The break at the lake turned out to be a great idea. To get there was a bit demanding, during the ascent I thought it should better be the heaven up there, otherwise it's not worth this strenous effort. We reached the lake at 9pm, totaly wet from sweat. But even in dark it looked misterious. We slept for a long 9 hours. We didn't even know how tired we were. For the whole day we did absolutely nothing, except filling our stomachs and taking naps. Very useful day!
What a pleasure it is to ride after a day off. The body is refreshed and the mind is eager to observe new things. But there is a big change in the surroundings. Not that much in the landscape it self -it still keeps on changing from bit more green to dry and brown, only to get greener again. It doesn't rain here much, but there are parts with forest or groves. Predominately its barren, though. The change I'm talking about has happened in people. The reason is Ramadan. First we were bit anxious about how we will get our daily dosage of nutritions- so important to us! But soon we've found out that as tourist plus travelers this is not a problem. Even muslims on the road {pilgrims, travelers} are allowed to eat. But majority of the people do fast during a day. They don't drink tea, some not even water. But they still work and live normal lifes, at least they try to do so. In reality the roads got deserted -only truck drivers remained and the towns are as vieled with slow motion filter. People appears to be just a bit more alive that zombies. They still welcome us everywhere, but not as cheerfully as before and all the invitations for tea have ceased. At least it looks like that in the first days.
After few days we got a better picture about the holy celebration. People take it quite seriously, but as for us it's not a problem. We even got invited for lunch by truck drivers, and few invitations for tea did appear. But everybody is saying that in Iran it's much more strict -they do not even listen to music... Ramadan takes one month so a good half of it we will spend in Iran. Will see...
As for the traffic it is slower, but obviously we don't mind that! Nice thing is that we are surrounded with beautiful mountains from north and south, but the riding is quite easy. The roads are neither too steep nor too straight. Just enough to keep us interested, but not to pass out every evening.It's also not so hot, rather chilli.
On the last day of this week we got another surprise. We woke up just to find out that everything is frezen. The bags and the tent are all covered in ice coating. It's just 23rd august, so we didn't really expected this. True thing is that we slept quite high. It might have been arround 1500m. What followed was a beautiful 25km up hill ride to a mountain pass in 2160m. Sounds horrifing? It wasn't that bad. The almost ceaseless 40km downhill was even better. Now we ended up in Erzincan. Just to give you a picture about the altitudes we are dealing with here, the town lies in 1180m.
Last thing. We've found out that getting a hitch from fully loaded tractor or truck, by just holding tide to its trailor is a good way how to safe energy, specially during the ascents. It doesn't happend too often because it needs a right timing, but ocasionally the luck strikes us. We have grabed a few already. I know, I know this is cheating, but common, we are biking from Slovakia to India, those several 5km kicks are nothing in the whole scale.
good luck to you all, and keep on reading.
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