Kerman has been a crossroads for thousands of years, and the Ganjali Khan complex is the city's best memory of it. The governor Ganj Ali Khan, who ruled Kerman for Shah Abbas I in the early seventeenth century, built a whole civic centre on the edge of the old bazaar: a square, a caravanserai, a bathhouse, a mint, a water store and a mosque, all in a harmonious style of brick and tile. The bathhouse, now a museum of anthropology, has wax figures bathing in rooms of coloured plaster, with a water tank and a domed roof lit by small round openings.
The bazaar behind it, a long vaulted arcade, is a living market, selling spices, copper, carpets and sweets, and the people of Kerman take pride in their handcrafts, especially pateh embroidery and woven rugs. The province is also famous for pistachios, and you will find them in everything from nougat to ice cream. Kerman sits at about seventeen hundred metres in a bowl of bare mountains, and to the east lies the Lut Desert, one of the hottest places on Earth, with its eroded sand ridges, the kaluts.
The ride that leaves from here goes to Mahan, about thirty-five kilometres south-east, where the Shahzadeh Garden climbs a slope in a series of terraces with fountains and cypress trees, a Persian garden in the desert, listed by UNESCO in 2011. The road is straight and the surface generally good, but in summer the heat is severe and the glare strong. Spring and autumn are better, with clear skies and cool mornings.
Kerman is a city of nearly six hundred thousand people, so fuel and food are easy, and the old centre has simple restaurants serving rice, stews and kebabs. Try a glass of tea with sweet dates, or the local cumin-flavoured dishes, and take time in the evening, when the square is lit and the air cools. As with any journey in Iran, check the travel advice and rules for foreign motorcyclists before you go.