... or as the saying goes: after rain comes sunshine or after every mountain comes a valley.
Normally, we base our route planning on other travellers, travel guides and the recommendations of the locals. This time we were somehow unlucky. Was it the day (Saturday?) or a lack of interest on our part? Perhaps we were tired or had we simply expected too much? We don't know.
So we drive to Ghalat, which is described in the travel guide as a pretty, picturesque mountain village. People rave about hostel owners playing music and romantic alleyways full of small souvenir shops.
As I said, Saturday is the beginning of the week here and no one travels to mountain villages to visit them. So we stroll through the pretty but almost deserted village. A young man invites us in for tea, it smells of ingredients that we have never consumed before and don't intend to. And we learn that everything is available in this village, we just have to say what we need. Aha. Somehow we don't feel comfortable, the conversation becomes sluggish. Our hosts perhaps seem to be consuming a little too much of what they are offering us, but we don't know for sure. We're just not on the same wavelength.
So we leave the village again, the emptiness inside us makes us sad. That's how it can be sometimes.
Speaking of emptiness: we need to refuel. Or rather, we want to fill up with gas, because we've done a lot of heating in the last few days of winter and if we find a gas station, we'll take the opportunity.
But you can't fill up with gas in a hurry in Iran. And that's a good thing, because once again we come into contact with wonderful people. We drive to the farm and ask if we can fill our tanks with LPG. Sure, but first it's the small van's turn. No problem. We realise that the gas here doesn't come from a huge tank, but is filled into the cars and other bottles from normal, I guess 11-kilo gas bottles.
So we bide our time, show all the other customers our camper, try to make them believe that Fiat is an Italian model (and have to explain that our Felix doesn't come from one of the Italian Formula 1 racing teams) and watch the men at work. The bottle change is really enormous, the guys here certainly don't need a gym for their biceps!
At some point, as it slowly gets dark, it's our turn. We refuel, fill up our water tank with drinking water and give a football to the boy who is really helping out here. We will always remember the boy's shining eyes.
We don't want to leave, the conversations are so nice, the invitations so friendly, the amazement that we have our own toilet and shower so funny! "A real hammam!" they shout again and again.
Our inner emptiness fills up again: with memories, with encounters, with warmth and lots of laughter. After bad comes good. Always.
Off to Shiraz, but now for real!
Merci for "travelling with us
We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.
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