IRAN Part 4 ...

A Brief Encounter in Tehran

We left Zanjan with a fairly good feeling already for this enigmatic country. Thinking that the welcome shown to us by Ali's family, was amazing by western standards. But the truth of the matter, is that the extent of hospitality the Iranian people were capable of, was yet to be discovered. Our next destination was Tehran. A city with traffic problems enough to give any western road planner the raving collywobbles. A city that would put the fear of God into any mild mannered motorist. And a city to put my scare-o-meter of mad drivers off the scale. The trepidation felt upon first entering Iran not only returned, but increased along with the density of traffic as we neared Tehran city. Tehran was definitely not a city to enter by motorcycle, if you are of a nervous disposition.

Once more my trusty travel guide was to give me a flavour of what was likely to be encounterd on the roads of Tehran. In short traffic. Lots of it. In fact, lots and lots and lot of it. As soon as we were within 30 miles of the city two things happened. The first and most predictable, was that the number of cars increased on the motorway we were on. More cars were coming on at each intersection, and few if any seemed to be leaving. The second thing was the speeds were getting faster. Our leisurly pace of 90/110 Km/hr up until that point allowed us to creep past most of the motorway traffic, but also allowed the few speedsters to go past us with ease. As we neared Tehran this speed was no longer adequate. It began with more speedsters who had no intention of slowing to go round a feeble motorbike. Then more worrying was that we found that the heavy lorries would thunder-up level, doing only a few Km/hr more. If not alert to their intrusive presence, would result in us having thick black smoke spat directly into our faces. Even more alarming still, was that they came from either side. I found I had to watch both of my left and right mirrors for overtaking traffic! To compensate, we now had to keep up with the majority of traffic, only letting the odd mad driver go past. It seemed to be the only strategy in order to not be overwhelmed. The problem with this of course, is that the few sign-posts in English hurtled by way too fast, increasing the likelihood that we would miss an important turn-off. It mattered little though, as we'd already decided we were going straight to the middle of this mad city. Follow the cars, and where there were more cars we went. Another clue was the air quality. The more choking the fumes, the more likely we were heading in the right direction.

We felt we were getting closer, but as usual decided to pull over to confer and try to find a land-mark that might give us a chance of hunting down our hotel for the night. No longer had we stopped for more than a minute, when a yellow taxi pulled up. Winding down the window in the back of the car, was a rather pretty young lady. She was seen to be wearing an elegant and expensive looking head-scarf, that had rode back on her head to show off perfectly conditioned jet-black hair. She then asked us where we wanted to go. Now I remember some things about this encounter, but unfortunately didn't remember nor had the foresight to write down her name. Though having said that, the things she told us, along with her demeanour, meant it would be diplomatic to change her name anyway. During the first few minutes of this spontaneous interview, it became clear that even though this lady was apparently trying to help us out, she was in fact looking for something herself. The intensity of the gaze, the flirtatousness of speech told me she was definitly after something. It quickly became evident what this something was. Which was I believe, to get out of her current life and predicament. It seemed that there were serious problems between her and her husband, though my initial assessment was, that she was too young to be married. But of course having said that, I was again using western standards. She told us that her husband was 'with' another woman. “An older woman” she stressed. She enlarged on that for a moment to make sure that we got the point, then suddenly said that she would like to invite us to her home. Now, can you imagine ... put yourselves in our position for a moment. Gone on, you can do it. .... There we are a couple of road-grimy motorcyclists. One over fifty years of age, the other a relative spring chicken in his early thirties, and a very attractive and very much younger lady with come-to-bed eyes, starts talking about taking us back to her home! The latent thoughts remained where they were, due to a life-time of frugual living, moral training, buddhist studies and spartan living. My powerful moral fibre had honed me for moments such as this, so would be able to resist the offer with ease. But there was no need to fear, as she soon went on to say how much she would like to take us home, but if her husband found out then ... she mimed the knife being drawn across the flawless skin of her rather shapely throat. It would be hard to imagine anyone carving a slice around such beauty, but took her at face-value. Who knows what kind of lunatics reside in a city, which is happy to put up with such crazy traffic. Eventually the conversation petered out. Mostly because we had one thing on our minds. No ... not that you single-brain-celled person you. It was finding the bloody hotel. All we wanted were directions to a cheap and preferably clean hotel, but it seemed that our pretty young lady with well spoken English was running out of things to say. I guessed because she'd aired her marital problems, along with ill-advised thoughts of fantasy for entertaining two bike-riding travellers, and didn't know where to go from there. Seeing as she was the one that engaged us, it was her perogative to pursue or finish the conversation. We just sat looking at her for a moment, till I brought the subject back to the immediate problem of finding somewhere for us to stay. We thanked her for her interest and wished her good luck with ... 'life' I suppose, then urged her to continue on to wherever it was she was going, proffering her our thanks. The slow exit of the taxi left us looking at one another with questioning expressions, but it did allow us to get on and fumble our way around the city again. She left I felt taking with her a good deal of sadness, but also with the thought; that anyone who could be that forward wouldn't stay 'down' for very long. I'd put money on the fact that in the not too distant future, some young (or maybe not-so) Tehranian was going to be getting the ride of his life ...

My original travel plans saw me avoiding Tehran, as no more than a 'via' in order to get to places of more cultural interest. But things had changed in that the family of one of my Kurdish friends resided in this city, and it was graciously offered that we'd visit and perhaps stay with them briefly. We also had the matter of trying to arrange our Chinese visa, and Tehran it was agreed, was a good as place as any to get it. Little did we know what our visit to Tehran was going to bring.

We eventually found a well appointed but shabby hotel, nestling in amongst the taller buildings of one central Tehran's main 'drags'. Luckily it had a pull-in wide enough to get our bikes off the streets. Bikes that seemed to attract attention like magnets, and made slipping in and out of our temporary places of residence unnoticed, something of an impossibility.