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Updated: May 13, 2025
The Russian peasant at once invites me to his menzil in the caravansarai; and although he looks, if anything, a trifle more indifferent about personal cleanliness than either a Turkish or Persian peasant, I have no alternative but to accept his well-meant invitation.
Situated in a region of wind and snow and bleak, open hills, the wretched serai of Ahwan is remembered as a place where the keen, raw wind seems to come whistling gleefully and yet maliciously from all points of the compass, seemingly centring in the caravansarai itself; these winds render any attempt to kindle a fire a dismal failure, resulting in smoke and watery eyes.
There are at the caravansarai a number of travellers, among them a moujik of the Don, travelling to Teheran and beyond in company with a Tabreez Turk.
The few Persian travellers in the caravansarai and the villagers come flocking around as usual to worry me about riding the bicycle, but the servants drive them away in short order. "We want to see the sahib ride the aap-i-awhan," they explain,-no doubt thinking their request most natural and reasonable.
I arrive at the caravansarai of Ahwan, a dreary, inhospitable place in an equally dreary, inhospitable country.
From the street, indeed, it is hardly visible, for it lies within the threshold of a caravansarai or fandak, in which beasts are tethered, goods accumulated and travellers housed, and of which the general appearance is that of a neglected farm-yard.
Shelter, and the usual rude accommodation, supplemented on this occasion by a wandering luti and his vicious-looking baboon, as also a company of riotous charvadars, who insist on singing accompaniments to the luti's soul-harrowing tom-toming till after midnight, are obtained at the caravansarai of Deh Mollah.
Katoum-abad consists of a small mud village and a half-ruined brick caravansarai; in one of the rooms of the latter we find "Hodge-podge" and Me-shedi Ali, with an abundance of roast chickens, cold mutton, eggs, and the before-mentioned mysterious black bottles.
Like the Ah wan caravansarai, the one at Gusheh seems to draw the chilly winds from every direction, and I arise from a rude couch, made wretchedly uncomfortable by draughts, the attacks of insects, and the persistent determination of a horse to use my prostrate form as a rest for his nose-bag, to find myself the possessor of a sore throat.
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