A few of us try to climb to babak castle, but the path is not clear so in different groups we try to climb up to the castle ruins.Myself and Jackie spend time scrambling through several woods and scramble up the rocks but are beaten by the last rock wall as we would have needed ropes to get up it, others somehow manage to make it, but end up getting soaked as they return in a thunder and hail storm and they are drenched! But no time to wait so we move off to our next bush camp, another stop off at Ahar and more people stop to chat, one with the flash motorbike and dressed as medallion man and looking like Magnum PI causes great merriment amongst us! Of course he does not know this.
On our journey we are stopped at every police check point and our guide and trip team have to keep them happy, on one occasion we have togo back to the last check point and the return only to be stopped a short while later! more curiosity than anything else as it is all good humoured.
Iran still does not disappoint, we pass an area that seems to specialise in brick making but it is all small people no big conglomerates here, we stopped a scrounge wood to cook on, people are so helpful here, a guy just lets us take wood and like a plague of locusts we take enough wood to fill our store cages on the back of the truck and the guys running the wood yard pose for pictures.
We travel through similar beautiful mixed countryside snowy mountains a bit more agricultural large and small, sheep and goat herds as well as cattle are kept everywhere. The towns all have shops and a plethora of garages keeping the all important lorries and utility vehicles going and therefore it appears the whole country.
Every vehicle that passes us toots and the people wave at us in excitement and we respond of course.
We travel towards a heavy weather front and stop near the Azerbaijani border which has fantastic views all around, I explain to our guide that where we stop looks like Europe all in one small area with rolling hills, snowy mountains and forests all around us. We watch a violent storm in the distance, which then turns on us, just as we are eating we have to clear the things away quickly one tent collapses we all go to bed early just to make sure our tents stay in place. In the morning all is well everybody is just a bit tired from it, we move onto Massulah for a couple of nights stop.