Menu
We are having quite a comfortable journey in our 1st Class air conditioned compartment in this carriage and are sharing the compartment with Abejat, an Iranian young lady, and her brother Khrousm, both in their early twenties, modern minded and have just returned from a shopping trip to France and Germany with Canon camera etc. They speak some English. Khrousam is a born joker. Bajhat is studying pharmacy. They are good fun so we are all staying quite cheerful despite the fact that the journey takes three nights and three days.
The back of the seats lift up to form a bunk. There’s a ladder and bucket and carpet on the floor which is swept sometimes. Double glazing and air conditioning keep us cool – outside the air is like a hair dryer even when the train is moving. There is a restaurant car, tea 5TL large glass with lots of sugar but no milk, very refreshing.
The countryside is burnt grass with green scrub occasionally. Much wheat and sunflower occasional tobacco tomatoes and melons. It is amazing that there can be such a luscious fruit in such a dry land. We also noticed that there are many wild fig trees in Greece and wild plums in Yugoslavia. Some cafes and houses have grape vines for sun shades and you can pick the grapes for breakfast.
We are now in Eastern Turkey and the country the looks like the Nevada desert. We are on top of a mountain plateau, there are a few pictures of snowy tops in some hills. It is still hot and very hot in the day but quite cold at night. The train of 15 carriages travels very slowly and we see a village of mud huts and soil roof with nomad tents and shepherds and sheep herds scratching life out of the barren countryside. No hedges or boundaries of fields are visible but field shapes seem small areas. Sometimes though the wheat fields spread like prairies. In the morning we came around a huge lake, a mist hovering over it which made the mountains behind appear to hover in mid air. Sometimes a hill rises from the plateau like a huge burial tune. Usually they are bare but bushes sometimes cover the earth.
In winter there is much snow and I think it must be lush in spring, but now short wild grass is burned to dry hay by the sun and I think overgrazing must cause problems. We followed a river for a while which was laden with red brown silt and turned later to a green mucky colour as it slowed into oxbow shapes as it meandered across flat land. I bet it is swampy in the spring. There is no shade anywhere and although we noticed tractors we also noticed wigwam shaped shelters of twigs and grass for shelters, a contrast of old and new.
To have more than none wife is frowned on and olny the first wife has legal status but since a woman is only entitled to one dress and food then she is effectively cheap labour for some tribes. How else can she live in these wild places, we were told? There seems to be no electricity or TV in most places, no poles and wires.
At each station people jump out to refill water carriers and buy supplies. Usually I get back on the train as it slowly moves out, laid back or crazy, but so do hundreds of others which is quite a funny sight to wonder if they will all make it back onto the train. I wonder if any are there from last week’s train who had not timed their jump back on the train adequately? I’ve decided to give Joy half the travellers cheques in case I don’t make it back on the train!! Mine are always in my money belt around my waist.
During Friday morning at 6am the ticket inspector wanted our billets. Then he wanted our student cards, then more proof of being a student. I was getting panicky since we only had Turkish cards which we were warned are not always acceptable. I showed him my Open University card and said we lost our international student cards in Greece and had not time to write home for more. He accepted my OU card but wanted 120 TL extra for Joy. P paid willingly because the second class carriage part of the train which I expected to be expelled to is very crowded with six to a sleeping compartment with only reclining seats and only an open window instead of air conditioning and a very smelly bog and dirty old men and sick people. I hope we are OK with the cards in Tehran!
We arrive at Lake Van 1900m above sea level in the mountains with our train route blocked by steep sided alpine mountains everywhere around which reach to snow covered peaks 5317m above us. We continue the train journey by crossing on a ferry, yes the whole train aligns itself to the tracks on the ferry and the whole train, carriages and engine carefully crosses onto the ferry. Only the first class carriages go on the ferry, the other people are foot passengers who have to scramble for places on the carriages that meet us at the other end of the Lake Van. It is very hot on deck and after our tinned lunch Joy notices a well dressed uniformed Turkish eyeing her. He finally comes over and asks if she is my friend and I go into the standard identification procedure to prove our non hippy “we are moral” identity “she is my wife” “I’m a teacher” we go to Nepal; we climb the Himalaya”. This is necessary to prove we are not free sex hippy with tart which is the assumption especially if the female is blond.
He says he is the engineer and would we like to go to his cabin for coffee or tea. We warily consider then we go and get the full friendliness treatment; Hoy tries an officer’s shirt and cap on and I photo it; he brings melon and a friend or three and we converse around mundane points in sign language and pidgin English. The captain of another ferry which is broken turns up. Suliman speaks perfect English and looks like a fast worker. Sure enough within five minutes we are offered Raki (strong wine/spirit) and hashish – “no problem on ferry boat”. We turn the offer down and Joy also politely refuses the offer of a shower an “sleep in cabin tonight”; “have meal with us, money no problem …” We excuse ourselves and go upstairs to cool off, and to let them cool off too!!
There is some beautiful scenery from the ferry steaming across Lake Van with mountains all around us but Mustafa lures us up to the bridge and we peer through binoculars into the evening haze making appropriate ooh and ahh noises when we thought we should see the sights that he is pointing to, even though we didn’t understand or see them.
Note from Wikipedia 50 years later:
“Turkey Lake Van Train Ferry
The Lake Van Ferry (Turkish: Van Gölü Feribotu) is a passenger ferry service operated by the Turkish State Railways. It runs 90.6 kilometres (56.3 mi) in Lake Van between Van and Tatvan. Ferry service began operations in 1971, when a railway from Van to Iran was built. The ferry carries mainly railcars across the lake along with passengers. Passengers of the weekly Trans-Asia Express used the ferry to bridge the gap between the two railways until the service was suspended in July 2015.”
We escape to meditate – something that is slipping badly but melon pips from above remind us of Khousrou the practical joker from our compartment. We return to Mustafa to say goodbye and thanks for that part of the hospitality that was genuine. Explaining goodbye in pidgin sign language takes half an hour and the ferry finally docks. People crowd around as the ferry is winched until the train lines on the ferry and land line up and the carriage rolls on to land for its next slog of travel.
…………………..
2am, passport, forms and tickets and a demand for our student card, but thank God I’ve already seen this particular inspector and had a pleasant chat with him to establish some rapport. Joy is asleep and I pretend the cards are under her so he just tweeks her cheek and says OK no problem and goes. I’m not sure if she was asleep but it worked out OK. 7:30am customs exiting Turkey no problem.
We look forward to a hotel and privacy, the arrangements for vacating the compartment for the toilet bucket and for changing into sleeping clothes was becoming tedious.
Suddenly rumours start flying around the train of military and civil unrest in Iran; a curfew in Tehran; people shot; train cannot arrive in the late evening as planned because we would be subject to curfew and either locked on the train or shot. Our travelling companions ask us to leave the compartment and when we come back Abejat, the sister, has changed into something that covers her body and head and face that I think is called a Hijab but she pulls the bottom up so we cannot see her face, only her eyes. They are worried that they will be recognised and we think it may be because they are obviously from a very rich family and they are laden down with presents and household goods. We wonder how many will be “confiscated” by whoever has seized power but we also wonder if they will be safe. We start to realise that we need to wonder if we will be safe and I need to start making contingency plans but for what, if we don’t know what is going on?
We are forced to spend another night on the train, stationary in nowhere with no clear future for our travel plans or indeed, for our safety. Joy is very upset as am I and become upset with each other until lunch time.
…………………
I feel a bit responsible for our predicament because I was the instigator of the overland trip by public transport, Joy mainly wanted to get to the Himalaya and explore and climb. I have always been a keen observer of world events that are reported in various news media and I realised that this year, 1979, might be the last year in our lifetimes that we could travel by public transport to the Himalaya so we do it or regret the missed opportunity.
I observed that Turkey had troubles with Kurds at the Eastern part of Turkey and had been alleged to have bulldozed a Kurdish village flat, at night, while the residents were still asleep. Consequently the world news pundits expected Turkey to erupt in violence.
In Iran we knew that the USA and CIA had put the Shah in place as a puppet ruler and there was massive discontent with Ayatolla Khomenini who was exiled to Paris calling the shots, potentially literally. Consequently Iran was unstable and due a civil war.
In Afghanistan the Russian Communists were after a warm water port to the high seas with an overland route from their USSR to the port through their client states in central Asia so the Russians were influencing the politicians or assassinating the non compliant ones. It was widely reported that “the west” ie USA were going to resist this and it was about this time when reports started about groups of students organising themselves into fearless fighters against the Russians but who might be a bit extreme but at least they were better than the Russians so the CIA were backing them. Consequently Afghanistan was due to erupt in civil unrest or war.
[The “students” became the Taliban and soon bit the hands that fed them weapons and money.]
In Pakistan President Bhutto had been arrested along with members of his family and some of them had reportedly been hanged and Bhutto was sentenced to death and due to hang. Consequently a large mass of the public, his supporters and those against the current regime, were expected to either start civil unrest or a military coup (again).
So every country we went through had problems. Yugoslavian suicide drivers. Greece shortly after the trial of the colonels of the Greek Junta whose coup and tortures ruled from 1967 to 1974, only five years earlier; see The Rise of the Junta in Greece and it was at the time when USA and CIA solved problems in a paternally interfering way, for example the Greek and Turkish conflict over Cyprus (terrorism & invasion) was solved by President Johnston who likened them to a flea on an elephant’s back and was resolved by Kissinger at a dinner party drawing a line across the centre of the island and surprise, surprise that is where the ceasefire UN patrolled border still is today in 2016, even going through the centre of the capital Nicosia. That dinner party solution then, is currently in 2016 an issue to be resolved before Turkey can join the EU, (whether that is good or not…)
We wanted an adventure by travelling by public transport to the Himalaya before the overland route closed and we realised that the route was closing while we were on it. On the train we had just entered Iran and the countryside turned dramatic with pillars of rock rising from hillsides, one pillar was 40 feet high with a narrow three feet diameter. The soft rock is carved by wind into caves and buttresses with nature’s sculptures inviting our imagination to find hidden artistic shapes. Some people have built house entrances into the caves. We follow a canyon, occasionally comint onto flat topped mud-brick houses, just like the illustrated Bible pictures, we could be back in those lands and times.
An Iranian is complemented by our wonder of his country and treats us to tea. WE talk to others about the trouble and the sights and everyone including the train guards (armed) tell us to get out of Tehran fast. We pass a train of five carriages of soldiers and ten tanks on flat cars going somewhere. There is a tank guarding a station that we stop at. Our companions are worried; the whole trainload of passengers is worried. We try to sleep so we will be prepared for whatever will come next but everything, the whole world, is in a turmoil.
…………………..
We learn that there is now military rule in Iran with martial law, a 9pm curfew and tanks in the street. Instead of the train arriving at 10pm it goes slower and drops us off in Tehran at 5am Sunday morning. We slept little because of the frequency of ticket checks and customs inspections between midnight and 4am.
Our companions are very nervous and tell us that 500 people have been killed in Tehran and 10,000 killed in Iran in total. We don’t believe them. It’s beyond our comprehension.
6:00am We walk from Tehran station expecting to find the backpackers Hotel Amil Kabir in 10 – 15 minutes. It’s the only hotel for people in our situation and western travellers on the train talked about it being their destination. We observe deep open sewers by the side of the road which must act as storm drains and public latrines. We see a kid squatting over one in the main street and cannot avoid realising that he has diahorea of some sort but just downstream a woman washes clothes and a man gets a jug of the brown sludge to was the dusty pavement.
In a back street we are lost and crowds seem almost hostile to us; a kid throws something at us and we are worried. There are drinking taps with people crowded around them. The women are all cloaked to try to hide their faces. Under their cloak we not they often wear normal western dresses. There are more women around than seen in Istanbul but I think that here they are doing shopping then go home. The men leer at Joy but don’t touch. The traffic is noisy, smoky and horny – any excuse for a blast. We had heard of one man in a queue of cars jumping out and beating the man behind him who parped his horn and thought it an exaggeration until we saw someone jump out of their car and do exactly that, beat the horn parper!
A tank guards parliament that we should have to walk by and soldiers won’t let us walk past it so we detour. At each major roundabout or square is an armoured car or tank or soldiers. We notice some blood on the streets, some dark but some quite red, fresh! Finally we arrive at the hotel where there is a queue to register but by 13:00hrs we find a mucky room which is a welcome sanctuary from which to plan a hasty escape in the next step of the adventure.
We pick up information from fellow travellers such as currently UK buses to Istanbul can go no further than Athens though some foreign based buses pick up extra passengers from Istanbul. (Perhaps there was an expectation of the uprising in Iran spreading to Turkey?) The train from Istanbul to Tehran is cheaper than the bus (1040 / 1100TL) and more comfortable but takes an extra one night and students only get 50% reduction on the train, not the bus.
Train Tehran to Mashad is slightly more expensive than the bus which is 500-650Rs, about £4.20 – £5 each, and the bus takes 14 hours, leaving near Levantur at Khava Tour office to Taibad or the Afghan border. The Afghanistan border closes at 18:00hrs and the bus from the Afghanistan border to Herat was 120km. We heard that buses from Tehran were going no further than Mashad (see map) because of border disagreements with Afghanistan, our next country en route to the Himalaya. So with some uncertainty about outcome and with a loose association of travellers in adversity, we and groups of other young western adventurers and travellers mix with locals on buses towards the unknown where we may be dumped in no man’s land in a border dispute.
Tehran – Mashad 1,000km £4.20
Mashad – Taibad 150km
Taibad – border of Iran & Afghanistan 3km
Border – Herat 120km
Herat – Kandahar 100Afs (Afghanistan shillings)
Herat – Kabul 200Afs
Other information and advice from travellers:
In Kathmandu use a hotel near Pig Lane and keep away from French people who cannot get repatriated and so try some awful cons etc when broke and cannot get home. People of other nationalities allow themselves to go broke and get flown home by their embassy, a kind of interest free loan.
Back to strife torn Tehran.
On Friday a crowd was machine gunned and someone saw about 500 bodies, some maimed and some dead.
We saw an old man walking slow and painfully near a line of soldiers at one of the huge roundabout and the soldiers ordered him to the other side of the road and walk the long way around the huge roundabout. He obviously refused and the soldier kicked him severely a few times and then kicked him to the ground. Joy was going to go to his aid and I had to hang on to her. Then we were told to move along and not watch. I didn’t dare take a photo or even have the camera on show. We heard two gunshots near the hotel and apparently a bullet hit the hotel on Friday.
On Monday the buses couldn’t get from the station because tanks blocked off the road because of some trouble. The newspaper on Sunday said saboteurs will be executed. Anyone can be arrested and if they don’t confess under “military investigation” then they will be held during the martial law period, six months.
Before the troubles there were 1 million people in political prisons out of 40 million population; I wonder how many are in now? We notice people on crutches with eyes bandaged. The bazaar district is a trouble area and is about 400 yards away from our hotel and everyone keeps an eye on it for trouble that may come in our direction.
When we were on the final corner to Amil Kabir we were noisily asking for directions when an Indian/Pakistani looking person turned up speaking with an American accent and directed us. He asked where we were going next and then said some friends of his were going in a minibus to Kabul and do we want a lift. We met him at 17:00hrs Sunday and waited for 45 minutes for two girls who were supposed to be joining this impromptu group.
We were all so desperate to get out of Tehran that we were all considering any and all options. I was hoping it would work out because someone said that trains and buses were all booked up with this emergency exit from Tehran. When this man tried to phone his friend about the girls Joy went to our hotel for a pee. Outside two Iranians said to her “keep away from that man, he is bad, you will find out”.
Joy was upset and confused and though he took us to a nice restaurant for a meal and we had a good pizza and vodka and 7up, I kept looking for flaws in his story and guessing any naughty motives – sex, robbery, smuggling with us as mules or a smokescreen at customs or what? He seemed to be a genuine pilot with broken legs through an aircraft crash and now was instructing helicopter flying to the Iranian military.
He certainly spoke to people in apparent fluent Farsee, English, Italian, French and presumably Urdu. But he was too friendly. Someone said that because Iranians dislike Pakistanis and Indians that he may be over compensating an inferiority complex, also just being seen with a pretty girl is a big deal in all male dominated societies, especially Muslim, that we are now in.
I insisted on paying for the meal – he didn’t eat anything and our 2 pizzas, 6 double vodkas with tonic and ice (risky) & lemon (great) was 470Rs £3.60
…………………..
Our over friendly shining knight Iranian Pakistani Indian possible con man escape on a mini bus met us at 11am but without the couple of girls but now they had a Range Rover and not a minibus. We were suspicious. He said meet him and the couple at 2:30pm. We concluded that since he wanted us to change our travellers cheques to rupees then his con may be money. We had heard of a similar con where the car which was supposed to go Istanbul to Tehran went around the corner, the driver and girl got out “for a coffee” and a crowd of Turks jumped in the car and robbed them. We decided to take a bus!
We find a bus leaving at 3pm but it’s too short notice and we would be obliged to pay for our hotel into which we had booked for another night. So we give “Rodger” a miss and book a bus for tomorrow, Tuesday, at 16:00hrs 1090 Rs for both of us.
Petrol is cheap here, about 4p per gallon and everyone seems to have a car but they drive them as if they were driving a camel. Although there are zebra crossings nobody takes any notice of them and on a six lane road you just have to walk at a regular speed and jump around and between the cars. I am seriously scared of the traffic, never mind the revolution! Imagine the layout of cars in a traffic jam and imagine threading your way through them to cross the road. Now imagine that same arrangement of cars with some doing 30mph and others slowing down for you, others aiming at you; that’s Tehran’s roads.
There seems to be an insanity in Iranians brought about by motor vehicles. The ultimate trip with death is taken by the young Iranians on motor scooters and mopeds. No joke, even in the traffic conditions described the kids ride their machines the opposite way around the traffic; they weave in and out of cars that drive towards them, then change from upstream in one direction to downstream in the opposite direction. They ride on the pavements, and when the road is quiet they play dodgems between themselves, or is it a version of jousting on motor scooters?
The police have the best way of dealing with them though. I saw some kids going the wrong way around Sepah Square. Next moment the police stopped them, summoned a lorry, throw the bike in the back of the lorry and I’m not sure if the kids were arrested but he was surely in trouble. The lorry was full of motor bikes and motor scooters but the attempts by the police were like swatting flies because within minutes I was avoiding mopeds on the pavement.
Back at the hotel we can’t complain about the 73F heat, during the day it was 95F; at least we are safe. Joy did lots of washing at 11pm and when we went for a pee at 4am it was dry. It’s like trying to sleep in a tumble drier. Joy bought some mirrored sunspecs so that when people stare letcherously at her will not see her glaring back at them and take offence. I’m looking for a sun hat but all their heads must be very small or mine is …
…………………..
(From postcard to home)
We get the bus from Tehran to Mashad at 4am and an English friend we met called Rod is going to post this journal to you after he has flown back to England on Thursday. Sorry there’s no Iranian stamps but we’ll send postcards. You should hear from us by phone from Herat or Kabul if we can sort it out, otherwise from Pakistan.
The journey is proving safe, well established and friendly. We keep meeting the same people at each stop and a camaraderie gets established, giving each other tips and shared experience and latest information.
Please write to us and because our plans are fluid in India, please send the same letter to Kathmandu and New Delhi marked Peter Nicholson, Post Restante, Head Post Office Kathmandu Nepal or New Delhi, India. Mark the envelope “Hold until arrival”. We’ll be 1 week going through Afghanistan, 3 or 4 days in Pakistan and possibly go straight to Kashmir where postal services are irregular, then either down to Delhi or straight to Kathmandu. We’ll be in Delhi in 1 month / 3 weeks and Kathmandu in 4 / 6 weeks.
……………
(From journal 1978 09 12 Iran Afghanistan Pakistan Pete)
Iran is filthy, too many cars and cons. We caught a bus on Tuesday 12 Sept £4 each for 1000km but no air conditioning, just draughts through holes and reclining seats but at least there was iced water. The road out of Tehran is very mountainous with a 5607merer peak in the distance still snow streaked, rising like a volcano from amongst other mountains that have desert surfaces. In the valleys are occasional oasis of trees and fruit plantations but in the main it is hot and arid with desert scrub.
I read, Joy is thrilled by the hairpins. Some of the cliffs are amazing, a potential paradise for climbers. There are a few stops at their equivalent of motorway cafes but the road is only single carriageway and the buses park at right angles to it, thus they have to reverse out onto the road when they want to get going again, and lorries are steaming along at 50mph so our biggest danger is no longer revolution and civil war but is dangerous traffic.
Toilets are disgusting and unusable but a kid still tries to hassle us for coins for suffering them and I refuse, he should clean them and anyway at 2am he should be in bed. Orange and grape juices are dearer than in England and they don’t have cold storage and everything is very seasonal.
…………………..
At 9:15 we arrive at Mashad. The man in the bus station says the bus for the border goes from another station at 1000 and we cannot get there in time so we stay in the hotel upstairs above the bus station for 300Rs. It’s grim, 2 beds, a fan and much noise from outside traffic. Why do they use their horns so much? No patience? Sounds like a weird electronic music made from car horns of different tone and quality. It’s so ridiculous it’s amusing. Thank God (or Allah) for the curfew when we can sleep.
A guy gives Gary and us a lift to a carpet warehouse. We have tea and he drops us. We are accosted by an “English teacher” who helps us order a meal. He then takes us to a roof top for a good vantage point of the mosque domes which are covered with turquoise stone. He gropes Joy whilst I am photographing the domes – we should have got out then but we allow ourselves to go to his friends tiny carpet / turquoise stone shop. The trouble is that because so many people were killed by the Shah in Friday’s riots and because they cannot meet for group prayers in the mosque ie have a service (martial law says it would be a political gathering) so the religious leader has instructed all shops etc to close in mourning for the dead and as an objection. This has resulted in curfew being changed from 2100 – 0500 to 2200 – 0400. The strike may last a month and many hope it will bring down the Shah of Iran who is in power. I think not. [How wrong was I?]
Back to our only chance of buying some turquoise stone; there are only 3 mines in the world producing it and one is here at Mashad. See Sacred Sites in Iran
After a few cups of chai and 1 hour Joy realises the price is ridiculous and eventually pays 200Rs for 2 second quality green turquoise. But we get a further hour of interesting history and an explanation of how carpets are made. The quality determines the price and the size of the knots determines the quality – 1 million per square metre is best. To make such fine weaving needs very small fingers and the children of gypsies living near the Russian border make them. But in the future all children must attend school so no small cheap labour with small knots. Thus old carpet have smaller knots and are more valuable. The dies are natural such as shells of nuts, leaves, red pomegranate skin, orange and yellow saffron, blue from the Nile, fawn from hair or skin of the 2 humped camel. Angora and wool are used, rarely silk. It takes 9 – 15 months to make a carpet and some designs are straight from the imagination so only one person makes it but sometimes a few people work on the same carpet.
One design was a marriage carpet which a girl would make during her engagement, of necessity a long period. It depicts the brideprice – 6 camels, and the number of children she expects to have, 6 shown by a hollow person with a bun seeming to be woven in the belly.
The con here was, of course, the carpets cost £240 – £1500 hagling will of course reduce it maybe by 25 – 50%. They understand we cannot pay that money from our travel allowance so they say pay a £25 – £50 deposit and then send the rest by bankers order from England and they send the carpet by mail. The risks in that system are obvious and really all they want is the £25 “deposit” which I will not give. They started getting aggressively insistent but I didn’t want to be equally aggressive with 3 guys in a small room in a building very much like a Glasgow tenement block.
Finally we escaped by wit and polite thanks and “no hard feelings” by both Joy and myself kissing the boss man on both sides of his cheeks. However our “English teacher” guide was furious. On the stairs he tried to grope Joy again and when I objected and faced up to him, he groped me !! Maybe he thought I was jealous? I shrugged him away, then he said something vulgar so I told him we no longer wanted his company. Then he tried to claim 100Rs £2 for a drink he bought. I said sod off and when he became more insistent I took off my spectacles ready for a fight. He backed down to 15Rs 30p for some lemon he bought for Joy and Joy insisted I pay. We cursed him and he kept following. I was getting angry but you never know what complications can happen in a strange land with corrupt police and a revolution and civil war in the offing.
Suddenly he gave us the money back and followed us to the turquoise domed mosque that was the purpose of our excursion. We weren’t allowed in because of martial law and because it is a special pilgrimage mosque. He then went into the mosque perhaps to pray for more luck next time. Joy was understandably in tears, I was upset and angry. We both consider the moslem morals to be almost barbaric.
…….
We had an unusual version of a sandwich at a shop opposite our hostel that resored some confidence in humanity. The people, especially the little kids, were happy and friendly though we know that little kids can work like the worst sharks, pulling at your arm and begging for money or trying to get you into a shop. We saw how they make their nan bread. The shop had no furniture, just a hole in the floor with an open oven underneath shaped like an inverted bell with the fires in the bottom. A wet dough is made then patted into a slab 18 inches by 8 inches and the ladies deftly slap this flat bread onto the side of the oven where it sticks for just long enough for it to cook when it is flicked onto a wooden spatula and served straight away. How many fall in the bottom when they are learning the trade I can only guess at. The bread was delicious.