13-Aug-2011 -- I was on a 4-month cycling trip around south-east Europe and the Middle East back in the summer of 2011. I had just entered Iran from Azerbaijan a few days ago and was on my way to the northern tip of the country, along the border with Azerbaijan, to visit 39N 48E. Prior research had shown that this Confluence was located just a few hundred meters off the road connecting Ardabīl with Garmī, approx. 50 km north of the town of Raẕī where I had stayed with friendly locals the previous night.

The countryside up there is hilly, almost mountainous. It looks very dry and brownish, but on a second look one sees that much of the area is used for agriculture. It probably rains much more during the spring. Now, however, all the crops have been harvested and in the villages the straw piles reach high.

Getting to 39N 48E wasn't as spectacular as my previous attempt to visit a Confluence, back in Georgia earlier on the same trip. The area was getting hillier and the road was winding its way upwards along a slope when I approached the place where I had to leave the road. I left the bike at the roadside and walked down the slope across a rocky, harvested field - still 200 m to go, then across another, steeper field, maybe a meadow in spring, which hadn't been visible before - still 100 m to go, then across steep, semi-desert, with cliffs falling down into a gorge below at the not-so-far end. Luckily, the Confluence didn't make me climb down those cliffs. I hit the spot somewhere on that deserty land. I snapped a number of photos and climbed back up to my bike. And on I went to Garmī. Pretty unspectacular, really.

Further up the road on that hill I had a spectacular view towards the West, over now-dry farmland, with a few mud-and-clay-house villages interspersed, and a blue reservoir lake in the distance.

Continued at 39N 47E.