Day 22 - Shiraz to Tehran

A travelling day today. Had a somewhat lazy morning as our flight (Iran Air) to Tehran wasn't scheduled to leave until 12.35 pm. A bit of last minute money changing back to US dollars before being collected at 10 am by Moshtebo. Shiraz airport terminal is relatively small and access to our aircraft was by bus as has often been the case on this trip. An uneventful flight over the desert saw us landing in Tehran a little over an hour later. As  before, Mr Habibie was there to greet us and transport us to our hotel in his taxi. The afternoon was spent packing and an aborted attempt to mail some items back to Australia from a Post Office that didn't actually allow us to mail items as they were all deemed samples and hence banned from export - go figure. Given that our flight from Tehran to Istanbul departs at 5 am tomorrow morning we have opted for an early dinner and some evening sleep. We are to be picked up at 1 am after all.
As we are about to leave Iran now seems as good a time as any to reflect on what we have learnt about the country and it's people. The thing that struck me the most was the incredible hospitality of the Iranian people. Wherever we went we were treated as honoured guests with the by now familiar remark that the attention given us was seen as their duty and not an imposition. So, so different from nearly every other country we have visited. Next greatest impression would probably be the driving. Iranians would have to be the worst and the best drivers in the world depending on how one views these things. The worst insofar as they have something like the highest road traffic fatality rate in the world. The best when one considers the feats that are possible in a motorcar or motorbike. I actually have a great deal of admiration for their ability to navigate tight spaces, travel backwards at speed on motorways, avoid pedestrians while riding their motorbikes on sidewalks and generally avoid hitting each other while proceeding through intersections with complete disregard for traffic signals and the like. And Iran has to be the land of the speed hump - never have I seen so many speed humps - every town and city has a great many and all seem to be on the main roads to slow one as one approaches a U turn location or a side street entry. Then there are the nose jobs. Plastic surgeons in Iran must be rolling in money given the large number of girls and women (and sometimes men) wandering the streets with sticking plaster on their nose. Apparently Iranian women, despite being amongst the most beautiful in the world in my opinion, are not entirely happy with the shape of their proboscises and happily pay to have them reshaped. And did I mention the food? Iranian food is generally to die for - so much variety and so many interesting and delicious taste sensations. And lastly the Iranian sense of humour which is not dissimilar to an Australian sense of humour. They are quick to laugh and also to disparage themselves while remaining proudly Persian. I suspect that a very large percentage of the population crave greater freedom and given the large proportion of young people in Iran I hold high hopes that they will achieve this one day. The restrictions placed upon them by the regime only foster discontent and methods to get around the stifling constraints of everyday life.

Day 21 - Shiraz

Yasna arrived with her driver at 8 this morning as arranged. Today was to be our day for visiting Naqshe Rostam and then the ancient city of Persepolis. We arrived at Naqshe Rostam an hour or so later and began our visit to this site with four well preserved wall tombs. The scale of these has to be seen to get a true feel for them and they are all the more impressive when one realises the present day ground level is so much higher than it was back then. How these tombs were carved out of the rock so high above the ground defies imagination. One has  clearly been identified as the tomb of Darius the Great. There is also the remains of an earlier Elamite relief of a man's head that dates back to around 1000 BC. We then headed to Persepolis, perhaps one of the best preserved of the cities of antiquity. The stunning reliefs looked as though they might have been created yesterday. The scale of the city is huge and again high above the city one finds a couple of wall tombs. We would have easily spent 3 or 4 hours here including a welcome break for tea and cool drinks. Eventually we headed back to Shiraz and bid farewell to our lovely guide Yasna and her driver. Iranians are such friendly, lovely people. After a short rest we decided to visit the tomb of the celebrated Persian poet Hafez. A quick taxi ride across town and we found ourselves in the beautiful gardens that surround the tomb and memorial hall. A great many Iranians also were here paying their respects no doubt. This evening we also headed out to try an upmarket restaurant that Yasna had suggested - Haft Khan or Seven Stages if I understood her correctly. Arriving early by taxi the Maitre-De showed us around all seven different sections that make up this restaurant stretching over several floors. Each section is tailored to different tastes and different sized wallets. In the end we opted for the traditional and enjoyed a delicious meal before taking our leave and heading home.

Day 20 - Shiraz

Our guide Yasna arrived at 9 am as arranged earlier by phone and she turned out to be the very same guide that had escorted the Canadian Iranians from Shiraz to Zeinoddin a couple of days earlier. She also works for Iran Traveling Centre, our Shiraz based travel agency. Her first role as guide was to assist us in returning our rental car to the Shiraz Europcar office which turned out to be a gold dealership in the main. Somehow in the past 48 hours we had managed to acquire a scrape on the front passenger door so our deposit will be reduced somewhat to take this into account. Having dealt with the necessities of transport we then headed off to our first stop, the Naranjestan Ghavan museum. From there we walked to the Arg-e Karim Khan citadel a huge castle like structure in the center of Shiraz. Again on foot we ventured to the Aramgah-e Shah-e Cheragh mosque situated in a square not unlike Imam Square in Esfahan although much smaller. Entering the mosque itself required removing one's shoes and at first I was a little reluctant as I thought it wouldn't be worth the effort. How wrong I was proved to be when I did remove my shoes and entered the most glittering interior of a shrine that I had seen. This was the burial place of Karim Khan a former ruler and his tomb attracted hundreds of devotees wishing to touch the tomb itself and to pray in it's vicinity. We also visited another small museum known as the Bargh-e Nazar and Pars museum. Somewhere in the midst of all this we had lunch at a well known Shirazi restaurant (it's in the Lonely Planet guide as being a top restaurant) the Sharzeh traditional restaurant. The food was excellent and our meal was accompanied by the sounds of live traditional music being played by a band in the atrium of the lower level of the restaurant. After lunch we wandered through some of the bazaar and ended up buying a Persian carpet and arranging for it to be air freighted to Australia - something I'd been hoping to avoid but in the end it seemed inevitable.  At the end of the day, after parting company with Yasna who has proved to be delightful company, we ventured out again in the evening for a dose of Iranian fast food for dinner. On the directions of our hotel staff we located 101 Fast Food restaurant and with the aid of a couple of local lads we managed to order a tasty meal for an insignificant sum again. Having satisfied our hunger we then ventured further afield locating a garden with an old mansion operating as a tea-house that Yasna had told us about. Of course we stopped for tea and enjoyed the surrounds before heading back to our hotel and bed.

Day 19 - Zeinoddin to Shiraz

After a leisurely traditional Iranian breakfast we packed up to leave at the same time as the Canadian Iranians who were to be met by Soheil, our guide from yesterday. As a result we followed them in their minibus as far as Mehriz where we were to turn left and take what amounts to a substantial shortcut by bypassing Yazd completely. At Mehriz we encountered a military roadblock where initially I thought things might turn ugly, largely I suspect, with the benefit of hindsight, due to misunderstanding and language difficulties - I don't feel comfortable when being interrogated by guys with automatic weapons slung casually around their neck and shoulders. A quick phone call to Parisa, our travel agent in Shiraz, and the assistance of Soheil who had stopped and came back to help, and soon all was well - turns out they needed the papers proving we had hired the car and weren't in the process of stealing it and driving to Pakistan or Afghanistan :-)  In the end we parted friends with friendly handshakes all round and a smile to send us on our way. En route we stopped for lunch and sightseeing in a small town called Abarkuh where we visited the supposedly 4000 year old cyprus tree, a beautiful mosque, an old mansion and tried a fastfood joint for a hamburger. I have to say that Iranians make better hamburgers than Aussies - it was delicious :-)  Another stop on the way, closer to Shiraz, was at Pasagard where the tomb of Cyrus the Great is along with more ruins of palaces and so on. On we went to Shiraz, eventually, where we proceeded to get completely lost and almost came to blows until Sue leapt into a cab which I then followed to find our hotel. In the end we made it just in time as we had a radio interview scheduled for 7.30 pm. The interview had been arranged with the husband of one of Parisa's colleagues and took place in the lobby of the Eram hotel where we were staying. We met Parisa and her husband along with Mehdi the interviewer. It was lovely to at last meet Parisa who has been so, so helpful in every respect with our travels and up to now had just been a friendly voice at the end of the phone or a helpful email respondent. Interview over we said goodbye and set out to find some  dinner opting for a late meal at the hotel restaurant and then finally to bed after a long day.

Day 18 - Yazd to Zeinoddin

Another busy day today. Firstly we set off across Yazd with the aid of a rudimentary map to again meet up with Soheil near his home. We took advantage of his local knowledge to organise a car wash as our first priority. This cost some small sum, perhaps two dollars and the dollar tip to the kid that was doing the washing made his day. From there we visited a number of sites in Yazd including the water museum where we learnt all about tapping into aquifers  another mosque whose name escapes me, a former bath house that is now a gym, a former bath house that is now a restaurant, a building that houses six wind towers and finally the towers of silence, an important Zoroastrian burial site (actually two) where they used to leave the dead in these circular compounds on the tops of hills to allow nature (read vultures) to dispose of the corpses. Finally we also visited a small, old village outside Yazd named Qam which was also formerly populated by Zoroastrians - we simply wandered about enjoying the peaceful atmosphere. Soheil turned out to be an excellent guide and we bid him farewell as we headed the 70 odd kms out of Yazd to Zeinoddin, a refurbished caravanserai sitting out in the desert and now operating as a rather unusual hotel. We arrived to find we were the only guests, at least until a group of 4 Canadian Iranians arrived some one hour later from Shiraz. We spent the evening on the roof of the caravanserai star gazing after watching the sun go down in the desert. Had a delicious buffet dinner with the Canadian Iranian family and enjoyed swapping ideas on Iran with them. Eventually went to bed on thin mattresses on the floor much as the silk road travelers would have done in the past.

Day 17 - Esfahan to Yazd

We left Esfahan reluctantly today, having enjoyed our stay immensely. We had a loose arrangement to meet our next guide, Soheil at a particular square in a town called Ardekan on our way to Yazd. We phoned Soheil when on our way so as to co-ordinate both our and his arrival as he was driving in the other direction from Yazd. in the end we couldn't find the square so we propped in a local restaurant and had the non English speaking staff assist in directing Soheil to our location by phone. Having met we set off for our first stop, Chak Chak, the most sacred of the mountain shrines of Zoroastrianism. This involved a steep climb in fascinating mountainous terrain to arrive at a cave-like structure where there was a constant drip of water from the ceiling with apparently no source ever having been found for the water. The sound of dripping water was likened to chak chak and hence the name. From there we drove to Meybod where we had a delicious and again, inexpensive lunch in a converted caravanserai. Also in Meybod we visited the ancient ice-house  pigeon tower, a private home with the tallest wind towers in Meybod, a carpet museum and lastly one of the oldest castles in Iran, Narin ghaleh dating from before the Islamic period. Following all this we then drove further to Yazd where we visited the Jameh mosque before finding our hotel, the Fahadan traditional hotel, in the old quarter near the old jail. This turned out to be a beautiful old hotel which has been operating for over 200 years. Dinner at an associated traditional restaurant 200 meters up the road in a converted bathhouse completed our evening. Our hotel hosts a couple of exotic parrots including a macaw that get to fly around the open space in the tea-house/restaurant area.

Day 16 - Esfahan

Today was moving day. While still staying in Esfahan we had decided to splurge a little and stay at the 5 star Abbasi Hotel for one night. The Abbasi is a converted caravanserai and is highly ornate and seriously decorated. The gardens alone make the visit worthwhile. Anyway, to effect our transfer we had walked the route between the Sepahan hotel and the Abbasi to ensure we didn't get lost. When it came time to make the move we were at the Abbasi only to find the road blocked off by police as a bunch of diplomats were about to arrive with no one able to tell us how long the road would be blocked. We killed time by pigging out on a chicken sandwich and a strange snack of melted cheese over potato crisps and tea of course. Eventually the road was cleared and we taxied back to the Sepahan to collect our car and drive back to Abbasi. We then generally just lounged about enjoying the hotel surrounds as well as going for a walk in a beautiful local park nearby. At 5 pm we partook in what seems like a very Abbasi and perhaps Esfahani thing to do - a bowl of Asheh soup as all the locals were having, a strange taste that Sue liked but frankly I could have passed on. Dinner in the garden restaurant later that evening was also very pleasant - could not have asked for a better setting and the food was excellent as well. All in all a very enjoyable experience staying at the Abbasi :-)

Day 15 - Esfahan

Spent today sightseeing in Esfahan after again connecting with our local guide Maryam. we started at Naqsh-e Jahan or Imam Square and had a much more in depth visit to the mosques than we had had two nights previously. Maryam was very knowledgeable and took the time to explain everything we wanted to know. A couple of interesting spots along the way included  the arched gate where one would whisper in one corner and because of the acoustic design,could be heard in the distant corner, and also the spot where one can hear the echo of paper rustling - simply brilliant acoustic designs. We also visited Ali Qapu palace and the delightful teahouse, whose name escapes me, off the north east corner of Imam Square that is decorated with all sorts of interesting objects hanging from the ceiling. We wandered the endless tunnels of the bazaar for a while before stopping at a miniaturist where Sue indulged herself and  bought a painting on camel bone box. Then off to lunch at a revolving restaurant at the Aseman Hotel. There I had possibly one of the best pepper steaks ever (I was sick of kebabs by now) cooked on a bed of cabbage and served sizzling hot - mmmm, nooshe jaan as they say here or simply bon appetit in English  As the period between 12.30 and 5.00pm tends to be siesta time in Iran we opted, at Maryam's suggestion, to visit her apartment for a welcome break and refreshment of tea and Iranian delicacies and also a chance to remove the ever present hi-jab scarf. Refreshed we again hit the road to visit the 40 columns palace this time. This is so named, despite only having 20 columns, because of the reflection in the adjoining pool leads to one seeing 40 columns. Maryam then dropped us back at our hotel where we again rested for a while before setting out again for Imam Square. A few gift purchases later and then we tried an upstairs traditional restaurant for dinner. Good food and interesting but not quite in the same league as last night's Bastani restaurant. Again we were engaged in lively and friendly conversation with our neighbours. A walk back through the now, less scary, bazaar alleyways to our hotel and turned in for the night.