From East to West through Iran and some cooling distance made from the equator, too.
9th Aug 2006

Finding the hillier bits of Iran
Shiraz. No wine but history and mashed food
The net tightens on our vicarious souvenir hunt...
But we avoid carpets...
All is revealed in the murk of Berthette’s oil
There's a famous Persian town that’s noted for ...
Round the corner they’re a bit more dangerous ...
Slab city but some interesting social input

Something to see (other than desert) at last

At last the scenery of Iran improved. Crossing over mountains to reach Shiraz, the dry dirt of the desert gained rather more form. I’m easy to please, all I need is a few bends in the road. To keep an eye on the wannabe racers, cardboard cut-outs of police cars were placed strategically at crests of hills and the like. It would be remiss not to mention a little about police cars and those of the general population. The vast majority of civilian vehicles are Hillman Hunters. Yes, probably one of the least popular cars of its time in England continues to be made in Iran. Pretty much the only modifications that have been made are the relocation of the petrol filler from its instantly recognisable position at the right-hand side of the rear number plate to the more customary spot on the rear wing (about 5 years ago) and the moving of the hand brake from the door side of the driver’s seat to the transmission tunnel (last year). The badges on the rear of the car suggest fuel injected engines have superseded the original carburettor aspirated lump. Thankfully, Johnny Frog seems to have managed to avoid trade embargoes with Iran and there are a number of modern French cars on offer along with a few stalwarts. I was told that the Renault 5 is still manufactured but didn’t see anything like a new one so cannot confirm. There are, though, plenty of Peugeot 206s and 405s. What do the police need to be able to intercept these dullard motors? Brand new swanky Mercedes of course. Yes, we can see where public spending is going.

It was only the topology that changed, though; the relentless dearth of scrubby plant life remained just the same until we began to descend towards the ancient capital of Persia, Pasargadae. Here, clear signs of extensive agriculture began to appear although it was pretty clear that it was the end of the season and the stubble had begun to blend in with the straw coloured earth. Pasargadae is a trifling little set of buildings when compared to some of its greater contemporary sites which is surprising when you consider the extent and power of the Persian empire at that time. One can only assume that construction of the city was mostly in wood or that a thorough job has been made of carting off large amounts of stone for building elsewhere. The crowning glory - the Tomb of Cyrus the Great was unfortunately swamped under scaffolding. It was nice to know that a bit of preservation was going on. Elsewhere on the site were the foundations of a couple of little places and temples. Bit of a disappointment, really, but for us it was merely the chronological precursor to the biggy, Persepolis or Takht-e-Jamshid as the locals call it. We have a strategy of visiting lesser ruins first to avoid disappointment, don’t you know.

Shiraz, shame that a town that gave it’s name to a famous type of grape no longer produces wine. The town has a wealth of cultural history, not least of which is the birthplace of the aforementioned Bab, prophet of the Bahais, there is also a sizeable Armenian community, whose language and version of Christianity is akin to that of Ethiopia, but the Islamic revolution hardly promotes this cultural diversity. In the markets I noticed women dressed in full layered skits and a different take on the headscarf thing, who I later discovered were members of a a tribe local to Shiraz.

The town had a bazar of course; a warren of vaulted corridors with categorised merchandise. There was the material section, where mostly women in full black chadors pawed and pondered over bright spangly, translucent fabric, then there was the carpet section of course, (What Persian bazar would be complete without one?), the plastic utilities section, tupperware, buckets, bog brushes, etc. This sectionalising of the market is all very well if you are local you know which section to go to for your undies, but as a tourist what we wanted was the fruit and veg section to get ourselves some snacks, which we never really found and must therefor have been down own of the unexplored alleys. You see the European sort of open plan, temporary type market is OK, cos you can just gaze around and spot the grocery section in the far corner, but these interior alleyways give no clue at to what is in the adjacent alleys, but they have the distinct advantage of being weatherproof, cold and airy in summers and warm in winter. We in the West think we are so flash and new fangled with our temperature controlled shopping malls, when the Persians have had them for millennia. I can imagine that the individual shopping districts have been where they are now since the year dot unlike trying to find Marmite in your local Sainsburys.

We announced our presence to the big brother visa people, I don’t know why when they were probably already aware of exactly where we were staying, how much we were paying and whether we’d had a shower or not. Strangely, rather than hoon straight round and snatch their cash, after all their hassling to make sure they’d get their money, they arranged to see us the next day. Whatever.

And so to Persepolis. We had our usual whinging moment when the car park attendant cheerfully waved us in and then tried to ask for the same as a car. we went and parked behind a souvenir stand instead It is a beautiful site but rather smaller than I’d imagined, shall we say medium sized but perfectly formed. The palaces were built by diverse figures of Persian history whose names one could conjure with; Darius the Great, Xerxes, Ataxerexes. This was the golden age of the Persian empire and I was astonished to learn how far their influence stretched. At the sides of staircases, long friezes showed processions of envoys from the 23 different participant nations of greater Persia bringing tributes as a New Year’s gift for whoever was king at that time. Camels featured pretty highly and I can imagine the king getting peeved by this lack of creativity that left him with a huge herd eating him out of house and home. Along with local folk from Armenia and all manner of provinces whose names have faded into history, there were emissaries from Ethiopia and from up north. Uniquely, they are all shown happily upright rather than grovelling on the floor as was seen as befitting by the Egyptians and others. What is left of the place is well reconstructed having fallen to a sacking by Alexander the Great who had a bit of a reprisal moment after the Persians duffed up Athens. Tsch, tsch, such childish attitudes these ancient leaders had. I’m glad that our current leaders resort to diplomacy when dealing with terrorists rather than invading their host countries and wiping out a load of innocent citizens.

Up the road (strangely via the back entrance of the rip-off car park) are the cliff tombs collectively known as Nagsht-é-Roshtam. These are the tombs of the next great leaders of Persia after they had decided to move base from Pasargadae down to Persepolis (or Parsa as it was known before the Greeks added the sepolis bit). Along with the toned-down Petra style cliff tombs is a bit of a mystery tower. The thinking now is that it was built as a funerary tower in the fashion of Palmyra but before the potential corpse passed off his mortal coil, it was considered passé and so was destined to be forever redundant. Eventually after the passing of the Persian empire, an enterprising shepherd moved in and must have thought he’d come up on the lottery to have such a flash gaff. The general smokiness left behind had anthropologists believing that this was a Zoroastrian fire temple. Doh!

Back at base we were finally tracked down by our fretful visa fixer. Once he had his pound of flesh he seemed more mellow about our plans. I can see that he doesn’t want the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upset over any of his clients or they’ll stop approving his applications. He could have been a bit clearer in the first place. I tentatively asked how it was that he discovered we had entered the country but all of a sudden his English dried up.

Dizi, fun food for the masses

We took a bite in a restaurant advertised in English script. Although our experience in Cambodia should have taught us not to expect too much just because the advertising is in our tongue, we were surprise to find the clientele uniformly male. They didn’t seem too disturbed by us though and gently puffed away on their sheeshahs and discussed secret male subjects like football and engines safe in the knowledge that we wouldn’t understand a word of it. The ‘restaurant’ actually only offered one foodstuff - dizi. Fortunately this was just what the doctor ordered but we needed to observe other customers to see how we were expected to tackle the paraphernalia that we had been provided with.

Unfortunately there was no such luck. You got a pint mug of mutton, bean and veg goulash style stew, a basket of flat bread, a dish of pickled veg a large stainless steel bowl and a stainless steel plunger attached to a rod. Ummmm.....we had no desire to embarrass ourselves in front of a room full of expert dizi eaters but what really was the plunger thing for. Luckily I had read in the guide about dizi being mashed and the stew clearly was not mashed so the plunger thingy must be for that. Poured some of the stew into the bowl, with enough mashing room, and plunged in, then eat with the bread and pickle. This seemed perfectly satisfactory. It was not until after we had finished that we spied some locals varying the system. Whether this was his personal delight or the ‘proper’ manner we don’t know. I am pleased to report that in our blundering we had not seemingly committed some faut-pas
1. Pour the stew juice into the bowl.
2. break up bread into it and let it soak.
3. Meanwhile mash the lumpy bits in the mug into a paste and then eat it with the remains of the bread after having the soup ‘stew juice’ course. It’s a kind of 2 course meal in one. Also there felt something decadent about being allowed to mash up your veg. It crossed my mind that the introduction of dizi into the British culinary repertoire may be an answer to getting kids to eat proper food. Here was a meal you were meant to ‘play’ with at the dinner table. It was excellent cheap hearty food, a welcome change from the endless kebabs.

There were certain things things that must not go unmentioned about modern Persia, the country is so clean, on the streets the are tanks of cooled drinking water, in fact all water is safe to drink and most importantly, I am back in the land of salt and vinegar crisps. There is cheap, good cheese, olives. All these things put it up there in my estimation. OK I will still have to wait a while for that bacon sandwich but life would be dull if it was perfect.

Not sure why but the fort in Shiraz is a bit on a squint. A couple of the turrets must have been built with a terrible lean (Sack the engineer, I say), either that our they stuck a couple of corners over a boggy patch.

The tyre had been throbbing along all the while and it was clear that the stopper thread that had been inserted in Yazd was not going to wear away. To cap it all, the tyre wasn’t even holding pressure. I repaired to the repairers where we whipped the tyre off and inspected what was going on. There was a nasty bit of blistering on the inside where the plug had been jammed through and the tread block had been split by the cheese-wire effect of this indestructible string plug. Thanks to this lazy repair the tyre was now knackered rather than carrying us on into Turkey where it could be replaced with something decent. Now we had to fit the tube-type spare that we’d been carrying with us. Of course the tube had gained a hole while waiting for next use and so we were starting off with a patch - inauspicious.

Esfahan, home of the exotic chess set

All the way to Esfahan the back wheel was still throbbing. This could not be; the shaft was OK, the tyre was OK, the wheel was round and straight. The only other thing could be the bevel box and they never really go wrong unless they are short of oil - there has been no sign of oil loss, ergo there could be no problem. Hmm.

In Esfahan were had a few missions to complete, some guys running a carpet shop, what else, had been referred to us by Fi, the Hot rock driver, and they had kindly allowed us to use their names when applying for visas, we needed to pop in a say thank you and do some carpet considering. Also, we were on a buying recce mission for a Hun on a Honda. Jan, who we first met in Cambodia, had regretted not buying a backgammon set in Esfahan and had asked us to buy one if we could and drop it in at his parent’s in Germany on the way home. This all seemed like a good idea at the time but now that the deed was upon us I was wondering why we promised to do it. If Jan alone on his bike hadn’t thought that he had room to take a backgammon set, how were we meant to fit it in? I had temporarily forgotten how much Pat hates shopping, prices seemed to be way beyond what Jan had been quoted 18 months before and buying on behalf of someone else is so much more difficult than buying something for yourself. Typically, the ones we really liked were 7 times the prices Jan had been expecting to pay, even the cheap ones that were poorly finished were 4 times his price. Would he be content with a poorly finished one, would he prefer not to have one at all at the prices they were asking? he was not here to ask. We spent a long afternoon, trawling the backgammon shops getting more and more disheartened. We could see why he had regretted passing the opportunity by, as we have our own list a mile long of regretted non-purchasers; The silver and wood maté pots from San Antonio De Arreco in Argentina, Malawian chairs, Bao boards, and a minor mountain of textiles.

The thing that struck me as very, very peculiar is that although there were chess boards a-go-go, there was no one making beautiful chess pieces. We later found out from our friends at the carpet shop, that after the revolution chess and backgammon were made illegal, as were cards on the basis that it could all be a reason to gamble, so since gambling is non-Islamic, so was chess and backgammon. But then what do the craftsman do who have trained for a lifetime to produce beautiful chess sets, well they seem to have allowed to make the boards but not the pieces. Weird eh? As to the card thing, on the main street into the square men furtively lean over to discretely offer packs of cards illegally on the streets. More enterprising fellows have drawn a full set of cards on the back of identical business cards. There were clusters of men on the bridge shielding a card shark from police view as he conned anyone gullible enough out of their cash, with the find the king routine. There was something rather quaint about the idea that the illegal trade was in contraband packs of cards. Making so many thing illegal, means I am sure that there is a thriving black market. It was really rather odd for us as infidels to be surreptitiously offered packs of inoffensive cards - I confess that the first time it happened I was assuming that we were being offered the saucy variety of playing card so much favoured in the tat shops of Blackpool. Quite took me back to the “Hey, lady, wanna see pornography?” that was offered to my dear respectable mother in the lava encrusted Roman ruins of Vesuvial Italy.

The propaganda that pervaded the national TV at every opportunity, showing documentaries from the 1980’s on British footy hooliganism to prove that Britain is in a state of anarchy (and therefore in no position to criticise other form of governance) or the pictures from Iraq showing the maiming of only children and women by American troops, or similar pictures from Palestine with ‘Made in Israel’ in English blazed across the scene. I pondered whether the president employed the same editor who works for Fox News in America, and this is all a media fuelled campaign to gee up enough tension in opposing countries to ensure that there is always at least two countries at war, so that the news programmes have something to create propaganda about. (“You provide the photos, I’ll provide the war!” It’s been done before, my love.) That’s enough of my conspiracy theories. A poster in the main square in Esfahan was clearly making the government’s feeling known to tourist, since it was in English. Pictures of maimed children and weeping women under the slogan ‘Down with Israel, Down with USA’. This president is pushing for a head on confrontation, against the will of populace. Will Bush give him what he wants? I wonder. There was some difference of opinion about the origins of this poster and it’s ultimate disappearance. One person told us that it was erected covertly by government agents and removed by other government oppos to get the required message over but give the authorities the semblance of liberality. Another told us that the sign was erected by the government and removed by decent minded local citizens and a final theory was that it was erected for a fundamentalist rally and removed by the authorities. Clearly local belief in the motives of their government are pretty confused.

The first day that we had arrived, it had been a Friday and so understandably a number of the shops were shut including our friends by proxy at the carpet shop, called, naturally, Aladdin's. So we got the carpet sales spiel from a competitor around the corner. Knowing nothing about carpets really, he could have almost told us black was white, but when I spotted a couple of cigarette burns and stains and he claimed it was a new carpet. He instantly lost my trust, then he started back-pedalling fast, and took a different tack claiming that being an old carpet made it in fact worth more money. Now even in my carpet naive state, I would have thought that there is a subtle difference between a quality antique carpet and a fag-stained, second hand one. This was not old enough to be antique. He was now annoying me with his lies. His colleague, tried to rescue the situation by engaging me in conversation about the hand printed fabrics which was a lot more interesting.

And carpets

When we finally met Saied and Ali at Aladdin's who had obviously learnt the fair art of the extremely soft sell. In fact you almost had to bully them between cups of tea to tell you something about their carpets. In became instantly clear that we were in a shop of quality. The carpets before us were in a different league. The shop we had been in the day before was a baloney (sic) sandwich carpet shop, and now we were in the fine French restaurant. Oh dear, oh dear, now that I had handled and seen a quality Persian carpet and had been taught what to look for, the carpets in the other shops were clearly inferior. Trouble was now I couldn’t afford to buy the good one and couldn’t bear to buy the cheap one. It is a cross that I bear, I invariably put my hand on the most expensive item in the shop, and don’t like the things I can afford, so I end up buying nothing at all. We took the website (http://www.geocities/aladdiniran or something like that - currently only in Japanese, I’m afraid, but you can navigate around and pick out a reference number then email to saied_mebah@yahoo.com to get a price. You may need to email first to get the web address right - it doesn’t look correct to me) and intend to treat ourselves if we ever stop being ‘workshy bastards’, as our dear friend Andy Smith calls us.

And miniatures

But I was in the mood for buying (Oh dear!), we had seen some beautiful miniature paintings on camel bone in Yazd and not bought them. So we asked Ali if he knew a place where I get a miniature and maybe he could give us come advice on this damn backgammon set. No joy with the Jan’s mission but he did take us to a wee shop where a guy painted his own miniatures. Given the option, I prefer to buy direct from the artist so we were in there. I am not normally into tiny twee things, but these miniatures are beautiful and depictions of Persian poets like Omar Khyam, you cannot get a much more Persian souvenir than that. I was hooked and would return the following day to send some money. Even Pat could not really complain because the souvenir was both small and light. And quite cheap.

We still had the backgammon issue. Pat had reached his limit on the shopping front but I was reticent to shop for a third person by myself, I wanted a second opinion. We set out the following day to resolve the situation, but still the affordable perfect set evaded us, and we ended up compromising and hoped that Jan is not disappointed, honestly we really did try. What Jan does not know is that if he ever goes to San Antonio De Arreco, he has to to get us a maté pot and bombilla to return the favour.

Patrick was completely shopped out and left me to buy miniatures and deal with the monetary terminology and I am sure is designed just to confuse the tourist when haggling. The official unit of currency is the Rial, but most of the time people talk of Toman (10 Riel), but then sometimes they talk in Khomeini’s (10,000 Riel). Then some quote prices in US Dollars, others in Euros, comparing prices between them all becomes a battle of arithmetic wit. Meanwhile, Pat sat watching the highlights of the World Cup final that we had managed to miss (didn’t miss much), in Aladdin’s over, of course, tea.

In one negotiation in a wholesalers, it was clear Persian are in touch with their dry sense of humour side. I had a lovely, banter with the guy behind the counter, and then was joined by three local women. Women in Iran are highly educated, most speak a splattering of English and many have university level schooling. I thought it a shame to be told the rationale behind this was often, that women with high levels of education can generally pick up equal level husbands. That although, we had seen women working, many quit work as soon as they were married and virtually all when they had children. It seemed wasteful to me that the country was sitting of so much potential ability and letting it stagnate. It is apparently very frowned upon to employ any kind of child minder, even to the extent of allowing a family to tend to your children.

We do, it is true, have bad parenting problems in the UK, with the children being hard to manage, truanting and the like. But that often has more to with the biological parents being poor at their job, than children having childminders.

Esfahan was the only place in Iran where we had seen a reasonably touristy kind of culture, mostly at the moment catering for the Iranian tourist market. But it did mean that there were some annoying people following us around persuading us to drink tea and look at their carpet shop or in the case of one guy, who was particularly hard to shake off seemed more intent of something more sinister. It was a real shame, because it makes you more suspicious of genuinely friendly offers of tea and conversation.

Even the mosques seemed to be following suit in the irritating stakes. The first time we wanted to go in the main mosque that is generally open to infidels, it was closed to visitors for prayers. Reasonable enough. We toddled along the next day, and were refused again, prayers they said. But the call for prayer isn’t till 12.00 and it was 11.30. There were tour groups milling around inside, but could we go in? It was the same guy stopping us both days and we decided that if we were try a third time he would probably turn us away again just for a laugh. I confess I have something of a low opinion of the insides if mosques as tourist ‘sights’. It seems entirely appropriate that environments designed to encourage communication between man and God should have few distractions and in this respect Moslems have it bang on. Thus, the insides of mosques are mostly cool, unadorned large spaces - instead of visiting, just shut you eyes and imagine yourself to be in a large cave. Be fair Pat they tend to do an excellent line in blue, patterned tiles. Personally I rather like their serenity, without the gaudiness of catholic churches or the terrible paint jobs of Hindu temples. But in style they do tend to be a bit samey. Oh, and save yourself a couple of dollars, too. I increasingly find myself in a ‘seen one, seen em all’ mindset. It is definitely time to return to the hum drum of daily toil so that I can fully appreciate the smaller differences.

Over at the ‘Ladies Mosque’, entry is best part of free and there is a charming young lady with a charmingly poor command of English to give information.

Our hotel had been described by Fi thus - “This place has always been used by both backpackers and overlanders but they have not done anything to improve this place in all the years I have been going there – ..................... – MR Ziaee has become only concerned with making money which is a shame. If I was going to carry on bringing group to Esfahan I’d look for somewhere else to stay.” Options in the middle of town were a bit limited and we were feeling a bit lazy when we arrived in Esfahan so here we were. The first time we asked for anything in the least bit out of the ordinary a stitch up ensued. I had rather rashly asked for coffee with my breakfast rather than tea and this doubled the price. I went back to tea. Helen was amused by the fact that the standard breakfast (egg, cheese, jam and bread) came with just three quarters of a flat bread. Bread is hugely subsidised in Iran like the petrol and so the quarter of a piece of bread that was missing would be worth somewhere in the region of naff all. Why the stinginess? I thought that this was not really such a bad thing as three quarters of a flat bread was quite enough for anyone and the hotel had obviously learnt through countless years of bread provision that they invariably threw away one quarter from each client.

The company was charming, though. In from the west were Roel and Lizzy, a Dutch/Brit combo who are heading for the exotic east with their rather nice Landrover - Don’t worry, Berthette. I wouldn’t change you for the world. Roel has the exact qualifications needed for an overland driver; a few years under his belt as a trucker driving in diverse countries from Morocco to Romania. Lizzy has carved out a wonderful niche, translating legal documents from Dutch to English and vice versa. This is perfect work to be able to do while travelling - so long as you can stay within email range. They have a sat-phone and so can pick up messages if there is any work to do and then hoon to the nearest cybercafe to pick up the assignment. We had a jolly time with them as we seemed to be pretty much aligned on the joys of travel/healthy cynicism mix.

There were also a pair of cyclists clearly riding our way, for their cycles had been Pakistani-ed. Adorned with garlands of plastic flowers and twirly wind mobiles, that we had seen as commonplace over the border.

Bethette’s bevel box is flakey

Ali had pointed out where a ‘lube shop’ was and I poled up there and had a hopeless conversation with the proprietor. I think we both realised that the most sensible thing would be for me to rifle through his collection of oils, choose something appropriate and do everything my self. He had all the containers and funnels and so it took no time ..... to discover that there was a rather nasty collection of metal flakes in the oil from the bevel drive. These things are sent to try us. The bevel box is even more of a challenge to investigate and repair than the gearbox was. Really the only hope we have with this one is to go easy and make it to Turkey where there are plenty of Berthettes about because the police have them. Pat had been worrying since Northern India about a peculiar whine, in the nether regions of the bike and had initially thought the second shaft drive was on the way out, but it looks like it could be more serious than that. We still have another 2000 km to do to cross turkey to Istanbul. Seems odd to think that we now think it relatively normal considering driving the ride that far to find a mechanic. distances are all relative.

Esfahan has a deserved tourist reputation, it has a long stretch of river bank, on either side, with delightful shady parkland, ancient bridges, palaces, majestic squares (possibly the largest in the world), millennia of history of skilled artisans and above all some wonderful tea-shops. Chai is so ingrained into the culture of Persia and modern Iran that although the Iranians tolerate all kinds of restrictions by their leaders, if tea was banned there would be an uprising within hours. Apparently after the revolution tea shops were shut down temporarily more because the government was uncomfortable about places that groups of people met and gaffed for long periods. But it didn’t last for long; men seem to sit for days, drinking tea and puffing on sheesha pipes. One such place was under the bridge, nice and cool. These places are of course almost always 100% male, it is not that women are banned, it is simply not customary to go if you are blessed with extra chromosomal material. As foreigners, we were welcomed as an oddity. I accepted the division of the sexes, but it seemed a shame that there were not equivalent places for women to go and sup tea with their girly mates, if they didn’t want to subscript to the sex tax of family restaurants. I did wonder whether legally in the UK, smoking a hookah pipe counted as smoking under the new anti-smoking laws in the UK. All the real nasties are absorbed into the water after all. It got me wondering whether we had found a wee loop hole and could set up a tea, sheesha and dizi restaurant, with lots of carpets and cushions to lounge around on. The major problem as I see it is so many assume in the UK that hubbly-bubbly pipes are for illegal drugs only, and would be sorely disappointed with the fruit flavoured tobaccos we were offering.

Anyway, in our little under-the-bridge tea shop we were engaged in conversation with a youngish guy who clearly demonstrated that there is no love lost between Iran and Iraq, but was equally unhappy about USA and Britain’s involvement in warmongering. He was a proud Persian, and wanted to travel, but his Iranian citizenship hardly makes it easy to get visas for many countries. He understood that his own president is hardly easing the situation with his inflammatory stance against US and Israel. I felt for him, I thought we had it bad, with Blair going in on any random bit of murdering that Bush thinks is a good idea, but it just made many visas more expensive for us or a little complex to access. With an Iranian passport, I imagine that for some countries it is virtually impossible. And Persians are such lovely people. Then there are the issues with the trade embargoes on Iran, many chemicals and pharmacies are hard to access, with means that their health care is extraordinarily expensive.

There was a down side to the town being a little more touristy, that it also had a reputation of attracting the criminal elements of bag snatchers and the like. Nothing so exciting happened to us, but there was the rather disconcerting habit of some males with mobile phone cameras surreptitiously snapping photos of me. For what purpose I could not imagine, after a day in heat, be-scarfed and covered in my Cyril smith outfit I struggle to think of something less sexy.

One wonderful thing about Persia is the beautiful parks and areas designed for families to enjoy their national obsession of picnicking. Now picnicking Persian style is not your sad, limp, cheese and tomato sandwich in cling film, sat on a packamac picnic. It is truly Persian. Carpets, and sumptuous cushions are laid out samovars are bubbling for continuous consumption of chai, pots of dizi, feta, minted yoghurt, fried fish, spiced chicken and rice, olives, chutneyed chillis, dates, halva, accompanied by a small mountain of bread. This is what I call picnicking. Early evening to 10 o’clock and on weekends, in the siesta time, park areas are filled with collections of families, eating, sleeping off their excesses.

Along with parks and the like there are clean public toilets, which seemed to double as laundries. Every one I went into had women occupying the sinks with a weeks washing being scrubbed and pounded. Either Persians are amazingly messy eaters, and need to chance clothes whilst picnicking or these were nomads making was of the freeby facilities. Nomads had a strange position in Iranian society, the work of the women is highly priced, and hand make the best quality carpets in the world. The men tend to be shepherds and herders. But of course they are still very poor. According to Saied and Ali, after the revolution, many flooded into cities thinking that under the new regime that they could seek their fortune in town. Where due to prejudice on behave of the townies or lack of appropriate skills, their tent villages are disappearing from the cities, and they are voluntarily returning to the old ways, finding that city life was not all it was cracked up to be.

Gay Ghazvin, but not obviously so

Ghazvin has a reputation for homosexuality and it is pretty easy to have a jolly moment with an Iranian by demonstration your knowledge of local stereotyping, saying you are going to Ghazvin with a limp wrist gesture and a Jagger pout. Has them rolling around. In fact there was no evidence of uphill gardening in Ghazvin at all - not that I am particularly attuned to the signs thereof. I guess the dude in the street who insisted on showing me to our hotel was quite frisky and friendly but he stopped short of patting my bum or anything. The hotel was really rather odd - they are clearly making an effort to do it up but they’d reached some kind of inertia and although the walls were beautifully decorated and the plumbing neatly arrayed for easy connection to requisite bedroom vitreous china, one had to descend to the reception level to use facilities in cubicles that did not have locking doors and were guarded by a lady who only allowed entry when there were no other clients of either sex in the area. Maybe this is to ensure that no same sex activities, even ‘Good morning’ greetings while brushing teeth, could take place. All hotels in the town seemed to have tripled their prices so this was not the bargain establishment we would have hoped for.

There was at least parking outside - but only briefly. I was assured by the hotelier that there was parking and I was guided to a spot outside the shutters of a shop. I assumed that they were no longer trading. We were taking an afternoon nap when the instruction came to move the bike. I was a bit bleary and miffed but acceded to the request, taking Berthette away to paid parking in the basement of a different hotel, only to find the reason for my having to move my bike was that the bloke on the other side of the alley wanted to park his bike in the same spot. Stitch up.

Ghazvin doesn’t really have too much to offer the casual visitor. There’s a mosque, a mausoleum and a bazar. The first two didn’t strike much of a chord and so we set off in search of the bazar. We think we found it but if it was indeed that little maze of tunnels that we found, it was under renovation. We were just getting enthusiastic about it and found our way through to the little old mosque in the middle when we were chased out by a guard who insisted that we go to an office and get a ticket. There had been no office at the entrance and he failed in his effort to communicate to us where the relevant office might be. We gave up, packed up and set off to see the Castles of the Assassins. Had a quick moment to change some money in the bank where we chatted with rather an open guy about matters political. We were amazed by his candour - here he was in a pretty high profile situation where the walls must have been covered in ears not exactly following the party line. I can’t possibly repeat what he said - who knows who is reading our website, if anyone.

Castles of the Assassins - it’s sheer murder to find them!

We did our best to navigate the Alamut area with the information that we had but we were somewhat hampered by not-to-scale, may-not-show-all-minor-roads and a dearth of roadsigns in any language. When we pulled up after a beautiful winding ride next to what seemed to be the fragments of a fortified structure atop a rock, we were still a little uncertain as whether this was indeed Hassan Sabah castle. We settled into a lovely room full of cushions in what was obviously a home that turns into tourist accommodation at the drop of a hat, or more accurately at the drop of the right denomination currency. It was really a bit pricey but the family atmosphere was priceless. Here we were back in the hills and so back in cherry country. We were bombarded with cherries and diverse fruit that grows in the same climate at regular intervals. Thankfully our constitutions held together even though saturated with the most wonderful sweet fruit - in Pakistan I think it must have been giardia as we had suspected or bad water used for washing them that left us a little loose.

So what are these castles about? The castle proprietors were colourful characters who hired out their services as killers in rather an exotic and wussy way. Simply put, they enticed their victims with the promise of some kind of rave with wine, women and song. When they were sufficiently relaxed, they drugged them and done them in. Hardly manly. Caddish in fact. As I write, we have just met an Australian girl in Turkey who has been subjected to the same kind of treatment having been enticed into a drink with a convincing tourist type in Istanbul, drugged, robbed and dumped. She spent several days in hospital before recovering enough to be allowed out so one I can only assume she must have been close to death as a result of the nasty cocktail.

Little remains of the castles and the setting rather begs the question as to how they convinced their victims to agree to join them in their rather deserty hangout. “Look, there’s going to be loads of gorgeous girls and great sounds, right” might have been enough to persuade me to cycle over to Heaton for the night but I’d have drawn the line at several days on horseback.

A little work is being done by way of renovation and providing access to the castles but it still calls for a stiff hike up the hill. We were amused again by the lunacy of chador wearing. This time it was the inability of ladies to see where they were going on the uneven staircases. I find it amazing that none of them gets halfway and simply rips of their head covering exclaiming, “This is bollocks!” in broad Farsi. Most of the visitors to the castles seemed to be women. Perhaps the men of Iran feel uncomfortable in the knowledge fo the history of these places but the women are faintly amused by the weakness of menfolk.

These were clearly townies in the chadors, the locals having a far more practical approach to decent dress standards. With full long skirts finishing just above the ankle, simply short jackets and even t-shirts and small headscarfs. I got the feeling that the people felt that they were sufficiently, unimportant or far from the thought police to dispense with the rigours of chadors.

The climate was so wonderful that we kicked back for a couple of days and got a bit of writing done. The family were fascinated by our pictures on the computer, particularly the pictures of their own country. We couldn’t fathom whether they’d ever been to the ruins of Persepolis but they were certainly a bit touchy about the naming, insisting that it was Takht-é-Jamshid rather than Persepolis. We said something out of order and they all drifted off muttering “Haram, haram”. It’s funny when you can have the ability to offend in many cultures but not enough language to know why. Helen believes that it may have been the misinterpretation of a bas relief that shows a unicorn being stabbed in the stomach by Xerxes that may have appeared to someone with a perverse mindset and myopia that the King of Persia was actually giving a hand shandy to a mythical beast. More the kind of thing the ancient Greeks got up to we are told.

Out on the road a commotion developed. The hill was extremely steep and the hazard of a wedding party dancing in the middle brought everything to a standstill. The father of the groom was keen that I should join them for the celebrations and I regret not having taken him up on his offer. There is a bit of western-centric embarrassment involved here. Someone invites you and you assume that they are just being polite and that really they would prefer that you declined. In fact, generally, in these countries not accepting is considered a bit rude and their being able to offer hospitality at an event of this kind adds ‘good karma’. Yes, it was a cultural experience missed through lethargy and I’m ashamed of myself. We later discovered that dancing is considered unacceptable so these were obviously very naughty people. Shocking behaviour dancing on a public street, definitely a thought police free zone.

Just as much of the rest of Iran the distances between reasonably sized settlements from Ghazvin to the border are pretty large. This is bit of a logistical nightmare, they fall in all the wrong places meaning either a short day or a long day. We were aiming for a short day really but even after a gentle potter around the Alamut area and a view of another castle, we still arrived in Lambersan in reasonable time to judge it as dull and time left to make it to Tabriz reasonably comfortably. The distances may be long, but the roads are excellent. We had kind of got used to unreliable road conditions and 600km in Iran leaves you less tired than 100km in India. Another plus for the Persians.

Tabriz is uninspiring but the people are lovely

Of course, as soon as we chose to carry on the multi lane highway shrunk down to a rather less convenient little road. The scenery improved though into winding valleys with scatterings of trees. Tabriz is a nightmare, clearly growing at a huge rate with blocks of flats growing up left right and centre. Road signs conspired against us and not having the mileometer really became a problem for the first time. We had our usual heated conference on the hard shoulder and a local motorcyclist pulled up. It was a big bike. Amazing, the first one we’d seen for ages and certainly the first Iranian owned large capacity bike at all. The rather dodgy looking bloke who was astride the late 70s Honda 750 explained that he’d been working in the UAE and brought the machine back with him. The clue was in the Dubai plate. I’d like to have chatted longer but he seemed to be on a mission and after guiding us to our hotel he hooned off. We knew that our choice of hotel was not ideal but given the size of the city, the reputation of the gaff for allowing bike parking in the lobby it seemed extremely inviting. What we hadn’t expected was the instant effort by the manager to sell us a tour out to the nearby cave houses. He kept it up for the duration of our stay and we had to think up a series of excuses for not going. Simply saying no was not sufficient for him. Dinner options were kebab, kebab or kebab so we chose the latter.

On a whim we went to the Tourist Office and met Hassan. Hassan had a guest book of many tourists, mostly overlanders, that he had met. We’d met some of them too so we could accept their positive comments as fairly believable. He pointed us in the direction of a dizi/tea shop as a change from kebab, which he claimed was the best in Persia, but our sample in Shiraz was way better. He also made us, an interesting offer of joining him to attend an English language school, to give the students a little practice listening to native speakers. Seemed like a nice change. It was a little disconcerting that Hassan openly admitted that he liked to attend the girls classes. To start with I thought it was quite a nice thought that he wished to help out the girls more than the boys, but then he openly divulged that it was because they were prettier. (Admitted almost with drool running from his lips) He picked us up in a taxi and he filled us in on a few positives of the new regime. Passing us on the highway was a convoy of blue pickups with boxed new white goods all flying the Iranian flag. The is a apparently a system whereby poor men who want to marry, are given the basic dowry of household essentials, washing machine, fridge, suite of furniture etc., as a tax free loan from the government. The government wishing to promote family life thus make it easier for men to settle down. I thought it was a shame that this could not have been done anonymously, and the government took the opportunity to cash in on the potential positive publicity by advertising to the citizens how generous there were being. But not a bad idea though. I did get a slight feeling that Hassan was keen to follow the party line, maybe his job in Tourist Information is dependant on him voicing only the positive.

At the language institute, Pat was ushered into one room and I into another with a some male and some female students. Hassan joined me, and introduced himself as Peter?? eh? I pondered whether because his English was pretty good he pretended to be foreign for the benefit of the students, so that they felt they had 2 foreign speakers to practice with.

The normal questions from the students came, Where are you from, What about your family? Where have you been in Iran? What do you think of Iran? One stumped me for a second, What was my most successful moment? Unaccustomed as I am to seeing the positives in my own life, it took me a couple of seconds to come up with an answer, which I then realised was a difficult situation to explain. On the spur of the moment, what I came up with was ‘At school, I had had a very unhappy time, because other children were cruel. When I realised that these children’s lives were probably in fact sadder than mine, probably led to my ability to succeed’ I don’t think it was the answer they were expecting but they seemed to understand. You can rely on Hippy for an odd answer to an odd question.

I then thought it was my turn, after all this is a conversation class and they need to practice. So I asked them what impressions they had of England. I was intrigued, what with the propaganda they receive on the state of Britain and all. There was an awkward silence. Their teacher inevitably broke the tension. She said ‘I think of drizzle, no sunshine, pie and fish and chips,’. Not a bad sum up. The students had managed to think of something to say. They were all too polite to say anything negative.
‘Britain is very organised’ ???
‘British are creative’
‘British are proud people’ I had to disagree with this one, we certainly are not very proud of our Britishness, we spend far too much time complaining.
Yes they all wanted to travel, but lack of money and their nationality were hindrances. It was a shame that my attempts to coax the girls into conversation fell on stony ground and the boys dominated the questioning. I do not think their English was any better than the girls, they were just more confident.
Peter sloped away at some point in the lesson. At the end I joined Pat in the more advanced class. Here they were chatting quite freely. I was surprised at how frank they were being, about the situation with their government.

I was a little confused, people claimed that there were people who would report them for antigovernment behaviour, but then they seemed to be very openly saying negative things in front of others. I remember voices falling to a whisper in Egypt when a person criticised the government even if there was no-one about. The teacher, commented that the headscarf thing was a trial especially in the heat, but claimed that she would be arrested if seen outside without it. I could not decide whether a myth of dress police was put out by the government or whether truly people were courting jail by breaking the dress code. It was also suggested that anyone who turned away from Islam and embraced some infidel religion may be exterminated. This, we were sure, must be an urban myth. Mustn’t it? God (if there is one), I hope so! Lapsed Catholics burning in Purgatory seems like rather a soft option in comparison.

The teacher showed us around the town the following day. Further weirdnesses ensued. She offered to take us to the French church near where we were staying, and explained that there may be some difficulties, because a) she is not a certified tourist guide and b) she is Muslim. As a student she had been naturally curious about Christian ceremonies and architecture and had wanted to visit the church and was sent away to get the correct paperwork. When she applied for the paperwork to get permission to enter a church from the ministry she was refused. We did not gain admission to the church, where two elderly, unscarfed French ladies seemed to be under voluntary house arrest behind a high wall, mainly because the curate who had the key was not there.

The lack of knowledge of Bahai faith, was explained to us. Bahais claim to have a prophet after Mohammed, which is most sacrilegious to the powers that be in Iran. So after the revolution small enclaves of Bahais were rounded up and disappeared and their teachings were made against the law.

Such intolerance, is, in my limited understanding of the Islamic teachings in itself un-Islamic. Not to mention missing out on a wealth of their own Persian history and rich culture.

Generally, like young lads everywhere, the students are preoccupied with thinking of girls and justifiably pointed out, that with all the restrictions on mingling with the opposite sex, means that when they do finally get introduced to a suitable partner by the family, it is hard to know whether this is really the person for them, when they have nothing to compare to.

It seemed strange to us, that young people brought up by parents who had been brought up before the revolution, were restricted so much by their parents. It was explained that people fear that their neighbours may spy and report them to the authorities for breaking the rules. So even though drinking alcohol, dancing, dating all go on in private homes they do these things clandestinely, afeared about who they can really trust. I wonder how much this fear is justified or malicious rumour. One lady summed things up, when I pointed out all the things that are good in Iran, lovely people, clean streets, little crime, safe drinking water, cheap fuel, she said ‘Yes, but we are not allowed to enjoy it’

Tabriz is known for it’s nuts and nougat and there are fancy Armenian silverware shops. As we window shopped we wandered into the bazar. Now this was a proper bazar, none of the touristy hype of Esfahan, this is probably the place to get your work-a-day carpets, with whole arcades devoted to them. Our nougat was sumptuous, sticky and wonderfully messy. Wandering through a modern shopping mall we were taken aback by a display of fancy strapless ballgowns. Eh? Where would one wear one? Were there places that only women went or clandestine illegal ballrooms? Was there a whole underground world that we were not privvy to? There was a strange juxtaposition between the ladies in full black chadors who paused to consider these flamboyant sexy outfits.

Tired of getting lost trying to find little places in out of the way places, we succumbed and took a taxi to Kandovan. Iran’s version of the more famous cave dwellings in Turkey at Cappadocia. Millenia ago people with intelligence worked out that caves protected you against both the heat of the summer and the freezing temperatures of winter. The lifestyles of these people were a far cry from the modern malls of Tabriz, but then I am not sure they want it.

Drinking chai, we got a weird feeling that we were being watched, worse still, we were being videoed. Videoed? Eh? Two tourists drinking chai is not really that interesting. The voyeurs claimed to researching tourists thought on Kandovan and how it could be improved. We consented to an interview. Which confirms my cynicism about market research that it is only atypical people that ever answer the questions. There was rather a small population of foreign tourists to sample from viz. us.

We were on our way out of Iran from Tabriz. We’d had all our suspicions confirmed. Without going in to detail, Iran can be summed up as follows:- people absolutely fantastic, government and religious leaders pretty much all barking mad.

There was one last port of call - to see an Armenian church close to the border. It is really pretty strange in this part of the world; the region is all Azerbaijan but then there is ‘proper’ Azerbaijan just over the border, the majority of folk in the area are the Kurds, whether Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, Georgian or Azerbaijani and most of the host countries have a downer on their Kurdish minorities. Whatever, someone has stumped up a bit of cash for the restoration of Ghareh Khelisa. We spent a confusing hour in the company of a French-speaking Kurdish Iranian stonemason and gleaned just about nothing. There was something wonderfully international about the relationship between this craftsman and his apprentice. When the youth prepared tea for us by pouring cold water onto tea leaves and then presenting the pot for consumption, the gaffer broke into perfect Basil Fawlty complete with rolling eyes and exasperated tutting. I would love to have a translation of what passed between them but I imagine it was something along the lines of “What have you done now, spaz?” just as the phrase is used on building sites throughout the British Isles. Helen is concerned that this is not very PC. Enough said.

The plan was to stop the night in Maku at the border before entering Turkey. But Maku was uninspiring, all it seemed to have was a population of rather large storks, and a set of overpriced dirty hotels. We were chased out of town by a spivvy bloke in his car desperately trying to change our last Iranian notes for us. We escaped his rip-off clutches and hooned the few km. to the frontier and the promise of foaming mugs of ale.