Parcel Delivery

Cycle tourists are a childish lot. At least, the puritan wing I belong to. Most of us are good-natured and well-mannered. We try not to give the finger to every truck driver who nudges us off the road, and we never say 'Papua New Guinea' when again someone screams from an open car window: 'What is your country!' But there is one thing we simply can't handle, one thing that makes us twitch: fellow cyclists who admit to taking a bus or hitching a ride when the going gets tough. 'Why?' we laugh nervously. 'Why on earth would you want to do that?' This is usually met with a counterquestion: 'Why not? Isn't this supposed to be something you enjoy? Why freeze your arse off or endure hundreds of kilometres of mind-numbing desert emptiness if you can take a bus somewhere nice?'

It's hard to argue with this line of reasoning. Of course, harsh conditions aren't something you actively seek out. But there seems little sense in running away from them either. Frantic traffic, buckets of rain, a long slog uphill: I've found that there is something to be gained from the suffering and the setbacks, even though it may not be very obvious when the road seems endless and all you want to do is pass out on a soft bed. Making it to the end of a particularly nasty day is infinitely more rewarding than a week of sunshine and tailwinds. Call me a masochist, but I feel you can only fully appreciate the good times when you've been through the what-on-earth-was-I-thinking-when-I-started-this times. In this respect, the relationship many of us have with our bicycle is not unlike a marriage.

A soldier acting as kickstand

You can imagine my dismay, then, when upon leaving Akbar's Tourist Guesthouse I was met by a soldier who first pointed at my bike and then, grinning, at the pickup truck behind him. I had been anticipating this moment for months. Bam is the gateway to Balochistan, a vast swath of desert that occupies parts of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. For years, the authorities have been trying to knock down a tribal uprising fueled by drug trafficking and kidnappings. Foreigners are allowed to enter the area only with a police escort. Cycling is out of the question.

Of course I put up a show. I acted surprised and shocked and tried to make the soldier see that I really didn't need his services. He seemed unimpressed. Then I went on explaining that I'd already seen my way through one or two hairy situations, that I had a good feeling about Balochistan, that I had cycled every single inch from Holland to Bam and that I really wanted to continue that uninterrupted line all the way to Beijing. The soldier listened patiently and then indicated the pickup again. I sighed, contemplated crying and then handed over the bike.

Settling into the passenger seat, I found I was unable to feel suitably annoyed, let alone work myself into a rage. Neither did I feel disappointed. The soldier and I had performed the parts we were supposed to play and now we were ready to move on. Annoyance was something that would come later, building up gradually over the course of the day, culminating in a fit of anger late at night.

That moment was still far away when, after a solid three kilometres, we left the highway and stopped at an army compound. I was under the impression that we would cover the 450 kilometres to the border in one go, but the soldier clearly wanted me and my bike away from the truck. Surrounded by my own luggage, morose soldiers gawking at me as if I had just crash-landed a flying saucer into their courtyard, I felt a bit lost. I smiled feebly and thought how nice it would be if I could just hop on my bike and ride off. Suddenly a commanding officer walked up and told me to do just that. 'Go,' was all he said. For a moment I looked at him in the same way the soldiers were looking at me. Then I got my stuff together as fast as I could and took off with a big smile on my face.

Unfortunately, this state of bliss was rather short-lived. Riding out of Bam, I was soon accompanied by two soldiers on a small motorbike. I said hello and asked them if they were to accompany me all the way to the border. They nodded. It seemed a fair deal, although I wondered where we would spend the night. A police station? An army compound? My two-person tent? Soon I learned that providing reliable information to foreigners on bicycles isn't part of the Iranian army curriculum. After fifteen kilometres I was told to stop. We waited in the blazing sun. Nothing but rocks and sand and a single straight line of asphalt that cut the grey monotony in half. Then a pickup truck materialised and a fresh batch of soldiers started lifting my stuff onto the truck bed.

On our way to Quetta

This pattern repeated itself several times that day. I would be transferred to a new vehicle, we would drive for thirty minutes or so, and then there would be a lot of waiting around in the middle of nowhere for God knows how long. The lack of information, the banter, the blaring music coming from the car stereo, the fact that they were eating my cookies—it all got on my nerves. In the end they got pretty fed up with me too, I think, because suddenly I was put on a bus to Zahedan, the last city before the border, leaving me to wonder why they hadn't done so in the first place.

When I got to Zahedan it was dark. Afraid I would have to deal with the army again I jumped on my bike and set off for the city centre, on the lookout for a place to stay. I was growing increasingly tired and desperate, but every single hotel I tried turned me down for no apparent reason. Eventually, I was spotted by a soldier in a candy shop and taken to a compound a few streets away. No one had a clue what to do with me. Phone calls were made, people were walking in and out and the only boy who spoke some English was more interested in playing me his home-recorded music than telling me what was going on.

After a couple of hours it dawned on one of them that there was a luxury hotel on the edge of town that accepted foreigners. In fact, it turned out to be the only hotel in town to accept foreigners. Weaving my way through Zahedan's backstreets, my eyes fixed on the taillights of my escort, I got there not long before midnight. When I finally opened the door of the little chalet I had been appointed, having forked out a lump of cash that normally would have seen me through a fairly comfortable four or five days, I was greeted by used towels, dirty linen and a full ashtray. Having a go at the hotel manager was probably the best moment of the day.

The next morning I decided on a different strategy. If they preferred to treat me like a parcel then so be it, I would behave like a bloody parcel. As soon as I left the hotel the escort merry-go-round started spinning again. I let it all happen. There was no option but to resign myself to the fact that I was no longer in charge of this trip.

At two in the afternoon we hit the border, where I bought three bus tickets: one for myself, one for my bicycle (which didn't get its own seat but was strapped to the roof) and one for my bodyguard—a shriveled, toothless man who kept stroking his rifle. Thirteen bone-rattling hours later the parcel was delivered to its address: Quetta.