First miles under our belts in the Islamic Republic of Iran
26th July 2006

Sweltering, but faring better than locals
What do a Peugeot 406, a 15 year old Yamaha 125 and a Toyota pickup have in common?
Survivng a quake
An invitation to lunch
Another example of the wisdom of our forebears
Identifying a problem doesn't necessarily help

The border (how many times have we written that?)

Some times waiting at borders in searing heat is just plain tedious. At Taftan we had considerable time to mull over our summative thoughts about Pakistan and there were a few prime examples of Pakistani culture to feed our creative, wandering minds.

The waiting area to get our exit stamps was segregated by gender which brings up all those thoughts of the lot of the poor females of Pakistan and the ludicrous garb that they are encouraged (dare I say obliged) to wear by their culture. From the testosterone filled horseshoe of men I witnessed the collapse of a poor old dear from obvious heat exhaustion. A posse of blokes rushed round to form a circle and observe the demise of this infirm old lady, they seemed to offer no tangible help and only my own practical spouse thought to offer her some water to drink and decanted out a good portion from our supplies. Of course the lady was fully dressed in clothes and a full chador over the top. In the circumstances I would have thought it would have helped if at least the top layer was removed to give her a little more air but cultural taboos are hard to break. In doing so she missed one of the random shifts of visa process candidates. The movements of these ladies was like some game of ‘hide the pea under the walnut shell’. Clothed uniformly in their black tents, it was impossible to identify who was queue jumping and there was something conspiratorial about the way that they moved in groups to other parts of the queue when a space was created at the front. Understandably Hippy got frustrated by all this and having been left in the hindmost position after several moves, at the next chance she upped sticks and dived for a gap created further forward. This created something of a stir and she was rounded on by some bitter old crow who berated her and forced her back to a random position down the line between another couple of indistinguishable tents.

The lack of distinction between the women did at least have one entertaining moment when a husband returned from the desk with his wife’s passport only to hand it to the wrong black, shapeless form. The non-person housed beneath, of course, had no right to speak to him and could only thrust the passport back and point back down the line to his no doubt beloved but unrecognisable wife. I put all my energies into trying to stifle a laugh, it was ludicrous. We pondered afterwards whether it might be appropriate for some kind of unique scent being created for each lady in Pakistan and instead of a picture the could have a scratch and sniff portion in their passport.

Finally having been bullied around by the old biddies who seemed to have a monopoly on jumping the queue, one was being a little more friendly. She had spotted the ring that Fazi had given me in Guyana and twisted it around on my finger to examine it. She then began removing it but struggled to get it past the knuckle. To begin with I thought she wanted a better look, then she began gesturing that I should give it to her. Sorry, this is way too cheeky, I did some chardes to intimate that this ring was special to me and I could not give it away. She tried again. It seemed a shame that this was the note that we were leaving Pakistan.

In the bloke’s queue things were more clearly ordered and when the next bunch were passed through for processing we all moved forward the appropriate number of spaces. It did seem that the odd bloke was buying a space from some one who volunteered to step to the back of the line and I had no problem with this as it didn’t affect my position and I respected the entrepreneurship of the candidate who was prepared to queue for cash. When I missed a move through picking up all my stuff, a swarthy fellow neatly occupied my space having been ousted from the queue ahead when he’d tried stepping in there. I was in the process of laying on hands when the master of ceremonies who was granting access to the inner sanctum strolled over to offer that I bypass the queue altogether. I was in two minds; I was fed up with queuing and Hippy had just got through on her side but I didn’t want to play the privileged foreigner card and jump the queue myself. No one in front seemed to mind and persuaded me against my protestations to go ahead.

So, in a nutshell, the queuing experience summed up our experience of Pakistan; the pointless and sometimes degrading segregation of women, the slightly Indian randomness, the hospitality to foreigners and the inefficiency of their officials. There are a thousand memories that we’ll cherish from Pakistan but when we return there (and we surely will) we’ll be quite selective about which parts we visit.

To me it just seems tremendously shortsighted of a country to really utilise half their population. Given the obsession of the men we met, wanting to have scores of children, perhaps it makes economic sense to render half the population housebound. Obviously there are a minority of women working outside the home and no doubt millions working in cottage industries in the confines of the household, but with little in the way of education they are hardly reaching their potential. All this is in a country that elected a female president, that was then ousted by a military coup. funny old world. There were things I would dearly miss about Pakistan, the beloved trucks, the best nan breads in the world, the friendliness in the Hunza and Quetta and probably the most stunning scenery from a tar road any where in the world up the Karakoram Highway.

We were anticipating that the Iran side would be a hassle for ourselves and well organised when it came to processing Berthette’s papers. In fact it was the other way about. Our visas were in place and so there was no arguing at imigration, just stamp and we were through. A crowd of Pakistanis were being kept in limbo by an Iranian official, all their pushing and shoving got them nowhere. The guy gestured for us to go through. There was a lovely waiting room with seats and everything but people were only being let in 2 at a time, and presumably kept out in the sun so long that they cease to have the energy to push and shove any more. For once I was glad of preferential treatment. You know you are in Iran not Pakistan when the immigration officer is a women, neatly bescarfed of course, but a polite efficient woman. I had worn a head scarf for most of time in Pakistan merely because it saved me some grief but now crossing the border it was to become law.

Finding the customs department to get the carnet processed was a nightmare. I was directed to ‘the computer room’ with a casual wave of the hand. I followed the gesture as best I could and found myself faced with a building site. I enterred each of the half finished buildings in turn muttering my mantra, “Computer room, computer room?” Each time I met a blank response followed by a casual flick of the wrist as if I were an obstinate fly. The computer room turned out to be beyond the building site and not a well lit, air conditioned, smart office as I had expected but a large customs hall with a counter all round the wall with a couple of desktops being blasted by a fan. “Where is your bike, then?” I responded with a flick of the wrist in the direction of where we were parked and was followed out by the customs officer who expressed his ire at my stupidity for not having brought it through the building site to a position where he could inspect the frame and engine numbers. He responded to my bewilderment by indicating that I should ride from where I was parked, through the exit gate into Iran and then back round into the customs area. I was inclined to follow the first part and just keep going but then accepted that pragmatism was the order of the day and avoided any unnecessary friction with Iranian authorities. Stamp, stamp and we were on our way.

Iranian desert relay

As we passed through the final exit gate we were accosted by a policeman who asked us to wait for an escort. This came as something of a shock. We’d passed through Pakistan without any police assistance and were now being hindered in sweltering heat in a country which the authorities at the embassy had informed us was totally safe and where we were free to roam.

There followed a ludicrous relay of official vehicles of all shapes and hues from Taftan to Bam. We had army pickups with armed guards sat in the back, shiny white Peugeot police cars, a 125 motorbike laden with two guards and a Kalashnikov and when we finally got to Bam, an SUV who insisted on escorting us from the roundabout at the edge of town for the last 300 metres to our hotel. Our hotelier, Akhbar, informed us that there had been a couple of kidnappings of tourists in the area as part of the ongoing ‘war’ between drug smugglers and the government. We’d assumed that we were being kept an eye on rather than shielded and so had been a bit short-tempered with the police/army when we’d had protracted, sweaty hand-overs. Thankfully, although hooning along with our guards, we hadn’t missed much; the scenery is uniformly dull being only broken up by 15 metre high circular watchtowers at 30 kilometre intervals. I pitied the poor souls whose duty it was to man these extraordinarily dull, torrid outposts. More to the point at these change overs there was not a single offer of chai! It was kind of flattering that they thought we were important enough to be potentially kidnapped and that they bothered to protect us, but also tremendously annoying. The pickups went so fast we could not keep up and the 125 was struggling so much against the wind that we encouraged it to go behind us to get into our slipstream.

It rather makes me smile that in this age of new techology and sophistication the drug smugglers have reverted back to their original caravans of camels. They don’t need a road or lights at nights and are virtually undetectable.

Bam, still reeling from the quake

Once upon a time Bam was an immense adobe city with an overbearing fort, then there was an earthquake. Sadder than the ruin of the ancient city was the horrendous loss of life. I hope I’m wrong but I believe the mortality count was in the region of 30,000. At the hostel, Akhbar had lost a couple of tourists and the friend of one of his sons. We were privileged and thankful that he had chosen to stay on and rebuild his business (now to be in a steel-framed, designed for earthquake building). He was fascinating company, a retired teacher of Persian literature and English and a fund of knowledge about the wonders of Iran. I’m afraid we probably bored him with a string of all the usual questions that tourists fresh into Iran always ask, but he had the good grace to fill us in.

It became clear very quickly that the Iranians are proudly Persian. I asked Akhbar whether he saw himself as Iranian or Persian, without hesitation he said ‘Persian’. How is it that the words Iran and Persia conjure up such opposing images. Iran is a sterile word, modern, efficient and cold. Persia evokes images of exotic ancient cultures, a rich exciting past, literature, art, carpets, rich deep luxurious fabrics and colours. Their heritage is Aryan, not Arabic, and looking around morphs and skin colour are more akin to Europe than northern Africa. There is probably no bigger insult than to call a Persian an Arab. I am embarrassed that so much Western media is so ignorant of the racial and cultural differences between Islamic countries and makes sweeping comments about ‘The Middle East’ often including Iran. For Persians to be thought the same as Arabs is like calling an Irishman - English, or a Pakistani an Indian. Iran isn’t even in the ‘Middle’.

We wandered through what is left of the city to see what remained of the citadel. It is the first time we’ve been to the centre of such a disaster area and it appeared that after each crisis like this there must be something of a world shortage of shipping containers. The whole city must have been living in them at one time and now it seemed that pretty much all businesses were being run from them. Arg-é-Bam still has some hefty chunks standing that give a good idea of how impressive it must have been. Work is under way to clear (excavate) the adobe debris prior to a full restoration. It seemed harsh that so much energy was being expended on restoring the ruins when there are still some people living in tents but there is a huge amount of domestic construction under way too and without it’s tourist attraction Bam would have to survive on its harvest of world famous dates alone. Thankfully the date palms stood while all else became chaos.

We availed ourselves of other Iranian specialities to create a wonderful feta salad with olives. We are so easy to please.

An email arrived from us from our visa agency in Shiraz asking when exactly we intended to turn up and pay for their services. We had been in the country less than 24 hours but they already knew that we’d arrived. Thus did we learn how the wheels turn in Iran. We replied that we may be taking an extra day in Bam. It was not intentional that we should tease them that we’d arrive later than planned but what the heck?

We spoke for quite a while with the engineer responsible for the steelwork of Akhbar’s new hotel. I was surprised at the amount of fabrication involved and asked whether this was beacuse of the necessities of seismic design but apparently the reduction of section at each floor is simply to reduce the amount of steel used. Clearly the cost of steel is a much more important factor than labour costs here. On a less technical front, we talked about university provision to discover that, yes, tuition is free but only for those that score extremely highly in the entrance exams; a scholarship system then. It occured to me that inducements like this in Britain would be a damn fine idea - students might be rather more serious about their A’ levels if there was something to gain from it. It rather appeals to me the idea that the intelligent and hard working get to go free and the lazy and less bright have to pay. Seems a bit tough on the less gifted, love.

Kerman, a city with a silver lining

We faced rather more dull scenery on the way to Kerman but were pleased that there was the brief respite of a completely incongruous set of gardens in the desert, Bagh-é-Shahzade. Where a spring emanates on a hill side stands a memorial to one of the great Persian poets. One presumes that he was born locally and it is amazing that he found much to be poetic about. Then again the same may be said for Wordsworth trapped in the cloud shrouded Lake District if you don’t find that kind of scenery particularly inspiring. We are amazed by the folk that we meet that pour praise on deserts. For the most part the scenery is invariant and obviously devoid of the greenery that I, for one, find pleasing to the eye. Sure, spending time in deserts is a wonderful experience, almost spiritual if you like, but praising its beauty is a bit far fetched. There are deserts such as in Namibia that have rather neat patterns in the sand and beautiful rocky outcrops in places like Wadi Rum but these are more beautiful things in deserts rather than inherently beautiful deserts. But that’s just my opinion.

I don’t know my fondness for deserts has grown through the trip but I have to agree that this one should not be used for the promotional campaign.

There were young couples almost touching one another in the gardens. I guess they were probably so inspired by the love poems of Shahzade that they were close to beaking the nationally enforced codes of behaviour. We took an ice cream in the shade of some trees and received polite, “Hello, What’s your name? Where you from?”s from every passing group. All very friendly and peaceful. We had still to come across any nasty, viscious terrorist type people who the media tell us infest these parts.

Kerman was next on our official itinerary. As there was little else of consequence on our route and it made a reasonable leg of the journey we decided to stop there and not provoke the authorities too much. Our hotel of choice (and the recommendation of Akhbar) was deeply uninspirational and we ended up turning away to take lunch and consider our options rather than plumping for it just because it offered parking. Just as we were about to enter a restaurant, I was parking Berthette, when Hippy was accosted by a young lady who performed the ubiquitous “Hello, What’s your name? Where you from?” and promptly invited us to take lunch with her family. We have heard countless stories of travellers being invited into peoples homes in Iran and Pakistan and having wonderful experiences with the incumbent families. Although performing the customary “Oh, no, we couldn’t”, “Oh, but you must” routine the requisite three times and still finding ourselves invited and so we gratefully accepted and followed her back to her home. We were reassured that her dad was in the passenger seat and nodding approval of the invitation. Indeed, the fact the her father was in the passenger seat and that Zalfa turned out to be only 15 years old was quite an eye-opener after Pakistan. She was a most proficient driver to boot.

It was clear that despite the obvious legal restrictions on dress for women, their lives were generally less conservative and than in neighbouring Pakistan. Women were educated, drove cars, some had jobs, were confident and chatty. Men spoke to me, women spoke to Patrick and we had not seen one woman in full burka.

We had a wonderful family lunch that introduced us to family life in Iran and there is little to report in the way of customs that would seeme strange to a westerner. There was the hugest flat screen telly I’ve ever seen and when I admired it they proudly played their Ricky Martin DVD for us. While dinner was prepared we snacked on a few of the famous Bam dates. When all was ready we took our places at a large plasticised table cloth spread in the middle of their impressively large living room. The picnic dining experience got me to thinking, “If we love to go and sit on the ground around a travel blanket when outdoors, why do we go to all the palaver of chairs and tables at home?” A warning to readers who are likely to visit us in Newbold Verdon when we get home, you may find yourselves eat off the floor, in a manner of speaking.

It also has the side effect that people tend to keep their floors very clean, leaving shoes at the door and such. If this is a life long practice I am sure that it maintains the flexibility of folk into their aged years. Iran and Turkey is of course the best place for this custom with a wealth of wonderful carpets to sit on. What made me smile a little was the fact that they had dining chairs and a dining table that was a sign of being upwardly mobile but they prefered the more relaxed form of picnicing on the floor, but like English folk having a dining room or parlour that never gets used except for special occassions.

The biggest advantage of all about eating in an Iranian home is that you get to eat the standard fare rather than the omnipresent kebab type meals that pretty much every restaurant sells. Mum couldn’t have had time to rustle up special food for us so we can assume that the delicious pullao rice offerings are, as they said, what they eat every day. We chatted while we chomped and stuck to the straightforward topics of why we don’t have children, what are jobs are and what religion we profess. We’ve found it easier to propound Christianity rather than be considered as heathens but in this case it fell on confounded ears. It also avoids creating an uncomfortable atmosphere in the home of people who have been very kind to us. We knew that Jesus is considered something of an also-ran prophet for the Moslems but were blown away by the fact that they seemed never to have heard of Christianity. How could we explain to them what Christianity is? Surely they knew of it but by another name. We affected crucified poses for them but it didn’t help. Surely singing hymns or pressing together our hands in prayer would be meaningless. In desperation I fetched the computer from Berthette knowing that we had a few images of churches, saints and crucifixes stored away. When I eventually found a fairly recognisable picture of Jesus, they knew that this was “Issu”. They still seemed confused that there was a religion based around this chap. Strange that Judaism is all too familiar and much despised but the religion that kind of came between Judaism and Islam is pretty much unknown. We trawled out some photos that we carry with me and I suddenly looking through them with an Iranian family became acutly aware of how ‘undressed’ I was in pictures, some I was wearing shorts, or a strappy top, in all my hair was uncovered. I was aware that this was a liberal family, and they clearly picked up satellite TV illegally, and so I am sure they had seen far worse on the TV. Poor Dad, who knew pretty much no English understandably retired to bed for a nap and left us with the others who did their best to teach us some Persian or Farsi- we failed dismally, learning only ob (water), garme (hot) and sarde (cold). Not that bad an effort for an afternoon’s work for the linguistically challenged Brits though. It is an Iranian or maybe Persian custom to have a 3 hour siesta in the afternoon, so maybe Dad was just feeling snoozy.

It had been a wonderful meal, and genuine and friendly hospitality. It was a refreshing chance to find a young girl so confident and well educated. It seemed that we were not the first travellers that had been welcomed by the family, apparently a few months before a German cyclist had had the comfort of their hospitality.

We were now on the other side of town and decided to look at a couple of other hotels in town before we had to slink back to the penny hang. It was one of those perfect examples of Kismet that having followed our instincts and joined the family for lunch we ended up at a cheaper hotel with a nicer room and still got bike parking.

Although we’d had our lovely family experience, Kerman really didn’t seem to have a great deal of appeal. We’d ridden past the ‘sights’ and not really noticed them and only having a bazar besides was not really so exciting. So we moved right on. Still no sign of terrorists.

Yazd, Zoroastrian zone

Yazd has more to appeal to the tourist and we have to confess that is what we are. We came across a crashed truck on the way which was actually being lifted up by a crane. This was a real first for Asia - we’ve seen plenty of crashed trucks on and off the side of the road but never any attempt to clean up. After the experience of Akhbar’s last recommendation we weren’t too worried that we couldn’t find his choice in Yazd. The alternative was ‘the best budget option’ but failed to yield the promised air-con or management who spoke a word of English. We agreed to stay on the basis that would change rooms on the morrow.

In the meanwhile we took a stroll around town and found ourselves a little piece of paradise, almost as nice as the haveli in Udaipur. The only downside was the price which at 20 Euros was about 7 times it’s equivalent in India. We’re saving so much on petrol here that such flagrant abuse of our budget can be tollerated. I’ll just point out the absolute craziness of the price of petrol here with a couple of statistics. When we get back to England we will have covered somewhere in the region of 88,000 miles, that means we’ll have used about 8,800 litres of petrol which therefore means our fuel bill will have been around $13,200. Had we covered the same distance sticking within the boundaries of Iran, we would have spent $765. If we could manage to carry the fuel, we could ride back to Britain from here for £12.65. If we wanted to go wild and visit Portugal on the way it may rack up to £20. The odd thing about this ludicrously cheap fuel is that it isn’t even Iranian. Probably because of some embargo or other the Iranains do not have sufficient refinery provision to supply the fuel they need and so they export crude and import the fractions that they need. The revenue from the oil subsidises the go-go juice. Apparently in a month or so the subsidy fund will run dry and fuel prices are set to go up. We got our timing right then. Iranians are tolerating the regime of the president and the Ayatollahs but I imagine their dissension will begin when the gasoline subsidies disappear. People have grown used to travel costing virtually zero, it will be a shock to the system.

On our one night in the hot house, we were at least able to watch the footy in the lobby. It occurs that I’ve written very little about the World Cup and it is not really surprising, it was rather lacklustre. No one really seemed to shine, there were no real surprises and far too many of the final matches were settled by penalties which I always find hugely disappointing (but that may be something to do with being English). We shared viewing space with a fascinating youth; half Italian, half Armenian, born and raised in Athens and educated mostly in England. Our footy fest was interrupted briefly by some drumming coming from a large building over the road. We subsequently discovered that this was some kind of traditional wrestling training that is done to music. Kind of rhythmic brutality. While up on the roof listening to the pulsing of tambours, we got the chance to view the famous wind-towers that punctuate the Yazd skyline. Just as we have been saying so regularly in many different countries, our forebears came up with some pretty neat plans for controlling their environments. Here, tall brick towers are built that have openings to make the most of any breezes that may arise. The draught through the house may have been passed through their cistern room 20 feet below further cooling it down.

We got a rather snotty reply from the visa agency asking why we were changing our itinerary and suggesting that we would have to report this to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So much for the freedom to roam as we pleased in Iran. We decided not to act on this request and continue on the basis of the information we’d been given at the embassy in Islamabad. We’d be spending our time in Iran looking over our shoulders.

To further confuse the authorities we moved hotel the day after getting the email - how suspicious does that look? Somehow in the process of moving we managed to lose a pair of Indian trousers, value £2 (equivalent of 400 miles petrol). Sorry, I promise that will be the last reference to fuel prices. I must just point out though that petrol is considerably cheaper than water which seems somehow right and proper in a desert country, but one of the wonderous things about Iran is that all the tap water is drinkable and there are even cooled dispensers on the streets of you to fill up your water bottles on the way walking around town. how civilised is that. So only a yuppy idiot would buy drinking water.

Tyre trouble

All was revealed. For a considerable number of miles, since Baroda in fact, there has been a strange bobbling from the rear of the bike that has at times been worse than others. I thought it might just have been uneven tyre wear, the shaft drive having seemed OK at the last inspection. It turned out to be a fine nail perfectly piercing one of the knobbly bits of the tyre. There has been minimal loss of air and so I decided to continue on the ‘ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ principle. I can only imagine that as the tyre has been wearing it has started to project until it coincidentally hit a bump spot on and pushed further into the tyre. If push comes to shove we do have a spare tyre that takes a tube that can be put on.

We set off out of town to visit a fascinating archaelogical site. The Zoroastrian people are well into recycling and this includes the human body that is after all merely a container for the soul. The bodies of the deceased were left out in the desert for vultures to pick at but to keep a bit of decency about the whole process they erected hollow stone towers within which the bird feeding took place. Just before we left, I checked the tyre pressures to discover that most of the air was gone. Bugger. How can it be that once you identify an annoyance it immediately becomes a problem? The best solution for nail holes is to take the tyre off and apply a patch to the inside (these are tubeless, remember). The last time we did this in Mexico, the patch was with us for about 8000 miles until the tyre finally wore out. We found the local tyre fixer who through laziness or simply because he thought he knew better put in a plug which seemed to be made from some kind of gelatinously coated string. He was keen to point out the ‘Made in the USA’ label on the packet and I assumed this was some new space-age technology that I’d not seen before. So, OK, 5 minutes later we were out on the road and the thumming from the nail was replaced by the tails of the plug making the tyre out of round. I’d suggested trimming off the tails but the tyre man had indicated not to bother so I assumed that they would wear off eventually.

Things were running a little late timing-wise now. Do we go to the Towers of Silence to watch sunset or to the Zoroastrian temple that we knew shut at 7 o’clock. We plumped for the towers. A little out of town two tumps circular low rise towers utilised the full size of the summits. There were ruins of temples at the base of the tumps. Despite Yazd having still a 25,000 strong population of Zoroastrians the last time these funerary towers were used for bird feeding was 30 years ago. Believers now opt for concrete coffins to prevent earth contamination. Even though this is the birthplace and the spiritual home of this ancient faith that was the first monotheistic religion and predates Judaism, we were struggling to find information about the religion, even a guy who claimed to follow the faith was very evasive about the details. Apparently Freddy Mecury was a Zoroastrian, but since he is dead now we won’t be able to ask him. All I know is that the 3 wise men that came the see Jesus, were meant to be Zoroastrian Magis from Persia. Fire is important, hence fire temples, although not directly worshiped it is thought to purify, not a bad concept in a time before disinfectant. The single winged God is a representation of the sun. Truth is all important and even half truth is considered a lie and therefore evil. Maybe a lot of policital problems would be solved if Zorastrians were media moghuls and advised politicians. Finally the belief that there will always be good and evil in the world, and that good will always in the end overcome.

All was to become clear later; since the Islamic revolution all teaching of alternative religions has been banned and although there are a splattering of Armenian Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Bahais in the country, their beliefs are not allowed to be discussed openly, and they pragmatically keep their worshiping low key and private. This seems to be a terrible shame, Persia has a wealth of religious history and culture, that is being wiped from their consciousness. At least they haven’t gone so far as blowing the Buddhas up like their eastern neighbours. With not only Zoroastrianism beginning there but also the Bahia faith. Later, in Shiraz where the Bahia prophet Bab had been born and had his revelations there was no information about him and when we asked locals there were a set of blank faces. Bahai has a major flaw in the eyes if Islam; if one is to accept that Mohammed was the final prophet, any claims by someone later to be a prophet is somewhat heretical. Therefore there is a tollerance of the older religions, indeed there is a kind of sympathy for Jews and Christians who have simply not been enlightened but any post-Mohammed upstarts proclaiming further messages from God are despised with vehemence. I guess this explains why we haven’t seen any Mormons in Islamic countries - they’d have to have a death wish. In truth, most Britons are pretty ignorant about ancient faiths, of Druidism, Paganism, and Celtic religions, but at least it is not illegal to find out information about them.

Talking of restriction of information we were struggling the access our web-based email. The powers that be in the censorship world of Iran took an objection to www.postmaster.co.uk. In the end we found a way to access the content of the emails via a proxy server, but it still would not let us reply. The proxy server thing was a loop hole that Iranians have found to access blocked websites that makes it untraceable who is accessing it. It is great that the heavy censorship is bypassed by Iranians but it worries me that no doubt people all over the world are using similar proxy servers to get away with accessing more disturbing material of child pornography, or how to build your own pocket nuclear bomb on the internet. (www.24proxy.com by the way)

We liked Yazd, the labyrinth of low rise adobe buildings in the old town, the majestic mosques, the tranquil hotels, the women that came up giggling on the street wanting to practice their English, collapsing in fits of laughter at their own attempts to speak a strange language. We had manged to sample the dish ‘fesengen’ a stew made with a pomegranate and walnut sauce, scrumptious. Unfortunately, we had also been adhered to by a tedious rather camp man, who stuck to us like a leech for most of a day. He was harmless, and while with him we attracted a number of looks of sympathy from the locals and at least a couple of men tried to tell him to leave us alone. We do rather leave ourselves open to annoyance from unsolicited bores and loonies by generally responding positively to requests upon our time. I feel that as we don’t really have too many pressing engagements we really ought to act as envoys for Britain. Someone has to.

It was clear walking the streets of Yazd, that there were those women in full black chador, or full length Iranian coat and tight secure scarves, and a subset of women who were pushing the limits of the Islamic dress code, in much the same way that school children push the regulations on school uniform. The Iranian coat should be loose and go past the knees to cover anything potentially sexual (I really think they should reach the floor as I’ve got a bit of a thing about ankles), preferably in black or dark grey (great of course for the seering heat of desert. The coat of course is one top of your everyday clothes. The scarf should cover your head and cleavage area, already clothed in casuals and the coat. The rebels wear heavy make-up, loose scarves with hair tumbling out in all directions, tied under the chin, and tight figure-hugging mini ‘coats’ finishing just below the tight denim covered buttocks, sometimes the more daring ones wearing bright pinks and greens. It was obvious that come the day of relaxation of the rules, some wouldn’t wear a headscarf again if you paid them to do it.

I was finding the headscarf in the heat, stifling. (I’d been trying to persuade Hippy to purchase a more appropriate scarf for the climate but, being as tight as a gnat’s chuff, she insisted on continuing wearing my arab scarf which is rather a heavy cotton) Not to mention the tiresomeness of even having to put it on to nip 10m done the corridor in the hotel to go to the loo. I pondered whether there was a clandestine trade in an alternative line in pervy mags in Iran. All those hair-styling magazines that clutter up hairdresser coffee tables, in other countries, are maybe smuggled in over the border in droves. Is it a coincidence that some barber’s shops in Britain used to have a collection of illustrated literature of a titillating nature and were purveyors of ‘something for the weekend’? Clearly there is some inate link between hair and sex.

On the man front, fashion is extremely dull in Iran. In complete contrast to Pakistan where every man wears the same simply tailored, long shirt and matching pants in one of beige, white or light blue, every man in Iran wears slacks and a short or long sleeved shirt. Only the religious leaders wear anything approaching traditional garb. Interestingly there are very few beards visible in Iran (again, the imams and mullahs are the exception) wheras areas of Pakistan is awash with them. Believe it or not, the Pakistan army and police force monitor the level of fundamentalist representation in the ranks by carrying out a beard count. 15% is considered acceptable. Here we are in Iran still harking on about Pakistan. Time to move on to Shiraz and the nearby ruins of Persepolis.