Day: March 21, 2006

What a relief, at 7H30, after a very light breakfast, Serge left the mausoleum of Safa Dasht in the direction of Sahariyar.  The wind was still favorable and the sky clear and blue so we could see Mount Damavand (5604 meters) which towers over Tehran to the North east.  At kilometer 35 Serge entered the suburbs of Tehran.  Because of the holidays, traffic was lighter than normal but still dense.
 
The city center was deserted and everything closed for at least 4 to 5 days: shops, administrative buildings, businesses and banks (which gave me a problem because no credit cards are accepted, the only means of paying being in local currency, the Real.  Dollars can only be changed at the central bank in certain large cities so we had to get organized).  The highway to the South, in the direction of Qom and the cemetery where the Ayatollah Khomeini is buried, was jammed.  Serge crossed Tehran from southwest to southeast in order to reach Semnan, then Mashhad in the east of the country.

René and Madjid had a tough job guiding Serge through the city.  Traffic was rather wild, it was a little like the law of the jungle, the strongest wins.  It’s not a good idea to try to compete because you could lose a fender or a bumper.  Serge wasted 30 minutes due to total lack of sign posting on the road.  It’s difficult to imagine if you haven’t experienced the task of trying to guide a runner in this kind of big city.  Obviously, Serge wasn’t very happy with the situation but he was long-suffering.  It took them 1H00 to reach the hotel in the center of Tehran where the new team was expected that evening.  It was a long, long day.

Serge was exhausted but happy to have crossed Tehran, a city of 13 million inhabitants.  Tomorrow will be another day, surly better.  After almost no sleep the previous night, I decided not to take the time to connect the Holter machine that takes an EKG which we send to be studied by the cardiac physiology department of the hospital in Saint-Etienne.

The new team arrived at the hotel at 23H15.  René and Laure were impatiently waiting for them.  The night will be short because breakfast is scheduled for 6H00.  Uncle Georges and René prepared their baggage because tomorrow will be their last day and then they will fly to Paris.