Day 101 (Iran): Qazvin - Karaj (strange hotel owners)

daily distance: 108km
total distance: 6988km
riding time: 6h

I can sort of make this short: it was a battle of a day, every km was hard-fought it seems. The wind was fiercely coming into my face, the landscape could have been nice if it wasn’t so strangely hazy, it was hot, there was lots of traffic and I didn’t really feel like biking.

Apart from that the hotel staff annoyed me to the point where I will write the Lonely Planet about them. The guy had an air of nonchalance about him, it was quite impressive. He told me last night that he would find out the details about the police station for my visa extension. With a smug grin on his face he told me that he couldn’t find out and all of a sudden claimed to no longer speak English. I just don’t like that kind of stuff.

The police station was interesting - and no, I did not get my visa extended. The first guy says to come back tomorrow. Now, tomorrow is Friday, meaning that the country shuts down literally. Certainly none of the offices open up. He said this with a straight face. I laughed. He said it could be done only in three days, so that was a no go.

I biked much more than I had planned and find myself in Karaj, about 40km from Tehran. I meant to camp out but then got sucked into the maelstrom of greater Tehran. Karaj is huge place and also full of hotel owners who want to rip you off big time. I got something that I paid entirely too much for - in the grand scheme of things I shouldn’t care and now I don’t. I am dead tired after clocking 100km after my late noon departure. Will be in Tehran tomorrow … and say this with a grin on my face.

On the way here, I was a) stalked by a weird guy who got entirely too close for comfort - even in the European sense, b) followed by a guy in a car holding up traffic just so he could drive behind me for about 2km until I pulled out and told him to move off and c) met a guy who had a swastika (Hakenkreuz) on his cell phone as a background picture. That wouldn’t shock me as much here as you can find that sign anywhere on buildings. It’s widely used on mosques and stands for eternity (or so I am told). But lording over the swastika was a picture of Hitler and though the guy was really helpful in finding a hotel for the night, it put me off quite a bit. He tried to explain that the world be better if this and this happened - mentioning the Aryan connection between Iranians and Germans that supposedly exists (and really is bunk from what I understand) that I hear so often here.

And here is some more fun … wonder what the other 40% are made of … or maybe I don’t want to know.