Getting into Adventure Green

SOLO FEMALE TRAVELLER
JOHANNA CLARK, A TEACHER FROM BRISTOL, EMBARKS ON A JOURNEY
TO A COUNTRY MANY MIGHT FEAR. WHAT SHE FINDS INSTEAD IS A PLACE,
AND ITS PEOPLE, QUITE BEAUTIFUL...
Johanna travelled by Triumph Bonneville
On the 18th May 2016 I set
off on my journey to Iran.
People said I was throwing
away my career as a teacher, ‘Why
don’t you buy a house!’ But I knew I
wanted to travel and see Iran.
Growing up on the Isle of Man I’ve
always been surrounded by the
culture of biking, though I don’t
come from a family of bikers. In fact
my family were very much against
the idea, saying it’s dangerous and
that I shouldn’t be doing it.
It was only during my time teaching
English in Indonesia that I finally
learned to ride one. Over there it’s
a case of learn to ride a bike or you
can’t get around anywhere. We would
ride down to Bali and back and a bike
gave me so much freedom.
Back in the UK I did a trip around
France before building up to the
big one; a four month tour down
through Europe, the Balkans,
Turkey and into Iran, a place I’d
always been fascinated by and with
that I set off.
I went on the Bonneville because
that’s the bike I had and the bike
I liked riding. I was carrying too
much stuff, shedding so much of it
as I passed through Europe. I had
a tent, sleeping bag, spares I didn’t
need, tools I never used; rope,
tubing to siphon petrol, a tarpaulin.
Everyone tells you take this stuff,
then you don’t use it.
I got to Turkey and realised I was so
inappropriately dressed, discovering
in the more conservative areas that
I really should cover my hair. My
passage through Turkey was around
the time of the coup, meaning that
I was stopped at every checkpoint,
which surprised me as I was clearly
a tourist. The advice was not to go
within 10 miles of the Syrian border.
A car bomb went off in the town I
was staying in, and I was told for my
safety that I had to leave and head
north. From there I went to Iran
and everything was fine.
I did get mistaken for an Iranian
several times, though equally
on occasion I did get stopped by
the religious police and told that
I was incorrectly dressed. One
policeman was really apologetic;
‘Even though you are a tourist
you still need to do it.’ He got a
woman from a shop to help me tie
my headscarf correctly. But it’s a
fascinating country.
They don’t have a massive tourist
industry, nor any foreign TV
channels, and the internet is heavily
censored. Therefore they don’t
have much influence from the
outside world. When they do meet
someone new they really want to
know everything about you and how
Iran is perceived around the world.
‘Why doesn’t the west want Iran to
have nuclear power?’ They would
ask. The go-to answer I gave was; ‘I
don’t know anything about politics,’
because they do have secret police,
but they’re generally easy to spot.
In Tehran, I saw women being
stopped by the religious police for
not being properly dressed, but the
women would argue back. They
certainly weren’t as submissive as
you might think.
The cities are more westernised
than I was expecting them to be.
In the countryside it’s a lot more
conservative and in the Kurdish
areas it’s obvious that gender
relationships are much more
traditional, where women stay at
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