Day fifty two - 22 September 2009; Bam and Bandit country

Today we drive to Bam. There is a melancholic feel to this place as it is the site of a devastating earthquake in 2003. The town is in the process of being rebuilt, although it must be said that much of Iran seems to be in a process of rebuilding or decay - it is hard to tell which is which.

The Arg-e-Bam mud city dating back 2000 years would have been a magnificent site before the earthquake, but it too is being rebuilt, the earthquake having reduced it to a relative pile of dust. Having said that, Iranian construction workers never seem to be particularly overworked.

the ancient mud city of Bam, standing until 2003

We drive on from Bam, from which the Lonely Planet suggests we should have an escort, as we are starting to enter bandit country. However, it is a good few hours before military personnel lead us through the desert with their pick-up trucks with mounted machine guns on the back.

At one point we drive through a valley surrounded by small rocky pinnacles looking very much like the setting of an old western ambush scene.

We camp at a military police compound near the border. They seem to be friendly, although we were not initially welcomed to camp there.

Many of us are starting to feel quite crotchety including me. At night, I camp on the roof laying my feet up facing the guards on the roof of the compound building, which is about a football field length away. Lucinda demands that I lay the other way to avoid giving offence to gun totting teenagers. I think she is being paranoid and I initially refuse to sound of myself and Pete the retired scouse headmaster exchanging FOs, but I give in to Lu when she gets on the truck roof to remonstrate. She threatens to leave me here in the morning, although the suggestion seems quite ridiculous to me. Having said that, on reflection I think she may well have been right to be alarmed, as I am not sure that these soldiers would suffer any penalties for shooting up a bunch of Europeans. Certainly the British government’s reaction to Iranian acts of aggression in the recent past won’t have done anything to discourage them. The bottom of my feet stay safely unexposed for the rest of Asia.