Mahneh

This morning I had intended to get going early. Instead I only left at a little after 8am after having a bad tempered argument with the hotel manager over the bill. At the time I felt that he was not being completely honest & fair, & a little rude. In retrospect I may have been a little harsh. However the facts sit I don't think I'll be going back there again.

Once I was going I felt that some of the effects of the bug hadn't left me. I still felt fatigued even though I'd slept well the previous night & that was on top of a snooze in the afternoon.

After 20km or so I passed through a police checkpoint at Emrani. The policemen were all smiles & handshakes, only interested in my nationality to be able to place me. As usual they were impressed when I responded with 'New Zealand'. Emrani didn't have very much beside the police checkpoint which was beside their fortified compound, an ambulance station, a shop & a mosque for travelers (I love these mosques, they always have clean toilets which service stations never do). Emrani used to be something more though. The disintegrating ruins of a walled town were 200m back from the highway. The town was built of mud, mud bricks for the buildings' structures & simple mud as a facing. Only the entrance to the ruined town mosque had fired ceramic bricks. The occasional rain was desolving the buildings & returning the mud from where it came. There was no information about when the town was abandoned but I can imagine that it wasn't more than a century. I can see that once mud structures lose their protection from rain that they would desolve like sugar in tea.

After eating a watermelon by the ruins of the mosque I moved on. The terrain was quite flat. I put my ipod on to distract me a bit from my fatigue. Not long after I arrived at Mahneh. It was distinct from the desert oasis' to the South which were small spots of cultivation surrounded by desert. There were extensive fields around it. Nearer the town were those that required irrigation & a lot of wheat further out.

As the Sun got a bit too close to setting for comfort I found a side road off the highway that lead to a suitable camping spot. Once the Sun went down it became noticeably colder than when camping in the desert further South. I don't know whether this is because I'm moving into an area with a (relatively) cooler climate or due to the North wind that has been present the last couple of days. I hope it's not due to the wind, which isn't favorable to me (I'm cycling North).

I cycled 106 km in 6 hours & 24 minutes
Total so far 5530 km in 75 days
GPS Coordinates of end point - N 35°7.677, E 58°58.873