END OF TURKEY

hi everyone..
im in erzurum in the very east of turkey. from here it will be only 3 days of icycling to iran.. it ha been a great trip through turkey but also tough once in a while. In eskisehir I visited some people I had become friends with ealier. moving east I past cappadocia, an amazing place (se photo). The last week on the bike has been up and down most of the time. I better get used to those mountains, cause
im gonna be fighting them for a while!! 3 days ago my back-carrier broke on a very essential place.. I maneged to fix it by attaching a pice of tool making a "brigde". I thought I would be able to bye a new rack here in town, but no.. hope my repair is gonna last! now im really exited to go to iran. I have a 30 days
visa but I might have to extend it since there is about 2600 km to do.
hope you are all doing great where you are.. next mail will be droped from the islamic public. inshallah!

TABRİZ-IRAN

hey mister, welcome to iran! what is your contry?? -it's a bit overwelming how friendly poeople are in iran.. every problem seems to fixable - I just had my broken rack of aluminium welded!!! I'm in tabriz in the north-west iran and I have been
here for 2 days. Even that I know it's an islamic contry, it's strange to experience this culture where women are so limited in their doings. a lot still wear the black chador (tent!). You cannot speak to strangers of the oppersite sex in public, you cannot sit next to them in the bus. in some restaurents they have curtains, to seperate the women from the men.. But things are changing... slowly. You can see a few girls wearing colorful dresses and the scarf is covering less and less of their hair. I met a university student the other day. he is studying english and he was my personal guide for the whole day! he introduced me to some of his female
classmates and it was really interesting speaking to them about womens rights..
the iraniens love turists and its not because the can smell dollars! they ornestly enjoy to show foreigners that iran is a wonderful contry and not the picture we
get from the medias. i'm gonna continiue biking today towards esfahan in
cenral iran. enjoy yourself and lets hope that mr. bush is gonna
keep his bombs away from here..

ESFAHAN,CENTRAL IRAN

hallo to my people out there..
mayby it seems like i'm having a relaxed holiday cruising around iran, but life on the road is tough! I biked 900 km straight to here from tabriz.I was happy
to have a nailbrush to clean myself with when I got here... I'm staying in a nice hostel with NORMAL toilets. that's a luxury here!! It's getting more and more remoted between the bigger cities. so I have to bring more food/water supplies
and I have to talk more to myself!! the very good news is that one of my danish friends, soeren h, is gonna join my circus in eastern iran. he is supposed to come along for a couple of months. I'ts just making me so happy!!! it's not unusual to see a family of 4 on a 125cc motorbike... but it's very rare that anyone of them
wear a helmet! cross your fingers... i'm only a few kilometers away from the iranian newclear lab. let me know if I should get away from here in the 24. gear..
the iraniens are very relaxed about this. but I'm not!

END OF IRAN... BEGINNING OF GREAT ADVANTURE...

dear everyone.
I have now reached zahedan, my last city in iran. but I have also just entered balochistan(southeast iran/southwest pakistan. here I'm gonna hang around
until friday when my friend soeren drops down from the sky!! biking from Bam to here was quite a challenge.. the middlepart is a VERY hot dessert(kavir-e-lut)and
160km. is without any water/food-supplies. I have passed MANY dead camels(wild), killed by the traffic. Nobody told them to look out for trucks,
before crossing the road! the one at the picture is the most "fresh"..
in the end of the dessert I slept in a tiny village. most inhabitants had left for better places and there was only one couple left. next morning while having
tea at their house a snake passed the doorstep! the woman screamed and the man grabbed a wodden stick and maneged to kill it. after I was told that one bite
would be deadly in short time..! zahedan is a dusty and criminal town most travellers stay in as short time as possible....ehh exept from me! it seems to be a pitstop for drug-smuglers and afghan refugees.I'm 50 km. from afghanistan and 30 km. from pakistan... the balochi people are though very friendly and I don't feel myself in any danger. I'm just enjoying the scenery.. hope you are doing well, and I miss you all

ISLAMABAD

hey you!
so we made through the big dessert. we were both ill when we arrived to quetta in pakistan after a week. after a few days rest and permit to bike through the
tribal-areas we contniued towards islamabad. the people in pakistan are not so used to 2 bikers like us, so everytime we stop lots of lokals will gather around us and stand there undtil we leave again! after  some days the police started to follow us, telling us it was for our safety.. the areas had a very beatifull senary but it was a bit annoying allways to have a police car behind you. one evening we arrived to punjab (another region) and we got stopped at a police checkpoint. after 1 hour they said we had to go to a police station 3 km. ahead. since it was allready dark we loaded the bikes on a policecar. but they drove us 30km away instead of 3km... here another police car was waiting for us to drive us futher away! this procedure was continiued 4-5 times and nobody would tell us were they were taking us.. after 150km. we were allowed to sleep in a police station.
the police kept following us until the first day of ramadan(the holy month for muslims). we have not seen them since!!! friday we reached islamabad, the capital. here we are getting visa extensions and chinese visa. its the plan
to bike from here directly to china but something has made things a bit difficult:
saturday morning we were in a building to find an internet spot when everything just started to shake. I said: it's an earthquake!! -and we ran out. the ground
was still shaking and all others were runnig out.. later we read on the news that it had 7.6 magnitude and with the epicenter just 100 km. away!! this earthquake has caused many landslides on the road were are supposed to take. and therefore it's
impassible at the moment. many villages are completely destroyed and many people are dead.. so right now we are a bit on standby.
let's see what happens...

Peoples Republic of China
hey everyone eventually we maneged to get going from islamabad! the road going north was blocked because of the eathquake, so we flew 300 km north to skardu and continiued on the bikes..
the mountains up there were stunning. the autum-colors of the trees and the snow-capped 7000+ meter peaks made some good pictures! the mentallity of the lokals also changed. they were much more friendly and laid back than back in the
flatland.
we got up to a the last village before the chinese border as heavy clouds were approching from the south. next morning everything just a few hundred meters
above us was covered in snow! the authorities tolled us we could not bike over the
border-pass and that we had to jump on a bus. no arguements helped and we took the bus. getting over the 4700 meter pass the road was snowy and we started
to appriciate beeing in that bus!! from the first town in china we were allowed to
continiue on bikes and so we did. but it was 4 very cold days down to kasgar. -12 c. in the tent at night and some snow on the road incl. a 4100m. pass.
in the bus we met a 42 year old canadian and he has been biking around the world for the last 4 years!! we are stil laughing of all his crazy stories.. my friend soren is gonna go home and he is heading to beijing by train. i'm gonna join him half the way and then cycle south towards kunming and south-east asia. it has been 2 fantastic months with him, and i will soon again miss to speak danish!! by the way I have just passed my first 10.000km on the bike!!!
enjoy yourselfs!
tobias

Peoples Republic of China
dear yekta & murat
thanks for your mail. i went to your webside and found
myself there..-very cool!!!
now i'm in chengdu and resting after some tough biking
over the mountains..lots of snow and mud. but also
very amazing senery and interesting tibet culture..
i'm gonna sail down the yangtse-river, jump on my bike
again and meet my dad(!) in kunming 27. dec. we are
gonna bike together to hanoi in vietnam. he leaves 13.
jan. and i'm gonna continiue to laos, cambodia an
thailand.
so the chances to meet are really good- i hope..
i really want to meet you, so i hope we can manege!
hope you are doing well in turkey.
greetings tobias

To be continued...

dear everybody
first of all...merry x-mas. hope you are enjoing it, cause i'm missing it a bit..
I have been in china for 2 month now, and it has been exiting. i have been changing between bicycling and the train, just to be able to see a bigger part of the
contry. it has been cold most of the time and the bicycling has therefore been tough sometimes. roadconditions has been everything between superp and
the worst ever! one place the mud was so sticky so i could'nt even pull my bike.. but i got saved by a bus. another place i was biking in snow on a allmost

non-existing road.. and crashing in all the svitchbacks downhill!
in china everything is about money. if you got enough of it, you will be above the law! a chinese guy told me: if you want to marry a beautifull girl, you got to
have a lot of money!! but even that the economical development is extremely fast, only a tiny bit of the population are rich. china has the biggest gap between
rich and pour. it does'nt really fit with the communist ideas!! but noone seems to care about that... the chinese have learned not to question politics.
china has a great deal of different minorities. many of them keep up their traditonal way of living, and thats what -together with a fantastic nature makes
china interesting. but the development will quite soon have minimalized both of these.. the 27. dec my dad is coming to china! we are gonna
bike together to hanoi in vietnam. i'm looking so much
foreward to this. and the summer is waiting for me down there! i hope you are all having a good time. just remember how fragile human life is. we can all be destroyed in few seconds, so carpe diem and happy new year!!
tobias