Her revolutionary heart
Dionne Christian talks to writer Lois Pryce about taking the road less travelled
When travel writer, explorer and cofounder of the Adventure Film Festival Lois Pryce accepted an unconventional invitation to visit Iran, the last thing she expected was to love the country — demonised by Western governments and media — so much that she would go on to visit three times.
Rather than finding a cultural backwater peopled by “a bunch of ranting religious lunatics that needed to be kept on a tight leash”, the motorbiking enthusiast encountered some of the warmest, most good- humoured and generous people she had met on her extensive travels. After her first visit in 2013- 14 — a solo odyssey that saw Pryce travel 3000km on a Yamaha TTR250 — she’s returned twice, taking her husband, fellow adventurer and film- maker Austin Vince, on her final trip because she wanted him to experience Iranian hospitality. In her latest book Revolutionary Ride – On the
Road in Search of the Real Iran, she shares with the rest of the world the story of her first visit. Pryce happens across colourful characters. As she points out, there’s a chasm between them and the conservative Islamic Government, not understood by the rest of the world.
“I’d travelled in other Middle Eastern countries but Iran is very different and the thing that struck me is how much fun the people are; they have an incredible zest for life and they’re so vivacious, engaged and throw themselves into everything.
“They’re incredibly well- educated and sophisticated in their thinking and very aware of being cut off from the rest of the world. They’re angry about their government. They have tried to do something but it’s a near- impossible situation.”
She says following elections in 2009 Iranians staged anti- government protests but these were quickly quashed. Pryce says she’s in awe of everyday Iranians’ resilience and ability to stay, by and large, cheerful under such a regime. Aware of the risk those she met took by speaking candidly to her, she went to great lengths to disguise their identities in her book.
“I didn’t just change the names; I altered occupations, the towns and cities that I met them in, their ages and family status because I am very aware the threats they face are very real.”
She’s no stranger to the world’s highways and byways. Revolutionary Ride is her third book, following Lois on the Loose — about quitting her job at the BBC to ride 32,000kms from Alaska to Argentina, and Red Tape & White Knuckles about her second long- distance solo motorcycle expedition from London to Cape Town in South Africa. That trip saw her cross the Sahara and travel through the Congo basin and Angola.
Pryce owes her Iranian exploits to a note left on her motorbike in December 2011, when it was parked outside the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the upmarket Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Despite the naysayers who said she shouldn’t go she couldn’t resist the challenge posed in the note.
The embassy had been closed by then Foreign Secretary William Hague after the storming of the British embassy in Tehran. Iranian embassy staff had been expelled; diplomatic and financial relations between the two countries were severed.
Returning after a lunch date, Pryce found a note attached to her bike from a man called Habib who wrote that, seeing the bike, he concluded its rider had travelled to many countries but should go to Iran. He said it was very beautiful, the Persian people were the most welcoming in the world and to not think about what had happened in Tehran because “… these are our governments not the Iranian people. WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS” ( a sentiment twice repeated in capital letters in a nine- line note).
Trusting her instincts —“the only way to hone those is to use them” — Pryce went ahead and painstakingly organised a 4800km solo motorcycle trek from the Turkish- Iranian border to the 4000- year- old southeastern town of Shiraz.
Once a hard- to- obtain visa was secured, the biggest challenges she faced were adjusting to wearing a headscarf ( hajib) when she wasn’t wearing her helmet and overcoming her own perceptions about Iran.
“The hajib was rather annoying; a necessary evil. As soon as I took my helmet off, I had to have my headscarf at the ready and whip it on.”
She writes about thinking she was being followed, of becoming increasingly concerned only to pull over and become more worried when the car or truck she believed was in pursuit also stopped. She’d be greeted by families, intrigued to meet a sole female motorcyclist, who would give her food or invite her to stay with them.
“I was constantly asked where my husband was — not in a disapproving way, but simply intrigued and excited to see a female on her own doing what she wanted.”
Though she experienced severe culture shock, Pryce says in many ways travelling in Iran was easier than traversing Africa. The roads were good, even if she couldn’t read the signage, and physically the journey was less demanding. Previous travels had given her a solid grounding in what to expect.
In a 2015 story, the Telegraph named her one of the world’s Ten Great Female Travellers.
But Pryce acknowledges leaving the welltrodden travel paths is becoming trickier, particularly in a world where we can jump online anywhere, and are continually warned about terrorism.
“When things start to feel as if they’re going wrong, it can actually be right because it’s often at those moments when you have the best experiences. It’s a hard leap, though, for those used to travelling in the Western world, where things run on time and everything works.”
In that, Pryce may share something with a woman who helped inspire her trip to Iran.
In the 1930s, British explorer and author Dame Freya Stark was one of the first European women to journey extensively — and alone — in the Middle East.
One of Stark’s quotes opens Pryce’s book: “I have no reason to go, except that I have never been, and knowledge is better than ignorance. What better reason could there be for travelling?”