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.
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