Axis of Evil

Soon after I'd stepped off the ferry from the UAE and first put my foot onto Persian soil I realised how badly I'd planned this trip. Lying in my unusually expensive hotel room after an evening of testing ATMs for compatibility with my bank card I at last got to the page in Lonely Planet that told me that, owing to a recent tightening of economic sanctions against Iran, I could only use cash.

Bad news. Bad, bad news. My forehead immediately heating up from the whirring gears of comprehension, I furiously emptied out my pack onto my bed in an Easter-egg hunt for forgotten US dollars. Okay, I thought, if I can survive for the next month on a budget of seven dollars a day, I might just be able to afford a visa into the next country. What a shame that night's accommodation cost four days of my budget. Well, I'd heard that Iranians are incredibly hospitable - it was time to put that to the test.

The next morning I got a look at what I'd got myself into. I felt like I'd been transported back to the land of my childhood: the streets were quiet, people smiled a lot and most of the cars were made in the late seventies. Iran is like Cuba plus twenty years. Taking my eyes off the quaint retro-town of Bandeh-e-Lenghe I pumped up my tyres (I've had a very slow leak for the past two months) and headed away from the coast and into the desert. Soon, I was greeted by an army of giant concrete tepees receding off over the plains that I initially regarded as a potential source of cheap housing but was later disappointed to discover actually sheltered awkwardly deep wells. They seemed to be straight out of Frank Herbert's Dune series.

Towards the end of my first day's ride through the immediately arid Iranian desert I felt a low rumble like a poorly tuned truck. The previously blue skies now flickered with distant lightning over the parched landscape and I knew time was running out to seek shelter. Thankfully, while stocking up in a small desert village on a can of pineapple slices costing a third of my day's budget, a bunch of guys jumped out to invite me into their home. I made an almost audible sigh of relief that the hospitality rumours were true.

However, this was one of the most normal night's stays I experienced in Iran. Over the next month I found myself crashing in three mosques (the secret of Islam's success - fully heated mosques in winter, I nearly converted right then and there), a school, a crowded student flat and even, almost, a military base. This latter source of emergency accommodation involved ingratiating myself with the base's commander and boisterously entertaining the recruit dormitory before eventually heading to bed. Sadly, this all ended in tears when, in the middle of the night, the base got a call from high command demanding to know why they were harbouring an enemy of the Islamic Republic. They kicked me out in my pajamas. To be fair though, the military did ensure I didn't have to pay for the hotel they dumped me in - I should have thought of getting the Iranian military to pay for my holiday earlier.

Apart from all the weird places at which I stayed I was mostly invited into family homes. The patriarch of one of these took me to his weekly game of lame volleyball - a sport invented for the large number of men in the city of Lar who'd been shot in the leg by Iraqis during their war with that country. Shuffling around on the dusty indoor sports hall floor using only my hands for locomotion I impressed the town's limping veterans with my spectacular serving aim.

Annoyingly though, success was never guaranteed in finding a bed (or actually a floor - which is what everyone sleeps on in this country). On two occasions I was forced to sleep outside - once in a burnt-out housing estate out of town, kept awake by a nearby group of local bogans and, later, distant wolf cries; and on another occasion, taking the opposite extreme, on a park bench in a large town's main roundabout - enlivened by an overlooking resident coming out to give me a box of Ferrero Rochers in the middle of the night. Other than the chocolate I have rued my lack of tent and the crappiness of my US army sleeping bag (and unrolling this in mosques is always an awkward experience - it's covered in cheerful American flags).

Another awkwardness occurs when my host, an imam or revered father, inevitably asks whether I'm a Shiite Muslim or Sunni Muslim. At this point his educated and worldly son will lean in and quietly inform him that I am a Westerner and therefore a Christian.

"Actually," I helpfully clarify, "I'm an atheist. It's my opinion that the god you worship every day doesn't even exist." I'm not sure how much they appreciate this insight into my metaphysical philosophy. Thankfully my Farsi isn't quite good enough to communicate the full extent of this heresy.

The ride leading up to the fairly banal city of Shiraz (maybe its banality was related to its absence of wine) was, as always, mindblowingly spectacular. Vast flat plains punctuated by striated mountain ranges, the road zigzagging around them to avoid expensive tunneling. Some rolling green hills made me feel like I was on the Tour de France, a comparison enhanced by motorists offering me food and clothing through their windows as they passed. Of course, some people can be annoying - I do still get the sneered 'Why?' gesture. How do they expect me to answer? "Yes, cycling through Iran is all part of my evil plan to destroy the world."

It was in the learned city of Shiraz that I heard of a method of acquiring some cash - through a hotel in the desert city of Yazd, a 400 kilometre detour. On the way I checked out the ruins of Persepolis, still smarting from the ravages of Alexander the Great's drunken party and subsequent house fire (what a night that must have been!). Knowledge of that conflagration kept my spirit warm as I ascended into three kilometre elevation mountains and was instantly struck by a massive snowstorm.

If there's anyone out there who's tried to ride through a snowstorm they'll know how much worse it is than rain. Not only is visibility reduced to about the distance of your handlebars, but even squinting, your eyes sting with the impact of each snowflake. Abandoning my day's ride half-way through I was forced to return to a town I'd past about ten kilometres back, a friendly truck driver giving me a lift for the last small stretch. Annoyingly I left my helmet in the truck's cabin but I think the extreme paranoia of hitting something for the rest of my ride adequately compensated for my reduced impact safety. As an added bonus, losing the false security of my head-protection launched me into a state of hyper-reality that really enhanced my cycling experience.

I spent the next two nights stranded in the small town of Safa Shar waiting for it to stop snowing while staying at the expansive house of a Zoroastrian engraver/cargo ship captain. On the second evening the local 'sportsmen' took me 'duck hunting'. This involved driving dangerously through deep snow in a 1970s sedan for an hour, stopping frequently when bogged, quickly disembarking to confirm the dearth of ducks, then taking pot shots at stray dogs on the way home. These guys out-boganed the Omanis.

But at last, digging my bike out of the snow, I was on my way. The next three days saw me dropping off the huge snowy plateau upon which I'd been stranded, crossing the vast and genuinely empty Abarqu desert, and finally climbing over another bitterly cold mountain range to Yazd.

Yazd offered my first encounter with foreigners in Iran - the backpackers' hostel there was swarming with them. My main contact here was Jemima, a slow-traveling Sydney girl and friend of my old Uni buddy Adrian, who introduced me and a bunch of backpacking characters to various local digs, bachelor pads and even an impromptu santur concert (a traditional Persian instrument) over dinner one night. During the daylight hours we all explored the Zoroastrian sky burial sites, went on a desert village tour and clambered over the interlocking roofs of Yazd's burnt-sand coloured skyline as the sun set over the mountains.

My companions seemed to involve a fair few cycle tourists, but none riding at the time - all had left their bikes in Tehran on their way across the popular Central Asian route so they could tour the south. One of these, James, even had to resort to eating canine roadkill to survive a deserted stretch in Turkey - I was glad I'd be taking the train.

During all this I was trying to set up a bank transfer with the manager's brother-in-law in India so I could finally get some cash. Here's a tip for doing this yourself: you know the description 'to appear on your statement' your bank lets you write when setting up an online transfer? The bank reads that. Don't describe your transfer as "Iran Cash" - you get a load of anxious emails demanding you call the bank immediately to tell them why your trying to violate international sanctions against the country. After carefully explaining the situation for five days I gave up and left the city, borrowing heavily from Jemima to get me to Tehran. Having left, the bank, Westpac, later spontaneously let the money through... but it took two entire months for it to arrive in India. In the end it was returned to my account because I wasn't related to the recipient - minus two large $20 transfer fees for their trouble which they still refuse to reimburse.

The final thousand kilometres riding to Tehran went by in one long deserty blur. Here I frequently found myself clocking up 150 kilometre days, barely stopping or even changing gears. I interrupted this journey with a few days in Esfahan so I could apply for a visa extension, which I got in twenty minutes rather than purported three days probably because of how awesome the visa official thought my trip was. Esfahan also produced my ebook reader, sent to my hotel there from Mumbai after I had to leave that city too early for its reception. At last I could finally dispense with the grotesquely heavy paper version of James Joyce's Ulysses!

While in Esfahan I hostelled with a Japanese backpacker who spent three days hanging around the headquarters of the Islamic militia, the dreaded Basij, trying to get his passport and camera deconfiscated. He'd been caught taking photos of one of Esfahan's historic bridges... while a demonstration connected with the recent Arab uprisings marched over it. He eventually had them returned within hours of his departure for home.

It was with great sadness that I rode the final 500 kilometres to Tehran for the conclusion of my cycle tour, precariously navigating between the twin nasty countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. The scenery was still spectacular - brain-numbingly vast stretches of desert, isolated villages perched on hillsides, and, at one point, a view of the gibbous moon bulging out from behind a sky-piercing icy mountain elevating a good mood fueled by both endorphins and adrenaline (produced during ascents and descents respectively). This later scene was just before cycling over Iran's underground uranium enrichment plant where I was briefly stopped by the army employing their Farsical language at minimum comprehension levels. It was unfortunate that it was at this exact point that I met the only other cycling tourists in Iran (a Swiss couple) - the army forced us to go our separate ways before we'd got a proper chance to exchange touring stories.

But at last, fifteen kilometres below the massive round cycling total of 10,000, I had reached the capital, Tehran. The next day, after three hours of waiting in queues at the main post office, I'd sent my panniers back to Australia. Annoyingly, my overlong bike was to remain with me for the train ride to Istanbul.

That afternoon, my stuff strewn haphazardly throughout my windowless hotel room like the contents of an inefficient garbage compacter, I went online in the lobby to check my emails. Chatting for a few minutes with Jemima who happened also to be online, we suddenly discovered that we were both in Tehran and, in fact, only about 50 metres away from each other. This called for immediate tea-ing it up (alcohol being illegal in this country) and I jumped across the street to join her for a brew.

Night having fallen, we took the metro across town to what Jemima described as the 'best soup in Tehran'. Well, this was certainly an offer I couldn't refuse and I of course joined her metro-hopping with alacrity - a decision that was to result in one of the creepiest experiences I'd ever had. During our long and eventually soupless search for this establishment, settling instead on kebabs, Jemima told me how she'd been followed around everywhere she went by the secretive Basij, presumably due to a weird case of mistaken identity. She reckoned they thought she was some kind of foreign activist for the opposition movement (they're obsessed with that idea here). She even pointed out neatly-shaven men standing around watching us as potential militiamen. I put this down to paranoia until, just about to take the escalator back into the metro system for our return home, one of these neatly shaven men turned to us and told us to sit down.

We sit. More men emerge from the crowd to make sure we don't go anywhere. They ask for our passports (they're at our respective hotels) and cameras (I keep quiet - mine's in my pocket). After waiting a few minutes we're suddenly grabbed from the side and pushed into the open door of an already crowded car that's just pulled up on the kerb. The driver goes crazy navigating the clogged city streets of central Tehran, pulling into cordoned-off bus lanes, overtaking trucks and speeding around corners. None of the men in the car speak English so a phone is handed to Jemima through which she's asked who I am and what we're doing in the city. It worries me that our story, that we were searching for the best soup in town, seems so implausible they can't possibly believe her.

Soon we're driven into the underground car-park of a suspiciously Soviet-looking concrete building. I check the time in the car: eight thirty p.m. After about 15 minutes sitting on the back seat a group of burka-clad women grab Jemima, blindfold her and take her away. A group of men then come and blindfold me, leading me into an elevator and then the Orwellian 'Room 101' of the institution. They make me put out my hand to stabilise myself against a wall while an English-speaker interrogates me through my left ear.

Up to this point I'm mainly feeling confused and unnerved, assuming it's all just some massive error that will soon be resolved. Standing facing the wall, blindfolded and questioned, I begin to worry about how long we'll be detained and what these guys might do to us. I constantly brace myself for a blow to the head (which never comes) and assume that at any minute I'll find myself waking up in some forgotten cell block. They ask me questions the whole time - who I am, what I'm doing, who I know in Iran, what Jemima's up to. Once I've been mugshotted with my ID they then lead me to believe they're ransacking my hotel room. They seem particularly confused by my assertion that I'm in Iran to pedal my bicycle around their nice country and that I'm completely free of any secret ambitions to overthrow their unpleasant government.

At last, after what seems like many more hours than the two and a half they have me standing there, they make me sit down and hold out my hand. "This is it," I think, "This is where they break my fingers." Instead I'm handed a banana and a bottle of water. I'm led back into the elevator and then, rather than the dank holding cell I assume I've just been rationed for, out onto the street. The car pulls up again and I realise I'm being released.

"Jemima! Where's Jemima!?" I demand.

"I'm here, Felix," a voice near me explains. "I'm standing right next to you." We're both still blindfolded.

After another wild drive through the now dormant streets we're dumped from the car with our bananas and bottles of water to find our own ways home before the metro closes down. As we part I want to give Jemima a hug for support, but these things are inappropriate in this country. I get back to my hotel room towards midnight - it hadn't been ransacked by the Basij, but my pannier-less bike gear is strewn all over it so it's hard to tell.

What an ordeal! I woke up the next day and basically holed myself up in the room not daring to leave until my train for Istanbul departed that evening. Despite the friendly Iranians in my luxurious four-berth cabin I was pretty uncommunicative until I'd had my passport stamped with a Turkish visa. At that point I burst out with, "What the hell is wrong with your country!?".

The story passed up and down the train to Istanbul. Most were embarrassed about what terrible hosts their country had been to me, but many were impressed I was let out without being tortured or indefinitely imprisoned. It was with great relief that I crossed the Bosporus with my bike three days later at the conclusion of my continuous overlanding adventure - I was at last safely in Europe.

Little did I realise what else I was in for once I'd flown into the vast African continent six days later...

Freighted

Travelling from one country to another on a cargo ship is a pretty awesome way to get around. After being refused a Pakistan visa I had been feeling pretty awful about having to fly over that intransigent nation, as if my whole trip had been a failure. So it's testament to how much this voyage meant to me that when I first realised I could take this ship, way back in Rajastan's Udaipur, my mood jumped into a higher orbital and has pretty much stayed there ever since, despite numerous subsequent set-backs.

The first night before my departure was celebrated with a small party at my usual Mumbai haunt, the Parsi-run Universal Café (which I flatter myself still misses me), coupled inversely with the discovery that a local foreign bike shop had once again destroyed my bike's bottom bracket. The following morning began with my last skirmishes against Indian bureaucracy as I had a US$50 traveller's cheque converted to Omani riels at a bank advertising a good rate, but had to have the money transformed into first US dollars and then Indian rupees to get there, incurring large commissions and dodgy rates at every metamorphosis until I had barely anything left (and that's ignoring what I had to go through to get the traveller's cheques in the first place!). It was worse than transmitting electricity to Tasmania under Bass Strait.

But soon I had gathered my gear and was creaking and grinding (that bottom bracket again) my way to the Mumbai ferry terminal from whence I would be ferried to the mainland port of Nhava Sheva.

The rest of the day was spent waiting for hours in car parks and container fields, presumably because those were what I was supposed to be during each successive stage of the administrative process. But suddenly, at sunset, I was clambering up the gangplank, and then I was on board. A passenger of the CMA CGM Coral.

I immediately met the disembarking group: two other cycle tourists. In the frantic minutes of our brief encounter we exchanged maps, currency, tips and itinerates: we were riding almost identical trips but in reverse directions. I later discovered that the 'small change' UAE dirhams they handed me (they'd boarded at Dubai) were worth almost $50. I love cycle tourists.

For the next six days life on board was like living in the hotel from 'The Shining' (halls of blood not-withstanding), or on the mining ship Red Dwarf. The few people on board weren't enough to even half-fill the massive floating office-block and they were pretty much always working on far-flung regions of the 280 metre long ship anyway. In fact, at times I worried that I was actually on board the spaceship from '2001: A Space Odyssey' and that some computer was about to switch off the life-support system.

In other respects it was like living in a Soviet submarine. While the crew was mostly Filipino, the officers were all Croatian and Ukrainian and they spent most of the rare periods in which they succumbed to my polite attempts to engage them in conversation reminiscing about the good ol' days under the Communists when the crews were large and the workloads small – plenty of scope for games, music and vodka.

Today, sadly, these cargo ships slide silently through the sea like ghosts. My entire floor, 'E Deck', was empty. I was the ship's 'Spare Officer (A)' according to the sign on my door, and fit somewhere in the hierarchical limbo between superfluous officer and steam-pipe mould. In one telling encounter I'd just finished putting on a wash when I turned and saw the captain standing in the laundry doorway. He looked at me, then at the washing machine.

"Err… do you want to go first?" I asked. He stared at me blankly.

"I'll get my stuff out. You go first."

The ship could also be quite spooky at times. The constant movement and vibrations of the vessel at sea seemed almost human. I often got the sense that someone had just sat down next to me or even gotten into bed with me. Objects placed on tables would march slowly but resolutely towards the edge, finally hitting the floor with a bang that invariably ejected me from my skin. Another concern, only slightly more legitimate, was of pirates. The first mate took me on a guided tour of the rest of the ship one day and pointed out all the anti-piracy apparati: riot hoses, rope ladder axes and even dummy security men equipped with fake rifles. The mate even related some stories of work colleagues who'd been taken hostage in these waters, sometimes for months.

Otherwise I spent my time reading, listening to podcasts, stuffing my face full of the excellent food prepared especially for me and watching movies from the 'Ship's Library'. They had the rather pointless but somewhat interesting 'Darjeeling Limited' about a train journey in a fictional country bearing no resemblance to India, and the much more excellent film 'Chopper', which toyed with my Melbournian homesickness. I filled in the gaps gazing at the hypnotic immensity of the ocean – a desert in flux. One night I saw swirling bioluminescent fireworks being churned up in our wake, mirroring the brilliant starfield above. I often watched leaping schools of fish shadowing our slow progress but I never saw the dolphins diving in the waves that the preceding passengers reported.

Well, I hear you ask, how much did this crazy sea voyage end up costing me? First, think of the carbon footprint: a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts my personal CO2 contribution at an additional 500 mils of fuel for the whole journey (although that's enough for over 2,000 kilometres of chain cleaning). Beyond that, let's just say that if I'd chosen instead to fly it would have required one fifth the money and one fiftieth the time. But stuff that. This was totally worth it.

After six days at sea I was at last disembarked at an Omani port half-way up the end of the Arabian Peninsula. It was 4:30 in the morning and I was thirty kilometres out of town. Miraculously, my ailing bike got me into the city. This was not helped by multiple shells of port security refusing to believe either that passengers could travel on cargo ships or that I could just ride on my bike into the country – but that's fine, by now I'm used to people not believing that what I'm doing is possible. Shortly after arriving in the delightfully named city of Salalah my bottom bracket actually disintegrated on me, flinging my left crank to the ground and grounding me where I stood.

I looked around at this strange new country. Oman is pretty much the opposite of India, the Indian underclass here even ride their bikes on the opposite side of the road (still the wrong side). Another contrast was the distinct impression I got that Salalah had just been hit by a neutron bomb and I was among the few survivors: loose sand blew across the streets; traffic lights flicked red and green unheeded; beige blocky buildings stood silently defiant in the centres of unnecessarily large urban properties.

In other respects Oman is like America. Everyone drives big American cars, there's fast food and enormous freeways all over the place and the materialistic yet deeply religious people are brash and loud while at the same time generous and helpful. They also practice polygamy, just like in America, as I found out from the young Arab civil engineering student sitting next to me on the night bus taking me to Musqat. He boasted that he would one day surpass his brother's acquisition of three simultaneous wives once he graduated and became rich.

The morning after the night's interminable drift through the vast Arabian Desert left me wandering the streets of Oman's capital for six hours, burdened by my unridable bike, looking for a reasonably priced hotel and a decent bike shop and being briefly stopped by the police while the Sultan of Oman drove past (he must never discover that there are other road users). The highlight of this depressing trudge was meeting three independent pairs of cycle tourists within a few minutes of each other. This highlight was soon surpassed when my bike was completely repaired by a Dutch-run cycling shop across town. I was now ready to head to Dubai.

Along the way I had pretty much all of the stereotypes I'd accumulated of Arabia confirmed. All except one: it was raining. For a solo cycle tourist with no tent, no sleeping bag and no sign of any hotels this was a problem. My brain seems to have exorcised the memories of trying to sleep under these conditions, often on freeway construction sites or by a drift of sand beneath a date palm, but I can still feel the occasional crisp sensation of the cold creeping under my skin. One night, just after crossing the UAE border, I awoke to a large motionless dog staring belligerently at me from the darkness. I won't even begin to describe the tenor of my dreams after that experience.

One afternoon in Oman as I was sitting on the coast of the Persian Gulf snacking away at a two kilo mass of date ooze (I was feeling a lot like I was part of an old Arabian caravan, riding through the desert on a diet of dates) I was accosted by a large local family eagerly inviting me into their home. After a long lunch they extended the invitation to the wedding of my English-speaking host's brother the following evening and, as the rain had yet to let up, I readily accepted. In the intervening time I was given the customary Arab tour: I met the family's prized camels, was taken four-wheel-driving on the nearby dunes (with my bike in the ute's tray, nerve-wrackingly) and was encouraged to fire a rifle into the air in preparation for the ceremonies (I never found out where the bullets landed).

Apart from receiving the traditional Arab garb as a gift I found the actual wedding to be a let-down. After the six grooms were simultaneously married without their brides on a football field crowded exclusively with men I stood outside a women-only reception hall with all the males waiting for their womenfolk to get bored and need a lift home (they can't be seen at all by a non-family member). Part of this waiting involved being driven up and down the freeway, whose speed limit of 140 kilometres per hour was universally ignored, doing the odd doughie. These Arabs also have a pathological need to spend ninety percent of their driving time talking on their phones. My old formula, cheap petrol equals bogans, has been proved correct – petrol here costs 40 cents a litre.

However, I had an excellent time with these generous people, learning the Arab culture and language, although the patriarch tried hard to convert me to Islam. One topic often came up though: people kept pointing out that Australia was 'against Iraq'. At the time I tried to explain to them the divergent public opinion on this issue but they all pulled perplexed expressions. It's only now that I realise they were talking about the soccer.

And it seems that love was in the air: as I was departing my host told me he'd just proposed to his uncle's family for their daughter. I later learnt he'd been accepted – his first of perhaps many wives.

The final four days of the tour had me riding over the rugged mountains separating the real Arabian Desert from its kinder coastal cousin and then heading into the most appalling headwind I'd ever encountered. At one point during this muscle-liquefying slog I looked up to see another solo cycle tourist gliding along in the other direction. Immediately we stopped each other to express great relief at finding company in this desolate landscape (although I can tell you there was more relief on the downwind side).

My companion's name was Lukas, a young Austrian riding to Kathmandu (or so he thought). He'd just come through Iran and gave me all his maps and guidebooks, his now superfluous second sleeping bag and many excellent tips of how to survive the Islamic Republic (leaving out one important piece of advice I will get to shortly). In meager exchange I donated the Indian SIM I'd fought so hard to retain. We ended up camping together in an old riverbed far from the obscenely brightly lit highway, staying up to all hours over an ebullient bonfire – an excellent night before my descent into Dubai.

For fifty kilometres I scrutinised the dune-strewn horizon for signs of civilisation. It took a long time before I realised that the ever-receding electricity pylon perpetually obscuring my view was no short pole… it was the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. As I approached, this structure's true scale emerged. I kept on having to remind myself that it was human beings who built this thing (specifically Indians).

Now, rather than stay in the vastly overpriced city of Dubai itself I instead made for a hostel in the neighbouring Emirate of Sharjah, spending the afternoon searching for the place amongst the many and varied normal-sized skyscrapers of the sister-city. But at last I was walking through the doorway. To my left a couple of zombies stared at the TV while they mumbled Koranic verses. On the TV was a live feed from the Kaaba in Mecca which, I can now inform you as a true connoisseur of this cable channel, is really not that interesting. One of these devout pilgrims, a non-English-speaking Shiite Algerian, was sharing my dorm and would not only wake me up each night at three a.m. when his alarm went off for his morning prayer (which I could tolerate out of religious freedom) but kept hitting the snooze for an hour afterwards (which I couldn't). When I at last expressed my annoyance by threatening to throw his phone out the window all our communications were channeled solely through death stares. At least this stopped his constant disapproving gestures during each romantic comedy I put on to feed my unhealthy addiction of that genre that he thought the characters should be married (which would defeat the whole point of the movie).

During the day I made the long bike commute to Dubai – a distance of almost 100 kilometres both ways – along freeway shoulders, failed road-construction projects and floating bridges. It was only while returning to Sharjah on the second day, into another headwind, that I decided that, actually, this journey was too uncomfortably dangerous to do again (although I hasten to add that UAE drivers are surprisingly gregarious on the roads).

Dubai is still the desert. The traffic and bustle at street level don't seem to match the vast forest of empty-looking skyscrapers above. The city is a vertically exaggerated Arab village. Wherever there isn't an army of Indians to sweep the sand away the dunes shift and grow under flyovers and against buildings: it's a desert in the sky.

I spent my two days here checking out the local sites of the Dubai Mall with its huge shark aquarium, the luxurious Burj al Arab (from the outside sadly), the deceptively enormous Palm Jumeirah and the base of the Burj Khalifa. Interspersed amongst these activities I frantically organised for the rest of my trip. At the Iranian Consulate I almost lost my cool on discovery of their visa cost: $210. I inexpertly stifled an outburst while spitefully wishing John McCain had won the 2008 US federal election and had fulfilled his promise to bomb the country. Awkwardly I had to return the next day to collect my passport, but by then they'd already forgotten me. I then had a new pannier rack installed on my bike. When the South African bike mechanic discovered my rear brake pads had suddenly clamped shut during the installation he threatened, oddly, to make a scene in the shop before I even got the chance to accuse him of causing the problem. What an emotionally fraught day! At least my brakes mysteriously realigned themselves on the ride home.

But it wasn't long before all my troubles were forgotten and I was crossing the Persian Gulf to the Iranian port of Bandar-e Lengeh.

Unfortunately a new set of troubles are about to kick me in the teeth when I realise that economic sanctions against Iran mean I cannot access my bank account. I now have to survive the next few weeks on the small amount of cash I happened to have on me during the crossing.

In the next post learn how I have had to hurl myself on the hospitality of the Iranian people. See you then!