thousands of goats, sheep, cows and camels for several miles. Many of the animals were painted or decorated and canvas covers had been temporarily erected to give them shade. It was an incredible spectacle that seemed like it had been played out for centuries - animals being sold for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, when they would be slaughtered to commemorate the prophet Ibrahim's readiness to obey God, even to the point of sacrificing his son.

It was only 20 miles to the India/Pakistan border and we followed in Michael Palin's Himalaya series footsteps and stayed the night to watch the famous Wagah Border closing ceremony which was great fun - and with added spice as the two countries fronted up following the Mumbai terror attacks. We cheered for Pakistan - although we had only been there a short while we thought the country was an amazing experience and were it not for the security situation we would have loved to have spent more time there.

Our first taste of Indian bureaucracy was the two hours of form filling for endless customs and immigration officers to get into the country - though none of our bags was even looked at. It was another easy 20 miles to Amritsar. We had left the muslim world after four months and the head caps and white shalwar khameez of the Pakistanis gave way to the brightly coloured turbans and saris of the Sikhs. We visited the famous Golden Temple several days in a row it was such a beautiful, peaceful and fascinating place, thronged with thousands of Sikh pilgrims. Like most Indian cities Amritsar was dirty, noisy and polluted and in addition a power shortage means no electricity during the day so businesses were running petrol powered generators adding to the din. Still nursing our Lahore colds we pedalled south out of the city through the chaotic Indian "wacky racers" traffic of rickshaws, bicycles, motorbikes, autorickshaws, cars, trucks, carts, cows, dogs and pedestrians all going in all directions at the same time - it was an amazing sensual overload - and out into the paddy fields of the Punjab.


Something I hadn't considered before we set off was that as the world around us has slowly become more exotic so we have become more exotic to the world around us. We set out to see the world, we hadn't counted on the world wanting to see us! It seems that cycle tourists are fairly rare outside Europe so we have become used to curious people staring, waving or yelling at us, but I don't think anything could have prepared us for our first week in rural India.

Every time we stopped in a village or town we drew crowds of males who just stood staring at us, there were rarely less than 20 people, sometimes over 50. (The women and girls were too busy cooking, cleaning, washing, collecting and carrying huge loads of firewood on their heads, collecting water, working in the fields, on construction sites or at crafts and bearing, having and rearing countless children). The crowds would stand motionless watching us do whatever inane thing we were doing - having a drink, buying some food, eating a snack - and no-one spoke english or was too shy to try. It was unnerving and freaked me out. There were times when people were running towards us before we had even come to a stop so we changed our minds and kept cycling. Even on the move we couldn't escape them - Indians would be pulling up alongside on motorbikes or in cars, even a school bus full of children to stare at the James & Tracey freak show (i will admit that we probably do look a bit ridiculous compared to our surroundings).


We did get some amusement from Indian cyclists though. As we passed swiftly along we would overtake the local cyclists pootling along on their rusting, black steel, no gear Hero bicycles. A few minutes later we would start to hear squeaking/creaking noises that indicated an Indian bicycle in hot pursuit. The squeaking would get closer and closer until they were in our slipstream where they would remain noisily until they neared their destination, whereupon they would cycle past, pedalling madly, for a close look before turning off, sweating and panting with a big smile on their faces. It was a scene that was played out in exactly the same way countless times every day - I confess that in moments of boredom we sometimes sped up to amuse ourselves.


I am not exaggerating when I say that Indians were taking more photos of us than we were of India (the curse of mobile phones). It was like being famous but with none of the perks. Tracey though has been the unwitting star of the show - something made clear when a motorbike passed us and pulled over ahead to get another look; Tracey cycled past them and they drove off after her for another look before I even got there!

It was a flat landscape of bright green paddyfields and tree lined roads. The winter sun was warm and the skies were blue. It would have been tranquil and perfect cycling were it not for "horn ok please". One of the most infuriating Indian idiosyncrasies is that no-one uses rear view mirrors (and in fairness camel/cow carts don't have any) so if you want to overtake you have to blast your horn so that the vehicle/cycle/cart/pedestrian/stray cow you are about to pass does not swerve out and cause an accident (all Indian trucks have "horn ok please" painted on the rear of their trailers). In short, every vehicle that passes us blasts their horn at close range. In cities the din of horns is almost unbearable and we have noticed autorickshaw drivers wearing earplugs! We quickly went in search of the quietest roads we could find.


The Punjab countryside was intensively farmed and the only uncultivated land was housing some of India's millions so we slept mainly in cheap hotels in small towns but often felt imprisoned, too tired to leave the hotel and face the curious staring crowds. After 5 days of flat, flat, flat we reached a slight undulation which was the start of the Great Thar Desert and the paddyfields and Sikhs were replaced by desert scrub, camel carts and the wrapped turbans and superb moustaches of Rajastan. We were sad to leave the Sikhs - I have always found them to be welcoming, honest and dignified people.

We camped in the desert and woke to a thunderstorm that turned into a day of constant rain. Cycling along with plastic bags over my shoes I contemplated how it could be that in a desert in the dry season, where it barely rains in the monsoon it was pissing down. After 50 miles we arrived very wet, in the small town of Lunkaransar where the unpaved roads had turned to slippery mud and the power was out. There was only one place to stay and on the day before my birthday I found myself squashing cockroaches in the bathroom by torchlight. Next day the rain had stopped and with a backwind we cycled a swift 43 miles to Bikaner and for a birthday treat Tracey paid for a night of luxury and we stayed in the maharajah of Bikaner's palace - it was bliss.


We decided to do the next leg of our journey by camel. Our bikes were strapped onto the back of a camel cart which contained all of our bags, 7 days supplies of food for us, 3 camel men and 3 camels and the cooking and camping gear. Tracey and I rode a camel each and the third camel pulled the cart which the camel men sat on. It was a fantastic journey and one of the highlights of the trip so far. After the noise of the road it was so peaceful to plod slowly along through the silence of the desert, the only sounds the bells on the camels, occasional bird song and the chatter of the camel men. For us it was also luxury - the men cooked us tasty breakfast, lunch and dinner, we had an A-frame tent with clean sheets and lots of blankets for the cold nights and a bowl of warm water for washing each morning. We were served lunch on a blanket in the shade of a tree and at camp there were stools, a table and a campfire to keep warm while watching the fantastic starry sky. It would have been romantic were it not for the constant farting of the camels!


We passed through small villages and lonely farmsteads of round mud buildings with thatched roofs and there was no electricity or running water, brightly dressed women carried firewood and water on their heads - it was a landscape that you would associate more with Africa than India. We rode through fields of harvested millet, desert scrub and sand dunes with herds of small wild antelope and the occasional indian fox. Many of the tribal people were living on the margins of what desert land can support, though in a few places irrigation brought splashes of bright green. We camped wherever we happened to be when the sun started to set.

For two people with saddle sore arses it was a questionable venture to set out on and I got a bum blister on day one. We were sore for a few days but eventually got the hang of it. On Christmas Day we got the camel men to decorate the camels with tinsel we had brought with us and we had veg curry, lentil dahl, rice and chapatis for Xmas lunch. We got quite attached to the camels and got to know their different personalities - we named them Binky (the female and Tracey's ride), Sniffy (so called for his ability to smell out female camels and inflate his mouth palette as his mating call) and Lippy (after his inability to control his drooping lower lip). Each of the camels was owned and looked after by each of the camel men. We were both sad to reach the village of Keechin after a week and to have to say goodbye - we also felt a little bad that it would take the camel men 5 days to travel back to their families in Bikaner.


We cycled a short distance to the town of Phalodi and gave ourselves a Christmas treat and stayed in the Lal Niwas Heritage Hotel, a beautiful restored haveli (old decorative merchants house). It took us 2 days to cycle to the blue city of Jodphur. Village children begged for "one pen" as we passed, signalling that we had reached the touristy part of Rajastan. We really liked Jodphur. It has an amazing fort and palace perched on a clifflike plateaux above the city, whose buildings are painted pale blue and langur monkeys leap from roof to roof across the narrow streets of the old city. Our guesthouse had a rooftop terrace with a fantastic 360 degree view of the city. We were also really thrilled to meet up again with Annette, Joerg and Elmar, three Germans travelling from Munich to Sydney by motorbike - who we had first met in Turkey. We spent a great New Year with them at an Indian NYE party and Tracey and Annette got dressed up like the locals. Check out the photos on their blog http://weltreise-aje-der-weg-ist-das-ziel.blogspot.com/2009/01/bollywood-silvester-bollywood-new-years.html


From Jodphur we made a 200 mile detour east by bus to Jaipur to collect a parcel my parents had sent there and to have a look around for a few days, though I had been there on holiday 5 years before. The highlight was a trip to a huge wedding cake styled cinema to see the latest Bollywood release which was a fantastic cultural experience. I couldn't help smiling at the din made by the audience - Indians must be the loudest people on the planet.

We returned to Jodphur and cycled south. Having been cycling East - South-East almost continuously since leaving home we found cycling south in India into the low winter sun somewhat dazzling and also resulted in a silly sunglasses tan. Tracey bought a sun-visor to help but now everyone thinks we are Americans.

We were still in a dry desert-like landscape and I enjoyed seeing wild antelope, black buck and blue bull roaming in crop fields alongside domesticated animals. In this area they are protected by the Bishnoi tribe who have strong environmental principles - I couldn't help but think that here was a model for conservation in an increasingly crowded world.


The tyres on our cycles are designed by Schwalbe to be puncture resistant - Tracey's pass a "drawing pin test". We have not found them to be exactly puncture proof but in 5,000 miles across some rough terrain we had only 5 punctures between us. We decided to camp in some desert scrub one night and by the time we had pushed the bikes to a secluded spot the acacia thorns had given us 13 punctures that we spent the whole evening fixing - and we had to carry the bikes back to the road next morning.

We were cycling along small rural roads which at times were glorious and at others real ass breakers - Indian back roads are easily the worst surfaced of the trip so far. Our main problem though is that all the road signs are in hindi but our map is in english (it is a road atlas that the editor - the Surveyor General of India - admits contains many errors and he invites users to contact him with corrections. If we were to do so we would need to redraw most of the atlas!) - so at every junction we have to wait to flag someone down to ask them directions. As hardly anyone in rural India speaks english and we no hindi this in itself is not always straightforwards. It is also compounded by Indians preference to have a wild guess rather than to say they don't know. So we have to ask several people to make sure and we are often told different things - at times it feels like one of those game shows where 3 people tell a story and the contestant has to guess who is telling the truth. We get lost and regularly find ourselves cycling on roads that do not exist on our map, not really knowing where exactly we are - but we get there in the end and have a great time in the process.
After 4 days cycling from Jodphur we were ready to make our assault on Mount Abu, only the road up from the west on our map was in fact a pilgrims footpath up the side of a mountain so we had to detour 25 miles and then start the 14 mile ascent. The scenery was fantastic as the forested mountain rises straight out of the plain. In the evening light troupes of monkeys lined the road watching us sweating our way slowly to the top. Unfortunately we ran out of daylight and legs before we reached the summit and hitched a ride in the back of a truck for the final 3 miles to the hillstation resort at 1200 metres above sea level. It was really cold at night and even in our room we slept in woolly hat and longjohns. Two days later the descent down the mountain was great fun and we rode nearly 80 miles before finally finding a scrap of uncultivated field to pitch our tent in as it got dark. As the full-moon rose in the fields all around us Hindus started tuneless chanting, singing, banging and periodically howling at the moon - a pagan din that went on all night and terrified Tracey. If the Great Wall of China is visible from space then astronauts must be able to hear the billion people of India!

The following day we crossed into the "dry" and largely muslim state of Gujarat. The landscape flattened into desert which would eventually become an enormous salt plain - the Rann of Kutch, where we went on safari to see Asiatic Wild Ass and flamingos. Almost overnight we left the cool winter of northern Indian and met the heat and humidity of the south. At this point my friend Sean's imminent arrival in Mumbai on business interrupted our plans and we cut short our tour of Gujarat and made our way to Ahmenabad. While wandering a bazaar in the muslim part of this city I noticed Black Kites swooping down into a dingy narrow lane. The filthy, pungent street was awash with live and dead poultry and the various parts of in various states of decomposition in dirty wicker baskets for sale. Vendors were periodically tossing unwanted parts, such as chicken heads, into the street and the large birds of prey were flying down and picking them up. I got my camera out to try and capture the scene and a chicken-head thrower tried to help by tossing heads into the street near me - but the birds were too close and fast to photograph. The chicken-head thrower though had realised that if he threw the heads by my feet I was nearly knocked down by the birds and thus I found myself playing a bizarre game of kick the chicken heads as he lobbed them at me like a tennis ball machine and Black Kites swooped around my feet.

From Ahmenabad we caught the Gujarat Mail overnight train 300 miles south to Mumbai to meet Sean as we could not have cycled the distance in time. Miraculously our bikes emerged largely unscathed from the luggage coach and we ventured out into the muggy dawn of this city of 22 million people. I had imagined Mumbai to be like a nightmare union of Tehran, Lahore and Sau Paulo but as we cycled down the clean, wide, tree lined streets with civilised traffic I could not have been more wrong. The British left a legacy of colonial era buildings in the city but it seemed that their values of order have also persisted and it hardly felt like the India we had been cycling through. It was also surprisingly touristy given that there are not many sights.


It was really lovely to see a close friend after 8 months and Sean's legendary hospitality was in such contrast to our budget travel that I was almost overwhelmed eating cheddar cheese and Tracey was grinning from ear-to-ear at the sight of a dozen mini wine bottles.

It was the week-end of the Indian release of Slumdog Millionaire and the media was full of commentary on the movie and what it said about Mumbai and India, which made a change from the constant coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks and their aftermath, which the city seems as yet to come to terms with.

We said a sad farewell to Sean and laden down with goodies and new kit we caught the ferry from Mumbai harbour, 15 miles south across the bay to the village of Mandwa and the start of the Konkan Coast. The sun glistened on the Arabian Sea, it was hot and humid and there was not a cloud in the tropical sky.

4000 - 4500 miles: Esfehan to Lahore

As we cycled through the fumes and melee of Esfehan traffic an Iranian pulled alongside on a motorbike and began a conversation, the usual questions: where were we from?, where were we going?, was that my wife? - I was more concerned with not getting killed and hadn't noticed my lucky prayer beads fall from my handlebars. The Iranian disappeared and then reappeared through the traffic a few moments later with the beads. It was a nice touch that made being back on the bikes feel even sweeter.

We passed a giant concrete fruit on its island of green and then miles of factories and mechanics workshops and then the road stretched out before us across the flat desert, not a bend in sight. It was a vast landscape where pylons receded as far as I could see towards the point of infinity and distant trains moved slowly, like giant millipedes. It was a landscape where you could see where you would be later in the day and the views changed in hours. In the absence of any significant vegetation or buildings we found that drainage tunnels under the road made perfect toilets!

During the day the sun shone and its gentle November warmth made great cycling weather but once the sun started its descent towards the distant mountains the temerature plummeted. We got in the tent and I put on all the clothes I had (3 pairs of socks, long-johns, trousers, t-shirt, 2 long sleeved tops and 2 fleeces, hat and gloves!). The temperature got down close to freezing and we were zipped into our slepping bags like two giant pupae. It was bearable but not pleasant.

After two days we reached Na'in and were taken in by two students who advised us against staying in the tawdry place we were looking at as it was "dirty". We were amused to find their flat had a stolen roadsign and to be dirtier than the inn we had been looking at! But they were genial and amusing hosts and we all slept on their floor Iranian style.

Next day a chill east wind made the lead grey sky and flat brown landscape feel more like a winters day in The Wash than the deserts of Persia. As we cycled along the only distraction was the occaisional ruins of caravansaries, relics from the days of the silk route camel trains but now their mud bricks were slowly eroding back into the sand from where they came. To break the monotony we diverted for a look around the ancient adobe lanes and buildings of Abaq, brown, dusty and crumbling. During the night it rained softly on the tent and was still pattering in the morning - so much for desert!

We passed a family of magnifiscent Imperial Eagles by the roadside on the way into Arkadan, where I ate camel kebab for lunch. We followed the sign and asked directions for the road to ChakChak and soon found ourselves on a dirt road in a gravelly expanse of absolute nothing - apart from rubbish which once dumped in such a landscape literally blows for miles until it catches on any flimsy piece of desert scrub. After a few miles the "road" was sand and impossible to ride. We didn't see any other living thing for 10 miles. The pure silence was magical after the nearly constant stream of beeping trucks on the highway. We camped a cold night in this nothingness and unbeknown to us we were lost in the desert. This fact became apparent the following morning when after passing through drifted sand and the bleached white carcasses of a cow and camel we came across a small oasis village that was not on our map. We eventually ended up back on the highway having cycled a big loop and no closer to ChakChak.

We tried a different route and late in the afternoon cycled off the highway down a dirt road, past rocky hills glowing orange as the sun set over the desert and a beautiful full moon rose. It was a magical, tranquil place to camp the night and the kind of cycling I had dreamed of when planning this trip. In the morning the water in our bottles was frozen. We eventually found ChakChak, an importatnt Zoroastrian pilgrimage site set halfway up a cliff. We had not passed anywhere to get provisions since Arkadan and due to getting lost had been travelling an extra day, which became a bit desperate when the 25km to Karanaq turned out to be mostly uphill - we had a tin of tuna and a last handful of nuts for lunch.

It had taken us a week to reach the ancient desert city of Yazd, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. All the travellers we met felt the old part of the city was the highlight of Iran. The adobe buildings, narrow lanes and bazaars made of mud and straw are quiet and atmospheric and interspersed with blue tiled mosques. It also helps that some of the buidlings have been restored and turned into hotels that have fantastic courtyards with daybeds to sit and eat, drink tea and chat. We stayed several days, extended our expiring visa and Tracey had a couple of her teeth filled - a consequence of the middle eastern taste for all things sweet.

From Yazd we headed south-east passing through the salt desert oasis of Bafgh with its date palms and camels. A conservative place where all women wore chadors, the police called in to quizz us and I spoke to some classes of english students. The barren hills to the north-east of town are home to some of the last remaining asiatic cheetahs. The vast Iranian deserts also have populations of leopard, hyena and wolf but we were not lucky enough to see any. An incorrect map, a dispairing headwind and a balls up on my part meant that two days into the desert from Bafgh were were almost out of water with nothing but a hot sun beating on the desolation - we took the occaisonal sip from our last cupful to stave off "dry mouth". It was perhaps this that was to blame for Tracey falling off her bike on the way into Nuk and bruising her leg. We seemed to have crossed some kind of threshold. Children as young as 10 were driving around on motorbikes, pestering us like buzzing flies and people were literally coming out of their houses and shops to stare at us in silence as we passed. Women seemed to be in short supply whilst Baluchi men dominated the streets with their big beards, baggy clothes and headscarves. We were also cycling through the pistachio nut growing capital of Iran - mile after mile of nut bushes and desert. We stopped for a night in Rafsanjan and the following day, aided by a backwind for a change, rode 70 miles along the highway into the city of Kerman as the sunset turned the sky behind us into a breathtaking golden candyfloss.

Our guidebook had led us to expect Kerman to be full of nomadic types, straight out of the desert but it was a faily modern place with men dressed like they were straight out of Saturday Night Fever. To the east of Kerman lies the vast Lut Desert - one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. In summer temperatures can go above 60C and in the winter below -20C. Thankfully we were between these extremes of temperature and two Hungarian tourists invited us to join their taxi tour to see the desert and strange sandy rock formations. Beyond this desert lie the Afghan and Pakistan borders and this lawless region is where the majority of europe's heroin is smuggled through and home to the Jundollah extremists. In recent years there has been the occaisonal tourist kidnapping and terrorist acts (blowing up buses, that kind of thing) along the route from Kerman to the Pakistan border so we decided to travel by bus rather than cycle.

We had hoped to keep a low profile but when we showed up at the bus station on our bikes for the overnight trip we were completely surrounded by exciteable and curious Iranians who caused a right scene! I am a light sleeper at the best of times and hardly slept on the bus. In the freezing cold of dawn outside Zahedan bus station we warmed our hands on a burning truck tyre alongside a soldier and two young Afghan refugees.

Getting the final 70km to the border was a bizarre experience. We wanted to take a bus and were told that one left in an hour. When we went to go back into the bus station we were instead told by the soldiers to follow their motorbike on our bicycles - we assumed to another bus station. After a mile or so they met up with a police car and we were told to follow that. After another mile we met up with a different police car and were told to follow them - which we did, right through the centre of town (thus maintaining our low profile!), then out of the town altogether. Wandering what the hell was going on and fretting about missing our bus we stopped them to ask where the bus was. "What bus?" was the reply! Something had clearly been lost in translation.

We cycled on to a police checkpoint on the edge of town and from there we had to put our bikes and all our bags into the back of a police pick-up truck and were driven a couple of miles to the next police check point, where we had to unload it all. Then they stopped a random passing motorist to put our bikes and bags in his pick-up and for him to drive us 35km to the next checkpoint whilst our police escort stayed behind - quite how this was keeping us or anyone else safe was beyond us. At the next checkpoint the army took over and took our passports and we had to wait what seemed like ages in a biting cold wind in the middle of the desert for them to pursuade two random motorists with pick-ups to take us, our stuff and our soldier escort to the next ckeckpoint. We passed two recently smashed up pick-ups as we hammered along the road in typical Iranian suicide fashion. As we did so we passed a police speed check and the bloke carrying us (who was only trying to keep up with the pick-up in front that had the soldier and our stuff) got done for speding! This was completely outrageous and he was justifiably livid but got a ticket all the same - which made us feel even worse about the whole situation. At the next checkpoint we got a new soldier escort who flagged down another unsuspecting pick-up driver who finally took us to the border. Once in Pakistan we realised we had stepped into a filthier and more colorful world.

Immigration on the Pakistan side looked like a stable from the outside but inside it was a nice change to find english signs and people speaking english. We hung around for several hours waiting for a bus in the heat, amongts the dirt, swarms of flies and money changers. We watched men lay down in the dirt to go to sleep, using stones as pillows and pulling a blanket over themselves.

The bus ride to Quetta was 440 miles through barren desert running eastwards parallel to the Afghan border (which lay to the north of the dusty hills we could see). Our bikes were strapped to the sizeable load on top of the bus. Unwisely we had bought bus tickets before seeing the bus and it was a filthy vehicle with smashed windows held together with tape (they flexed in and out when the bus bounced). The bus crew and the passengers were wild looking Baluchi men with big beards, glassy eyes, baggy clothes and an assortment of headwear. They were in high spirits, joking and chatting as we bounced through the desert past camels, army check points, sand dunes and stunningly decorated red trucks. Pakistani music blared out and the sun set.

We made a toilet stop in a small village but Tracey was told to get back on the bus as she was not wearing a chador - which came as a shock having just come from Iran and was a reminder of where we were - fortunately she was not that desperate for the loo!

Sand drifts covered half the road and eventually the bouncy tarmac that made me think my teeth might fall out gave way to wildy bouncy dirt road. We stopped periodically to drop off or pick up passengers seemingly in the middle of nowhere and we passed through a couple of small towns. Through the middle of the night we were cold and uncomfortable and tried to sleep but I was mesmerised by the bus being driven like a rally car along the dirt road. We arrived on the outskirts of Quetta before dawn and tried to sleep in the bus with the crew until it was light.

The 10km cycle ride into the centre of Quetta was the most amazing 10km of cycling yet. In the freezing cold morning air we followed a bearded man in a turban who had his young son swaddled in blankets perched on his rear cycle rack. We passed a camel painted orange, herds of goats and sheep, young men sitting cross legged rolling dough for chapatis, open drains, dirt and rubbish, an assortment of weaving motorbikes, scooters, horse drawn carts, squeeking bicycles, motor-rickshaws, colourfully decorated buses and trucks and their noxious fumes. Raggedy, dirty children, sleepy faced men in turbans and women hiding under chadors were emerging from squalid looking buildings and alleyways. a chaotic mass of bedraggled humanity coming awake in a Third World city as the sun topped the surrounding mountains.

We were filthy and had hardly slept in two days and had planned to stay a night but first class seats on the train were booked well ahead. We figured if we were going to travel for 25 hours on economy seats in Pakistan then we may as well stay grubby and tired, so we boarded the not very aptly named Quetta Express to Lahore. I picked up the local paper at the station which made interesting reading: in a colmun on page 3 was the news that the day before a bomb had gone off outside Quetta court killing one and injuring several others, a suppliment informed of good progress in providing access to latrines, though it was noted that around 35% of the Pakistan population still lived without access to a toilet.

The train seemed to be going at walking pace as it wound its way down out of the mountains, stopping at small stations where passnegers had time to get out and eat food and drink tea before getting back on board. Initailly the train was uncomfortably crowded and we feared we had made a terrible decision but at one stop there was a mass disembarkation after which there was room to move around. As we passed through tunnels the train was thrown into darkness and the passengers shouted a good luck phrase. We had been travelling through dry barren mountains for over 3,000 miles and I was just thinking to myself that however beautiful it was I would be glad to never set eyes on such desolation again as long as I lived when we dropped out onto a plain that was as flat as a pancake and within a couple of hours I was wistful for any kind of hill.

We were passing south through desert with nomads camped along the tracks as they have been for millenia. Dust blew in the windows which were opened in the heat of the day and as time wore on the train carriage and its passengers grew filthier and filthier. We had managed to book one upper bunk which Tracey was able to lay out on and sleep during the night but I was upright on the bench below with all the others as we crossed the mightly Indus River. I was like a zombie, too tired to stay awake and too uncomfortable to sleep.

As we rumbled through the morning mist I could make out large trees and green fields with egrets and parakeets. The deserts of the Middle East had ended and I felt excited to be in a new and richer landscape. At one station there was a large painted goat on the platform wearing a mans jumper, its front legs through the arms. As we headed north I stood in the open doorway warming myself in the sun, drinking milky chai and watching rural Pakistan pass by. After 3 days/nights of travelling we pulled into Lahore station and fought our way off the train and out into the fantastic madness and chaos of the Indian sub-continent.

"So, what is your opinion about Iran?"

We were asked this question wherever we went. We gave a polite reply partly because we were in Iran but mainly because the answer was not so simple.

We did say that we found the Iranian people to be incredibly friendly, helpful and welcoming. On two seperate occasions in Tehran were were trying to find out where to catch a bus and not only did total strangers walk us several hundred metres to the right bus stop but they paid for our fare as well - and they weren't even getting on the bus - can you imagine that happening in many other capital cities in the world?

We also said that Iran has an amazing history of civilization with fantastic old cities, ruins and artifacts and beautiful architecture and buildings from a succession of dynasties: from the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassinians, to the Arabs, Turks, Seljuks, Timurids and Safavids and finally the Shah's of the Qajars and Pahlavis. Some of these places are wonderfully atmospheric and it easy to imagine how things must once have been - the Shah being cooled by a breeze as he looks out over Imam Square from the Ali Qapu Palace or a remote desert caravansary bustling with hundreds of camels and robed silk route traders.

What we didn't say was that we found Iran to be a bit dull. I understood that Iran was a theocracy but until we arrived I hadn't quite realised this meant that it was a totalitarian state (you have to be slightly suspicious about any country that has national holidays called "Heart-Rending Departure of the Great Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and "Magnificent Victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran"). "We are not free" was something we were told countless times - and its true - Iranians are not allowed to dance (except at weddings), women are not allowed to sing (this is good in that you don't have to hear Britney Spears songs), there are no bars or clubs and few cafes or restaurants and no "streetscene", cinemas in regional centres close at 9pm, hip-hop is banned as is having a boyfriend/girlfriend, there is not freedom of the press, speech, expression or dress (women have to wear the hijab but outside Tehran the majority wear the chador). To the outsider the 1979 revolution looks like an anti fun crusade and Mr Grumpy's (aka Ayatolla Khomeni) stern frowning face looks down upon the masses from huge murals everywhere. Unfortunately modern Iran has not the exoticism of its past.

Iranians assured us that there is dancing and drinking and merrymaking but as this is banned it takes place in people's homes - to what extent we could not say but either way, as an outsider its very difficult to access. It is a strange and at times fascinating society - we saw teenage girls wear fake hair which they can "show" because its not their real hair, like school children testing the boundaries of school rules. Young people have secret boyfriends/ girlfriends. Satellite TV is banned but many households have it - like the rest of the world they watch American movies, football and porn, whilst the government controlled TV channels spew out anti USA/Israel and pro-Iran propoganda, religious programmes and football. Its hard not to conclude that many Iranians just want to live their lives like elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly there is widespread dissatisfaction with the Ayatollahs revolution, the majority we spoke to wanted a change. Our sample was biased towards english speakers and younger people but walking along the street one day an elderly man attempted to strike up conversation; it was difficult to understand exactly what he was saying but the gist was clear "Khomeni was an asshole who had ruined Iran.". Though I am sure if we had gone to religous cities such as Qom or Mashad we may have heard a different story. Interestingly people mainly spoke to us about wanting to leave the country rather than fighting for change.

The division of men and women in Iran does have interesting consequences for the visitor. City buses are segregated - men at the front, women at the back - and on fully rammed rushhour buses its not always possible to see your partner, which is fine if you both know where to get off but not if you don't - Tracey had to keep getting off and on the buses when they stopped to see if I had got off! There are women only carriages on the Tehran underground but this is to allow women to escape the wandering hands of sexually deprived men from groping them in the rush hour scrum (women are allowed on other carriages if they want).

Unmarried men and women are not allowed to socialise which results in gangs of "frustrated" young men hanging about all over the place. In non muslim societies this would result in carnage of epic proportions. It is a credit to their religion and society that in Iran it does not - but that is not to say that having the streets full of Beavis & Butthead stereotypes is a good thing.

The lot of women in muslim countries is well documented. We found Iranian women to be confident, well educated (65% of university students are women - though only 20% get jobs) and have the freedom to be out and about in the public realm, drive cars and have (limited) jobs - which is more than can be said for neighbouring parts of Pakistan and Turkey and came as something of a suprise. Tracey met a young woman on the train from Tabriz. She was studying for a Masters Degree but had no plans to ever work, she came from a well-off family and was supported by her father, she was engaged and once married would be supported by her husband while she raised a family - Tracey thought it seemed like a pretty good life. But on the other hand Iranian women are expected to be housewives and it is hard not to feel that their lives and freedoms are restricted by what seem to us fairly spurious rules and social taboos (eg women are not expected to ride bicycles) made up by men and the injustice inherent in this grates against what we feel to be right - even if many Iranian women lead very happy and fulfilling lives.

We left hoping that the old adage "after the revolution comes the revolution" rings true for Iran - it would then be a fantastic place to visit.