A day's journey for a loaded camel was about thirty or forty kilometres, and every caravan road in Persia was punctuated at that interval by a building where men and animals could rest. The caravanserai was a walled courtyard with a single gate, rooms around the inside for travellers, stables and stores for the animals, and a well or a cistern in the middle. The Persian caravanserais, a group of fifty-four of which UNESCO listed in 2023, are the survivors of a network that carried silk, spices, cloth and ideas across the region for centuries. Many were built or repaired under Shah Abbas I in the early seventeenth century, who wanted trade to pass through his territory and to be safe.
The country south-west of Tehran, near Eqbalieh and Varamin, lies along the old road to Qom and the south, across a flat plain of salt and dust. The buildings that survive are mostly of mud brick, with arched passages and a plain, robust character that has withstood centuries of heat and wind. It is a place to imagine a very different kind of traffic, of camels, merchants and pilgrims arriving at dusk, and where the sound of bells and the smell of dung and smoke filled the courtyard.
Here too runs the Trans-Iranian Railway, built between 1927 and 1938, which crosses the mountains and the desert from the Caspian to the Gulf and is itself on the World Heritage List. The old caravan road and the new railway tell the same story of a country that has always depended on moving goods across difficult ground.
For a rider the plain is fast, flat and exposed, with big trucks and long straight roads. Heat in summer is intense, and dust storms can reduce visibility. Varamin, with a hundred and eighty thousand people, and the small city of Eqbalieh have fuel and food, and the Friday mosque in Varamin is a fine Mongol-period building from the early fourteenth century. Spring and autumn are the best seasons for the ride.
Take water, and stay on the paved roads. Rules for foreign motorcyclists in Iran are strict and change, so check before you plan a trip.