It looks like I’m going to be in Tbilisi for a while. Since arriving back from my cycle travels, I’ve had a lot to reflect on.

For the moment, I’m happy where I am. I’m enjoying seeing friends and rekindling relationships.

I am doing what I can to keep my days organised now I don’t have the routine of cycling each day.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’m researching design as it is something I am interested in. I have started writing up my diary into book and I am continuing to write my journal each day. I have a lot of photos to organise and I’ve been reflecting on my photography process.

1. Turn up to the Iranian Embassy having just arrived in New Delhi and say you want to get a visa.
2. Tell them your nationality (bad decision if British)
3. Remember that you absolutely definitely need a pesky ‘Letter of Invitation’ obtained either through a pricey tour agency or by a friend who ‘invites you’ to Iran.
4. Apply immediately for an LOI and wait for 15 days thinking things will probably be ok.
5. After 15 days, and numerous conversations with girlfriend who you’ve only seen 3 weeks in 7 months telling her you will be home soon, get a response from the tour agency saying ‘you’ve been rejected by the Iran Ministry of Foreign Affair for a visa with no reason given’.
6. Ball your eyes out, curse, swing your arms about like there is a cat attached to the end of each.
7. Get that familiar feeling of ‘starting from square 1’.
8. Convince yourself that this is just part of the process and treat it like a challenge not a problem.
9. Contact another tour agency and send them your details.
10. Contact your friend in Iran to send you a letter of invitation.
11. Get the producer of your film to call up a reliable tour operator ‘Sandy Travels’ to get you in contact with your extremely wise Iranian Visa Mentor ‘Reza’.
12. Reza tells you that if you get rejected twice it’s very unlikely you will ever get an Iran visa but because it’s the Iranian new year your best bet is to try as hard as possible to get the transit visa.
13. Spend the next week cycling 40km to and from the Iranian Embassy everyday with new instructions from ‘Reza’ in an attempt to beg the robots in the consulate for a transit visa (which they have the power of issuing if they want - in an emergency).
14. Prepare and psyche yourself up like Rocky. Borrow a shirt, wash your clothes and be the first one in the Embassy on Monday morning.
15. Explain your problem ‘I want to apply for a transit visa’, ‘what is your nationality?’, ‘British’,  ‘I’m afraid we have to send your application to Tehran which will take a month’ (ever heard of email???)
16. Stand in peaceful protest (like Ghandi) in front of the kiosk window for 2 hours.
17. Watch a very interesting stream of people applying (probably successfully I tell myself) for visas.
18. Meet the Visa Officer (visually a cross between Gerard Depardiu and Gordon Ramsey) and explain that you: have no money, don’t want to fly for environmental reasons, cycled from England to India, love Iran and think it’s a great country, are desperate to apply for a transit visa so that you can  transit through Iran by bus and train.
19. Get told by the Officer that - he can’t help you, it’s not how it works, but then he let’s you apply for the transit visa anyway.
20. Leave the embassy and realise that the only reason he let you apply for the visa was to get rid of you and that it’s extremely clear that you’re never going to be accepted for the visa without an LOI.
21. Unfortunately you can’t get an LOI until at least the 15 April (without delays) because of the Iranian New Year (Happy Norooz!)
22. Tell your Iranian Visa Mentor ‘Reza’ the situation and get new ‘advice’ to keep trying and to really make your situation VERY clear….
23. Buy chocolates and make a ‘script’: “The visa section Mfa is closed until the 5th April. I’m British and I know I will be turned down if you send my application to Tehran.” “If I don’t get the transit visa I will miss my best friend’s wedding?” “My Indian visa is about to expire and I can’t wait for 4 weeks and I’ve run out of money for more visas.” “My travel is a global cycle ride for charity, peace and unity between countries” “I love Iran and I want to tell the world how wonderful it is”
24. Get some other props: Print out a picture of your fancy 3 wheeled loaded bicycle against a backdrop of snowy mountains.
25. Get a friend in Tehran to send you a letter of invitation and a copy of his passport. Go to the Embassy the next morning, speak to the officer, offer the chocolates (gratefully received), but in reality don’t get much further but leave with a slight feeling of hope that there may be an ounce of human being left in that grey exterior.
26. Make a new script: “I’m running out of money to pay for accommodation. I can’t afford to wait 4 weeks”, “My wife is very upset”, “I can’t afford to fly (aside from the fact that flying is philosophically repulsive to me, not mentioning the nauseating environmental impact)”. “I can’t get the Khyber pass permit to cross overland to Afghanistan and I can’t afford / don’t want to wait 2/3 months it would take me to travel via China and Central Asia”. “My bike frame snapped and I’ve got a persistent knee injury”. “I can’t afford any more visas”. “My family is very worried about me”. “I know I should have planned things better but I’m out of options and I’m appealing to you as a  human being”. “I can give you an exact Itinerary of my travel”. Cycle 20km to the Iran Embassy armed with a box of Indian sweets.
27. Show your face at the window kiosk and get told ‘please sit down and wait’ Think that you might be on to something but then end up waiting 4.5 hours until you’re the last person in the Embassy then step up to the Kiosk to be asked ‘why are you still waiting around here, we finalised everything yesterday?’.
28. Because you feel so strongly about the situation start crying and cry for the next 20 minutes, during which time the officer refuses the Indian sweets and accuses you ‘you think because we’re Iranian you can give something and get something in return, that’s not how it works’.
29. But still after this experience leave with a glint of hope as one of the officers says, ‘you should go now otherwise he won’t give it to you. Come back on Tuesday’. Say ‘if you won’t take the sweets, I’ll give them to the security’. ‘No, the security won’t accept them’ - they say in response.
30. Leave the embassy and share the delicious box of Indian sweets with the Police guarding the embassy…get a vast amount of satisfaction from this.
31. Leave and enjoy a wonderful weekend cycling around, talking about art, eating Afghani food, attending an electronic music festival, meeting friends and making the most of life.
32. Visit the Embassy on Tuesday to be told that you’ve been rejected for no other reason than they don’t like giving visas to British.
33. Leave relieved at least now that’s over….
34. Essentially learn a lot about dealing with bureaucratic institutions and persevering in the face of an impossible challenge and learning a lot from failure.

All the above is true from my experience other than- I’m not married and my best friend’s wedding probably isn’t going to be until July.

Last week it was the Holi festival. People throw colourful powder and drench each other with water. I took a cycle ride through the Mehrauli area near the Qutab Minar monument just as the festivities were peaking in the morning. Most people were stained from head to toe in a shade of purple. This was from from having been pelted with every colour mixed together. It was like God’s hand had slipped and knocked the paint palette over.

I am currently living with wonderful Couchsurfers, Navneet and Priya in Delhi and travelling each day back to the Iranian Embassy.

I have a half-baked plan to go back to Georgia overland. The border into Tibet from Nepal is closed. The other options are go back to Pakistan, then come back to India or wait until the border with China opens a couple of months later in May.

My no-fly policy was something that was an important part of the original Ride Earth project. Now I was faced with breaking this commitment.

I’m in Delhi. I got a Pakistan visa about 2 weeks ago. I had applied for an Iran LOI (letter of invitation - required for the Iran visa, through tour agency Stantours.com for a princely sum). I was waiting for the little code of confirmation to come through so I could go to the Embassy in Delhi and pick up my visa.

However, it was was not to be. A few days ago I got an email saying my application had been rejected. It felt like the worse thing that could happen and that I was back to square one.

Having arrived in Delhi, I had been wishfully thinking that I would pick up Pakistan and Iran visas again and make my way by public transport back to Turkey. However, the world’s borders and their associated bureaucracy and politics thought differently. At the time it felt to me like the only point of border was to make life difficult for the overland traveller.

I cycled this morning the 16km from my host to the Iran Embassy to be told that I need the Letter of Invitation from a friend in Iran or they need to send my application to Iran, either way it would take at least a month. I should have remembered my last process of getting the Iran visa. Why hadn’t I remembered to organise the LOI in advance?

I cycled out of Kathmandu contending with smoky diesel fumes from the relentless traffic. Gradually I made my way into the suburbs and up out of the valley. I was not used to the mountains but I glad to be cycling on some hills again.

It felt like the beginning of another adventure and with the bare trees and overcast weather it reminded me a little of the Black Sea coast in Turkey. I continued onward past a sprawling area of industrial quarry works to the of the valley. At the summit I was greeted by wonderful views of steep mountains.

From Daman on clear day, you could see 18 Himalayan peaks. Unfortunately visibility wasn’t good, but the peaks of Ganesh Himal, Annapurna and Machappuchre were a mystical sight floating atop the whispy clouds and haze.

I passed the 2400m summit point feeling spiritually rested from being in the quiet mountain area surrounded by glorious wild nature. The downhill was long and ponderous. I regularly stopped to take photos, film travelling shots, and otherwise record my thoughts as they occurred via dictaphone. I stopped briefly in a house where a large old woman with a crinkly face sat with her young grandson propped against her knee and her daughter.

Onward I went up through the mountains, through little villages, and clay shacks by the roadside. I decided to continue to cycle in the moonlight and arrived in the town of Daman at 2330 m at around 7 o’clock. I went into a Dhaba which was a building made of branches with a thatch roof, a small clay oven. There were two ladies. One was smoking a pipe whilst cooking by some pans on a stove.

I met a man who was playing a type of table top hockey. He asked me to go and visit his school. Inside, the children were attending their lessons. The school was a project of ‘Room to Read’, the local community and the Nepali government. Architecturally the building looked good and with a nice paint job on the outside at least.

The teacher took me onto the roof and said ‘we don’t have equipment for our school - no tables, books, and no money to buy them’. I replied ‘it’s not a school without materials, it’s just a concrete shell’. ‘A foreigner, a German came last year and donated 50,000 rupees and we were able to build the roof’ he told me. I got the impression that they were relying on another beneficiary to turn up out of the blue and make a considerable donation.