To Qom



faithful shiites during the Ashura.

Ok, these people are driven mad for Imam Husein. Here are really important days, and it is a particular festivity. Everything was closed from Wednesday to Friday. But we were not hungry: Private groups gave out food, tea and sweets for free to all the people! It was really impressing.  Now I can understand why we saw so many huge bowls the days before. So, without any shops and everything for free because of Imam Husein we did not spend a single Rial the last 2 days... By the way, to visit Teheran during the Ashura has some advantages: The traffic is not as letal as it normally is and the air quality is much better. The disadvantages are that Tehran is a huge 14 million inhabitants town, which offers few but the great bazars and some museums, which were all closed...  

 Fortunately we met Hadi. He is a trader, and he aproached us with: "do you need some explanations about these days?", it was necessary to answer "yes please", and he starded to talk about Imam Hussein, to bring us all over the city center for three hours in the morning and three ours in the evening. With him we were really introduced in the "Ashura" and we saw places that we would have never trusted to enter. For instance the place of some islamic groups which pray togheter and prepare rice with chicken for about 2000 people. During these days is also not uncommon to see a couple of persons slaughting a lamb on the sidewalk. Actually I did not know that the skin can be so easily removed; to remove the head from the vetebral column is a little bit more complicated ...

But now we are cycling again!!! Yippie! We made us on the way to Qom which we reached in two days. We learned that a point with a name on our map is not necessary a little town...It could be only few houses made of clay and nothing else.

Little town indicated as "Aslambad" on our map. We thought "maybe there we could have our lunch and update our blog in an Internet point"

But if you look closer, then it can happen that you find some people which invite you to drink a tea, and than incidentally you finish to eat roasted chicken with toamtoes and bread. Really delicious, even more if you have not eaten nothing for hours! Actually between Teheran and Qom there is almost nothing but desert.  Look at our beautiful camping side....

Friendly people we met!





Camping place. Little story: By night (it was 6.00 pm, could you sleep at 6.00 pm?) we said "let's have a walk around". We almost did not find our tent again... 



Despite of that, the roads are by far better than in Turkey and although it was hilly and windy (as always against us, how is possible!?!) we make now more than 80 km a day. Qom is the second most religious city, really conservative. Italian native speakers should easily solve this...: "!orelc la orolc".

But now it is over and we will cycle to Kashan. Sometimes in Iran to find a Internet point is more difficult than to find a woman without a chador in Qom, therefore, we do not guarntee you fresh news.

P.S. How Berlusconi managed that? What are our next moves? Do we have a B plan? Who can write me some consolation and\or explanations words? please e-mail at mararrac@gmail.com