After the Marmar, built in 1967, fully refurbished in 2014, and now called the Baba Taher Hotel, we moved on to the Nayeb Restaurant, famous for its Chelo Kebab. It was really delicious. The best meal I've had since leaving England. First you get the rice which you prepare with butter and the yoke of an egg, then the kebabs - which is lamb with some tomatoes, sauce for the meat and more butter if you want it. And to accompany it some delicious savoury yoghourt with bits of raw onion (which is eaten everywhere here). I'm acquiring quite a taste for raw onion, but it's not a very social food. I followed all that with a vast slice of melon (I didn't know it was going to be so vast). Really pig-like.

Next he took us to meet, and converse with (teach?) Miss Norah Rassis. She's a friend of his. A pleasant little bird of 23 (very small) but attractive and with those lovely brown eyes they have here. It's no hardship to talk English with her! Though we tended to get onto rather complex subjects and had to explain the meanings of lots of words to her. We arrived at 3:20 and left about 4:50, a good hour's tuition. We took our job fairly seriously and did lots of "homework" on the words that came up in conversation, clarifying them in our own minds, so that we could explain them properly next time we met. Unfortunately, after only two lessons she got a cold, and in the end we didn't see her again.

Then Mr Babaian returned us to the hotel. Babaian is a card! I went and posted all our correspondence with a loud clunk. Postcards cost 8R for stamp, so they're out, from now on it's only aerogrammes as they only cost 8R altogether. Then I walked up to the Tourist Hotel, but it looked very grotty, so I decided not to bother about a job there.

The hotel Amir Kabir was full of people like me, long haired bearded hippies going to Nepal for a hash smoke-in! Believe it or not Brian and I were considered in a group apart from the hippy contingent. We both had a hair cut in Istanbul. Furthermore, Brian in his extreme conservatism shaved off his beard in deference to the young lady we're conversing with on the finer points of the English language. He did look young when he'd done it - about 30. Being lazy, and a scruff at heart, I did not follow his example, but I've tidied my beard up, and it does look better.

Heinz Sows the Seed of Selling the Wave

Heinz joined us and tried to talk us into selling the 'Wave' and buying two Russian 'Jupiter 2' motorbikes. Two stroke 350 twin. Not very startling performance, but rugged. Brian's idea, this, of buying two bikes for the 'Wave', fortunately it has now been dropped. Heinz says this (Hotel Amir Kabir) is his mailing address. He's one of the world's great talkers. Finally, we went to bed about 2am. Heinz reckons he only has about 7 hours sleep per week! The lucky man.

At this stage our plans for how to continue further east were changing almost hourly. We were reasonably certain that we couldn't sell the 'Wave' in India for more than the £25 or so that the customs would give us. Strangely on the very day we abandoned the motorbike idea I got a letter from my university roommate Keith in which his parting shot was "Sell the Wave and buy a BSA".