The Sunday Times April 3, 2022 25Travel My Story
The Nasir al-Mulk
Mosque in Shiraz, Iran;
below, the Mohammad
Al-Amin Mosque in Beirutunnecessary risk. It didn’t
help that I was embarking on
this adventure when the
Syrian war was at its height,
with refugees fleeing and
Islamic State claiming the lives
of hundreds of civilians across
Turkey and the Arab world.
Yet I was far from the
unhinged adrenaline junkie I
was painted to be. The risk,
I reasoned, was manageable.
I had no intention of entering
Jihadist strongholds or
countries besieged by war.
My aim, rather, was to
explore the communities
outside those places, which
comprise the majority of the
Middle East — the bits avoided
by mainstream media; the
silent 99.9 per cent.
There were some practical
challenges, however. As a
bike-touring neophyte I felt
ill-prepared. Everything
appeared worryingly new
and untested, from my bicycle
and bulging panniers to mythe journey were vague at
best, mainly because I had
absolutely no idea what to
expect once I hit the road.
How far could I cycle? Where
would I stay? Could I survive
on a budget of just £100 a
week? I just hoped that once
I had set off these questions
would magically resolve
themselves along the way.
The first few months were,
predictably, a steep learning
curve — I learnt how to steerLondonTehranRebecca
with her
trusty
bicycleand wild-camp, and that
camembert should never
be kept in a hot rucksack
overnight (and certainly
nowhere near your
underwear). Most important,
I learnt that people will always
be kind to someone on a
bicycle — and the people of
the Middle East were among
the kindest of them all.
Entering Turkey felt
intimidating at first. At the
border a 20-mile-long
barbed-wire fence built by
the Bulgarians carved a deep
serrated scar through the
surrounding hills, while on
the far side an endless queue
of lorries was a stark reminder
of the turmoil taking place
several hundred miles to the
south. However, my nerves
didn’t last long. Crossing from
Europe to Asia felt like moving
from sepia into Technicolor —
the sun was brighter, the food
tastier, the smiles sweeter.
And from Turkey onwards
the goodwill strengthened
by the day. Near Byblos in
Lebanon two men drove me
ten miles out of their way to
save me from a lashing storm.
In the Sudanese Sahara, not
far from the buried city of
Old Dongola beside the Nile,
a Nubian family roused me
tenderly back to life when I
collapsed from dehydration
in the 45C-plus heat. In Iran
so many people invited me
into their homes that I never
once had to camp or pay for
accommodation.
The Middle East is a region
known for its conservatism
and hostility towards the
West. As a white, unmarried,
agnostic British woman I
expected — at times — a degree
of judgment or ill will. Yet over
and over again my anxieties
were proved unfounded. My
hosts couldn’t have been more
different from the hawkish
fanatics so often splashed
across the news. The Islam I
encountered, shorn of itspolitical armoury, was
unfailingly gracious and warm.
This is not to say that Britain
— or the West in general —
escaped censure. While I was
looked on kindly, often our
lawmakers at home were not,
for this is a region where the
wounds of colonialism remain
raw. In Iran British politicians
are seen as the ultimate “wily
foxes”, and a common joke
when anything bad happens
is to cry “the British are to
blame!” — a phrase originating
from the popular Iranian novel
My Uncle Napoleon.
Such views can be forgiven;
for centuries Britain has
proved a frequent and
troublesome meddler in
Iranian affairs, exploiting its
workforce, plundering its
resources and — most
damagingly — spearheading a
1953 coup that arguably set
back democracy in the
country a hundred years.
Post-imperial autocracies
continue to bleed the Middle
East dry, and it was these that
I feared most while on the
road — more than any of the
other manifold risks, real and
perceived, I had been warned
about. In Egypt activists were
being beaten and harassed by
security forces every day. In
Sudan students were being
shot and killed while
protesting in the street. In
Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s
iron fist had crushed all but
the tiniest glimmer of dissent.
Across the region refugee
camps were full to bursting
with people fleeing President
Assad’s despotic rule.
Amid this tumult the extent
of my privilege became clear.
As a westerner I felt complicit
in these people’s suffering.
Yet as I breezed from state to
state, enjoying support and
accolades along the way, those
enduring far more courageous
journeys were facing anger,
aggression and arrest.
“Please remember that we
are not the enemy,” a female
refugee from the Syrian city
of Idlib said in the Turkish
border town of Gaziantep.
“We are the ones stuck
in between.”Rebecca Lowe completed
her journey in July 2015.
Her account of her travels,
The Slow Road to Tehran,
is published by September
Publishing (£18.99)GET ON YOUR BIKE
AND RIDE,
AND RIDE,
AND RIDE...
Rebecca
with her
trusty
bicycleof Idlib saidin the Turkish
border town of Gaziantep.
“We are the ones stuck
in between.”Rebecca Lowe completed
her journey in July 2015.
Her account of her travels,
The Slow Road to Tehrann,
is published by September
Publishingg(£18.99)Rebecca Lowe shares
the inside story of
her 7,000-mile pedal
from London to Tehran
S
hortly before I set off
on my year-long cycle
ride from London to
Tehran I received an
email from my
mother. “You cannot imagine
how devastated I feel,” it
began, before embarking on
a calm and rational exposition
(not) of all the possible hazards
I might encounter. The words
“dangerous”, “dreadful”,
“awful”, “reckless”, “hostile”,
“risking life and limb”,
“robbed and raped” and
“family disintegrating” were
all used in her attempt to
persuade me to reconsider
— some more than once and
with a liberal sprinkling of
exclamation marks.
“I think I’ll have to hit the
bottle or go mad,” the
message concluded. “I’ll start
with the former and see how
things go from there.”
As my departure date
approached I admit that I felt
guilty for what I was about to
put my parents through. I
didn’t want them to worry
on my account, or become
hopeless alcoholics, but I
knew the journey looked
bad on paper. Extending
7,000 miles over 20 countries
and three continents, my
route would take me through
Europe and the rest of Turkey,
then across Lebanon, Jordan,
Egypt and Sudan, from where
I would take a flight to Oman
before continuing by bike to
the UAE and finally Iran.
To my mother, and many
others besides, the trip
appeared fraught withgelatinous bottom and rickety
thighs. Unsure exactly what I
might need when far from the
comforts of home, I packed
every essential that sprang to
mind, including a collapsible
wine glass, an inflatable chair
and a silver-plated hip flask. I
even took my most prized
possession: my ukulele —
imagining myself, in a fit of
quixotic romanticism, as a
kind of latter-day Laurie Lee.
My plans for the logistics ofRebecca’s book
and, below,
the Wadi Rum
Desert in Jordan
JAN WLODARCZYK/ALAMY; MOHAMMAD NOURI, ALI CHEHADE/GETTY IMAGES; REBECCA LOWE