isfahan, pt. 1

this time, we weren't as lucky with the check in time as in kermanshah and had to wait for a couple of hours until we could catch up on sleep. to all of our surprise, johannes, a german bikepacker i had met in the hostel in tehran, walked through the door all of a sudden. we collectively scraped up our remaining energy and went to have a look around the city.

isfahan is beautiful, great people, and the hostel especially is really worth the money. 4 to 5 euros a night, including all the tea you could ever want, breakfast buffet and great people to meet. if you ever plan to come to iran, start there.

towards the end of the day, i got the idea to go on a little sunset hike and johannes joined me. it started raining buckets as soon as we got to the mountain, but we decided to push through and were awarded with an invitation to a mountainside barbecue as well as a rainbow sunset. johannes also gave me his old tent for free, which i would in turn give to elias.

then followed just a couple of slow days spent at the hostel planning, socialising, relaxing. since i feel like i still haven't disconnected from using my phone and so on, i got the idea to do a longer trip to nature at some point in the future. the idea escalated from a 4-day tour in kyrgystan to the te araroa, a 3000km thru-hike spanning the whole of new zealand. we'll see.

i also realized that i might have to break my no-fly-rule after nepal, because tibet is only crossable with an expensive ass organized tour and tons of paperwork. either that, or i go back all the way to pakistan and cross to china there, which would also require lots of paperwork. once again, we'll see.Read more