We have a few more days with Gertrude in Yazd. It gives us a chance to recover from the journey to Bam and start concentrating on our onward journey. Happily Gertrude also enjoys the ambience of the old city here. On the edges of the bazaar there are covered lanes of abandoned shops. Shutters are down, dust covers everything. Only one or two workshops are still being used by carpenters. Then you come to the sections still busy with clothes, housewares and gold jewellery. Hans - sunken courtyard areas surrounded by shops - are either modernised bright affairs selling cloth or crumbling abandoned buildings left to turn slowly to dust. Is it possible that the Iranians do not really know what a wonderful treasure they have with these old bazaars? |
| there is still a small community of Jews living in Yazd |
In all the major cities there are are at least one or two great old mosques or buildings from earlier times in Iran's rich history. We cannot tire of looking around the Friday Mosque in Yazd. There are endless details that you only discover after another visit.
Finally it is time for us to leave. We are taking the night bus across the desert to Mashhad in the north east. Gertrude will be continuing on to some of the other cities in central Iran. Ali, the manager at the Silk Road Hotel, has been incredibly kind to us and we are not sure how to thank him. Even worse, when we are ready to leave, he is fast asleep and we dare not wake him. He rarely seems to stop. We say our goodbyes to Khoroush and Roxanna and Gertrude and cycle off, quite literally, into the sunset. Is there a tear in the eye?
It always remembers me when we left someone place. This so particular moment, just when you leave the place, you are not talaking yet with your cycle partner, and you're almost looking at the road ... but you have such a huge amount of pictures in your head about what you've just lived ... such a particular moment !
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