Across Asia on a bicycle

by Thomas Gaskell Allen; William Lewis Sachtleben

From the high lands of Azerbeidjan, where, strange to say, nearly all Persian pestilences arise, we dropped suddenly into the Kasveen plain, a portion of that triangular, dried-up basin of the Persian Mediterranean, now for the most part a sandy, saline desert. The argillaceous dust accumulated on the Kasveen plain by the weathering of the surrounding uplands resembles in appearance the “yellow earth” of the Hoang Ho district in China, but remains sterile for the lack of water. Even the little moisture that obtains beneath the surface is sapped by the kanots, or underground canals, which bring to the fevered lips of the desert oases the fresh, cool springs of the Elburz. These are dug with unerring instinct, and preserved with jealous care by means of shafts or slanting wells dug at regular intervals across the plain. Into these we would occasionally descend to relieve our reflection-burned—or, as a Persian would say, “snow-burned”—faces, while the thermometer above stood at 120° in the shade.

Over the level ninety-mile stretch between Kasveen and the capital a so-called carriage-road has recently been constructed close to the base of the mountain. A sudden turn round a mountain-spur, and before us was presented [pg 94]to view Mount Demavend and Teheran. Soon the paved streets, sidewalks, lamp-posts, street-railways, and even steam-tramway, of the half modern capital were as much of a surprise to us as our “wind horses” were to the curious crowds that escorted us to the French Hotel.

A PERSIAN REPAIRING THE WHEELS OF HIS WAGON.

From Persia it was our plan to enter Russian central Asia, and thence to proceed to China or Siberia. To enter the Transcaspian territory, the border-province of the Russian possessions, the sanction of its governor, General Kuropatkine, would be quite sufficient; but for the rest of the journey through Turkestan the Russian minister in Teheran said we would have to await a general permission from St. Petersburg. Six weeks were spent with our English and American acquaintances, and still no answer was received. Winter was coming on, and some[pg 95]thing had to be done at once. If we were to be debarred from a northern route, we would have to attempt a passage into India either through Afghanistan, which we were assured by all was quite impossible, or across the deserts of southern Persia and Baluchistan. For this latter we had already obtained a possible route from the noted traveler, Colonel Stewart, whom we met on his way back to his consular post at Tabreez. But just at this juncture the Russian minister advised another plan. In order to save time, he said, we might proceed to Meshed at once, and if our permission was not telegraphed to us at that point, we could then turn south to Baluchistan as a last resort. This, our friends unanimously declared, was a Muscovite trick to evade an absolute refusal. The Russians, they assured us, would never permit a foreign inspection of their doings on the Afghan border; and furthermore, we would never be able to cross the uninhabited deserts of Baluchistan. Against all protest, we waved “farewell” to the foreign and native throng which had assembled to see us off, and on October 5 wheeled out of the fortified square on the “Pilgrim Road to Meshed.”

Before us now lay six hundred miles of barren hills, swampy kevirs, brier-covered wastes, and salty deserts, with here and there some kanot-fed oases. To the south lay the lifeless desert of Luth, the “Persian Sahara,” the humidity of which is the lowest yet recorded on the face of the globe, and compared with which “the Gobi of China and the Kizil-Kum of central Asia are fertile regions.” It is our extended and rather unique experience on the former of these two that prompts us to refrain from further description of desert travel here, where the hardships were in a measure ameliorated by frequent stations, and by the use of cucumbers and pomegranates, both of which we carried with us on the long desert stretches. Melons, [pg 97]too, the finest we have ever seen in any land, frequently obviated the necessity of drinking the strongly brackish water.

LEAVING TEHERAN FOR MESHED.

Yet this experience was sufficient to impress us with the fact that the national poets, Hafiz and Sadi, like Thomas Moore, have sought in fancy what the land of Iran denied them. Those “spicy groves, echoing with the nightingale’s song,” those “rosy bowers and purling brooks,” on the whole exist, so far as our experience goes, only in the poet’s dream.

Leaving on the right the sand-swept ruins of Veramin, that capital of Persia before Teheran was even thought of, we traversed the pass of Sir-Dara, identified by some as the famous “Caspian Gate,” and early in the evening entered the village of Aradan. The usual crowd hemmed us in on all sides, yelling, “Min, min!” (“Ride, ride!”), which took the place of the Turkish refrain of “Bin, bin!” As we rode toward the caravansary they shouted, “Faster, faster!” and when we began to distance them, they caught at the rear wheels, and sent a shower of stones after us, denting our helmets, and bruising our coatless backs. This was too much; we dismounted and exhibited the ability to defend ourselves, whereupon they tumbled over one another in their haste to get away. But they were at our wheels again before we reached the caravansary. Here they surged through the narrow gangway, and knocked over the fruit-stands of the bazaars.