23th - 30th October 2016
After leaving Ehsan’s house in Karaj, I
didn’t feel better but often dizzy, headache and stomachache. The first day, we
could make only 30 km then off to find a place for me to rest. It was an
unknown village which we didn’t even see on our map, Orin village. Péter
managed to find a storage room of a supermarket for us to take a break and
later on, a man who lived on the upper floor of the storage room invited us for
lunch and a night at his house. Despite the warm welcoming host, I didn’t
recover and started to have diarrhea. We wanted to stay one more night but the host
had their own schedule so we had to find another place. After some hours of
resting at a electrical tool shop in the next village, we decided to take a bus
to the next city, Qom.
Edalat was our host in Qom. He is an
amateur photographer and Persian-English translator as well as a Tar (the
Iranian traditional music instrument) player. He cooked for us a nice dinner
and showed us his beautiful city. The highlight was the huge shrine with golden
ceiling. Having nice talks and enjoying the beauty of Qom, I felt better and
the next day we even made 106 km to Kashan without any troubles.
Mohammad took
us home for the night and we got a nice dinner with his whole family. We also
ate a lot of fresh pomegranates from his garden.
We thought that I totally recovered so
we continued the next morning. Sadly, we could go only 10 km more and the
headache killed me again. We had no other ways than returning to Kashan to ask
for help. After some hours of resting in a mosque (my sleeping bag was
surrounded by loud talking women, naughty overactive kids and deafening prayers
from the stereos), Reza’s family adopted us to their home. That evening, we
asked for a visit to the hospital and they were glad to bring us there. The
experience we had at the hospital in Iran was a bit different from the one in
Greece. It was less chaotic but the doctors didn’t speak well English. Reza’s
wife who didn’t speak English was my spokeswoman without my permission. At the
end, I was diagnosed with food poisoning and got 3 hour long infusion and a
special diet to stabilise my digesting system.
The next day, we moved to Reza’s
sister-in-law to rest as his family would be out of town for 4 days. After 3
days staying with 2 unintellectual families, we noticed something about the
kids of this class. The parents here never spent time with their kids,
including studying or playing some intelligence developing games together. The
kids didn’t have any other toys than the metal weapon, a knife, a screwdriver
or a phone which played Muslim prayers all the time. We never saw the second
book in the houses besides the Qu’ran. Children were playing around the boiling
pots without their moms noticing it as they were busy chatting with each other.
The moms really didn’t see the latent dangers in their own houses to their
beloved kids...
The women in these
family don’t have much education or approach to social information. Many of
them don’t go anywhere besides the mosque. The shopping is done by their
husbands or children. The limitation of scientific knowledge was the reason
that they gave me some candy, some kind of biscuits, a piece of crytal sugar or
a spoon of butter to put on my belly. They truly believed that I should recover
from my sickness by those unless I am pregnant without knowing about it. It was
really the time to leave as I was fed up with those shallow housewives.
To make sure that I
would totally be fine, we (again) took a bus to the next city, Esfahan where we
renewed our Iranian visa for one more month. Just some minutes after getting
off the bus, a young man came to us and asked if we need any help. After
knowing that we were looking for a shop to recharge our simcard, he transferred
5 euros to our phone and didn’t wait for us to pay, he ran away to his bus. Of
course he didn’t forget to wish us a nice time in his country. The Iranian
hospitality always surprises us. Thank you, Babak!
Esfahan is a nice city with beautiful
bridges over the river (doesn’t exist anymore) and green can be seen everywhere
so that people could forget that they are at the dessert. During the 4 days in
Esfahan, we also met a German couple who were cycling from Europe to Asia.
Later, we cycled together for 10 days with a lot of fun. Daniel and Daniela
brought a new atmosphere to our trip...
Linh
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