Highways always beckon. There are new vistas and a distant horizon to be pursued. Add a bike to this mix and then it is about feeling the wind, the heat, a rain cloud’s fury and the nip in the air. Biking is two wheels and a soul bonding with nature. There is risk too, a life could be snuffed. When Lois Pryce rode a trail bike across Iran in 2011, over 3,000 miles, through Tabriz, Tehran, Yazd, Persepolis and Shiraz, it was about a British woman shedding her blinkers about a distant nation. The initial impetus was from a stranger named Habib, who left a note on her bike in London: “We are not terrorists! I wish that you will visit Iran.”
Pryce sidesteps the stereotypes peddled by rival governments and finds warmth from the exuberant hospitality of Iranians going through hard times while clinging to their nostalgia over Persia. The result is an evocative book titled Revolutionary Ride , a 282-page endeavour that weaves in Iran’s contradictions, of being governed by Islamic law and sheathed in conservatism but having a knack of finding joy. Be it conversations into the night, impromptu picnics, tinkling glasses of smuggled alcohol, Pryce reveals through her lines, a country marred by strife and yet finding happiness.
She writes: “Despite our differences I felt entirely at ease with these people. They exuded a comfortable, human warmth and kindness that I could not claim to have experienced very often amongst complete strangers.” This acceptance of the innate goodness of Iranians becomes her recurring motif. And this is despite three nerve-racking experiences: an expletive-ridden argument with the government’s secret-surveillance agents; a speeding van missing her by a whisker; and a drug-addicted petrol-bunk employee’s futile attempt at assaulting her.
But Pryce soldiers on. She finds serenity at the homes of friends with London-connections; peace within the confines of hotel rooms; and revels in the kindness of strangers inviting her home for dinner while opening up about martyrs — brothers and cousins lost to the Iran-Iraq war or rounded up by uniformed men and vanishing forever. Laughter and loss are constant echoes in the Iranian way of life and it moves her enough to make repeated visits over the next few years.
As she rides, Pryce has her inspiration’s (Freya Stark, a travel-writer who criss-crossed Iran in the past) words etched in the mind: “One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and take what every place brings without trying to turn it into a private pattern of one’s own.” This is a book that stirs hope and could make you dream about a distant road with a bike for company.
Revolutionary Ride ; Lois Pryce, Hachette India, ₹499.
