{"id":616,"date":"2012-05-14T03:06:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T03:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=616"},"modified":"2020-08-23T02:12:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T02:12:33","slug":"a-bed-by-any-other-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=616","title":{"rendered":"A bed by any other name"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:30px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?p=616\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>Sometimes the body is just so tired it doesn\u2019t seem to matter where I bed down for the night. In the past three months I\u2019ve slept on charpoys, in a tent, a prison, abandoned buildings, police posts, a few lovely guesthouses, the odd memorable hotel and a few establishments that are struggling to reach even a one star status.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve shared my space with other travellers, lain in the desert under the stars alone and been ground to a paste in a sandstorm during the night. I\u2019ve had a whole dormitory to myself and slept in a room so small it contained only the bed. When the urge to crash hits me, forget looking for a hotel\u2026it\u2019s hard enough to find one at the best of times.Sometimes anything that even barely resembles a bed can be inviting enough to crawl into \u2013 a roadside culvert for instance.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/?attachment_id=620\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-620\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-620\" src=\"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/P10306273-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/P10306273-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/P10306273-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/P10306273.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/a>Mattresses have ranged from comfortable to hard as concrete. I\u2019m not an overly fussy person and I appreciated the times when sheets were snowy white. I\u2019ve been grateful I had bike cover to put on the bed before spreading out my sleeping bag when the linen showed evidence of those who\u2019d been there before me. There\u2019ve been times when asking for a towel has been met with a blank stare as if to say the exorbitant fee being asked didn\u2019t include extras!<\/p>\n<p>Waking up to a gorgeous sunrise in a chilly desert takes some beating. I\u2019ve grown used to the early morning call to prayers in many places and fortunately I\u2019ve managed to catch some shuteye through incessant noise of heavy traffic &amp; passersby beneath my window, a cacophony of truck horns blasting and headlights flashing past the dhabas, and alarms going off at 2am in hotels.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m one of those who likes to be early to bed and early to rise. I can smile now at how the smallest ray of light used to disturb my urban sleep. And here in Tehran, it\u2019s a town that never seems to sleep. At 3am through the narrow lanes young Kurdish refugees are pushing carts groaning under the load of empty Sanyo crates, \u00a0A rooster crows. With one eye barely open, the city roars into life beneath the snowcapped mountains, a majestic backdrop to this heaving city. I though, roll over and catch another forty winks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes the body is just so tired it doesn\u2019t seem to matter where I bed down for the night. In the past three months I\u2019ve slept on charpoys, in a tent, a prison, abandoned buildings, police posts, a few lovely guesthouses, the odd memorable hotel and a few establishments that are struggling to reach even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[178,162],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iran","tag-sleeping","tag-tehran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}