Return to the Axis of Evil: Iran 2008

Tabriz --> Kaleybar --> Ardabil --> Rasht --> Masuleh --> Lahijan --> Qazvin --> Zanjan --> Takht-e Soleiman --> Sanandaj and Palangan --> Kermanshah --> Khorramanbad --> Esfahan --> Kashan, Abyaneh and Niasar --> Tehran --> Exit to Armenia

And so, arriving at the Turkey-Iran border we get out and walk through Turkey's iron gates and arrive at a large, sturdy, soldier-operated barricade above which a sign welcomes me to the I.R. or Iran. The soldier looks at my passport, lets others through and continues to stare at my passport. He leads me to the man at the passport booth. Would he let me in? Would he? The man reaches out, shakes my hand and welcomes me to Iran. A bit of paperwork to fill out (just where I'll be visiting) and I'm through.

Having made it across the border I taxi shared with the students and one other guy (who came from Dogubeyazit on the same dolmus as me) to Tabriz, stopping only for a cup of tea and to top up the taxi driver's thermos flask. This was handy as we passed a Swiss couple who were walking to Tabriz with their donkey and dog and so the students stopped the taxi and passed around the tea.

Reaching Tabriz, I hooked up with Mohammad (my CouchSurfing host) and spent several days staying with him. Like many Iranians he has satellite TV, complete with pay channels like "SexyArab": the revolution has definitely stopped at Iranians' front doors. During the days I wandered around (as you do) and ended up meeting loads of people, who kept on wanting to have a chat and even buy me food and drink - there is a strong culture of meeting a stranger who instantly becomes the guest ... and the guest must be treated like a king. It also makes navigating the different taxi and bus services incredibly easy as fellow travelers will become your host and insist on personally guiding you to the right place. Easy and relaxing!

After Tabriz, a fairly nondescript, large city, I headed to the recommended destination of Kaleybar, not for the town itself but the ancient Babek Castle sitting high on the hill behind it. "Just 2 hours walk on the track starting behind the Babek Hotel," noted Lonely Planet, bizarrely omitting to mention that the Hotel Babek was 5 km out of town up a steep hill. At least that explains why the locals giving me directions insisted that I should take a taxi, which I didn't do. One-and-a-half hours after setting out, with more steep hill in front of me, knees feeling the strain and the castle not yet in sight, a man on a little 125cc motorbike stopped and gave me a lift to the hotel ... which left me another 2 hours to go until the castle. Still, I made it there and back before dark and got a lift back to town.

Babek Castle crossed off the list I headed next to Ardabil by savari, or shared taxi. Basically a man with a car fills it up with passengers going to the same destination (thus splitting the total cost between 4-5 people) and then drives there at high speed: braking and low gears are frowned upon as this slows the taxi and, after all, time is money. However Kaleybar is a small town and my savari was taking a while to fill up - this caused the driver no end of stress and he tore around town tooting his horn, shouting his destination at passers by and, as his frustration mounted, arguing with (and in one instance assaulting) fellow taxi drivers who had the audacity to also collect passengers. At last a fourth passenger is found as, true to form, our driver hares around country roads to Ahar, where I caught another savari to Ardabil.

Skipping through Ardabil, with its mausoleum (but not much else) I headed to tea-growing country by bus, past green forested hills and rice paddies. Rasht is the centre of Iran's tea-growing industry by virtue of being one of the few places in the country where rain falls with any regularity. LP is at great pains to point out the tourists from Tehran can be seen driving around town during rain showers holding their hands out the car windows, seeking that rare pleasure. Rasht was, like Ardabil, more of a stop-over for me as I headed for the highly recommended town of Masuleh. Its small, on a hillside, at the end of a country road and its filled with more (local) tourists than locals. It also has few hotels however a number of locals run guesthouses and spend their spare time hunting down tourists with which to fill them: I was found within 5 minutes of arriving and guided to a guesthouse where I bunked on the floor. Literally: Iranians don't believe in beds and go for the simple option of thin mattresses (but sometimes the Spartan option of no matresses) and blankets. There's not much to do there except relax and drink the local brew (no, not alcohol) and, with local weather basically sunny during the morning and thick, low cloud for the rest of the day, tea drinking turned out to be an ideal pastime. I passed two whole days drinking tea with some English-speaking locals and three other tourists.

Masuleh crossed off the list, I turned my sights to Lahijan on the other side of Rasht. Not a bad little town, quite green and leafy with plenty of tea plantations (and tearooms) and a few sights. It's also home to the most annoying person I've ever met, one Ali Reza who decided to follow me and practice his very basic English with me. As he had little vocabulary he compensated by reading in a loud voice anything he could find in English ... signs in shops, the menu on his mobile phone, the ingredients of the Chee-Toz corn chips he bought. For two hours I walked around town with "MUSIC PLAYER", "IMAGES" and "RINGTONES" being shouted at foghorn volume and with me trying to find a way to get rid of him; eventually I walked farther than his chubby body could take and I declined his suggestion to take a taxi.

With the very north-west of Iran now done, it was time to head to another top objective of mine: Alamut Valley and the Castles of the Assassins. The castles are more ruins and small walls than castles but it was also a great opportunity to see some of the big outdoors. First, to get there, the town of Qazvin, gateway to Alamut Valley. I arrived in the morning and pottered around, checked the net and then, as I headed back to my hotel I was stopped by some English-speaking locals who were horrified that I hadn't seen all of the sights that Qazvin had to offer. Their solution? Jump on the back of one guy's motorcycle and he will take me on a whirlwind tour of the main sights by night. Which I did and it was absolutely fantastic: partly for the motorcycle ride itself but also because we stopped at a cistern on the way back and met a local UN-sponsored traditional instrument maker who showed us around his workshop and played some tunes on the various flutes, harps and other instruments he had made.

Gazor Khan: home of one of the dozens of Assassins' Castles, famed for its cherries (but not its cherry liquor) and where some chap called Ali has his guesthouse. It's smack in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains and a few farms and a great place to spend a few days in peace and quiet and doing some walking. Which is what I did. For a little more money Ali dishes out dinner at 6.30 pm: a massive plate of rice (complete with the crispy bits that burned at the bottom of the saucepan) and a meat dish. Can I just say right now that the combination of climbing (small) mountains and then stuffing myself with great food in the evenings was an absolute highlight? Splendid.

Time then to head west, towards Kordestan in the very west of Iran. What's there, aside from Kurds? The town of Sanandaj, capital of Kordestan and another highlight, the small village of Palangan, renowned for its fish farming. To get there I stopped at Zanjan for the night then, rising the next day at the uncivilised hour of 6 am, caught a savari to Dandy. From there I hired a taxi to take me to Takeb via the Zoroastrian temple of Takht-e Soleiman. Zoroastrianism is a religion which started in ancient Iran and for which the natural world is an essential part. Takht-e Soleiman is highly prized by Zoroastrians because of the "effervescent lake" at its centre. It was a long way to go and my taxi driver happily chatted to me in Farsi, despite me miming frantically that I didn't understand anything that he was saying. We arrive: the taxi driver becomes a tour guide (he was allowed to enter free) and we spent 45 minutes looking around with explanations provided to me in Farsi. Arriving at Takeb I find the local savari to take me town hopping via Bijar to Sanandaj ... except that after two hours of waiting I'm still the only person wanting to go to Bijar. The solution? Pay for the ride dar baste (literally "doors closed", basically I pay for the whole car rather than wait for other people). It also meant that I could get the taxi driver to pick up a hitch-hiker who, by coincidence, was also going to Sanandaj and who took it upon himself to guide me through the various savari and bus stations on the way.

Palangan: a dot of a village wedged into a valley near the Iran-Iraq border and where people have nothing more than little shacks to live in and where the highlights are side-stepping the local cows, donkeys and chickens as you wander around dirt tracks. As I did so I met a chap who was loading his donkey with bits and bobs and who immediately invited me into his barren shack for some tea. I initially refused but he insisted: within minutes of me sitting down and sipping my tea his wife had brought me a plate of rice and a bowl of meat stew.

Swinging past Kermanshah to see the Sassinian bas reliefs at Taq-e Bostan, I headed next to Khorramabad for a stop-over before going to Esfahan, the city to see in Iran. A snag presented itself: to stay in budget hotels in Khorramabad you need to register with the local police (for reasons unexplained even by Lonely Planet). Can you guess what happens next? Yep, I met a guy (who speaks really good English) at the bus station in Kermanshah who insists that I'm his guest (he invited me to stay at his home near Khorramabad but that was 60 km out of the city: difficult). Arriving at Khorramabad he helps me buy my ticket to Esfahan the next day, finds the hotel for me, takes me to the police station (paying for the taxi), handles the paperwork for me (which was stamped and approved by a senior policeman with laughably badly dyed hair) and spends the afternoon showing me around. And Esfahan? A beautiful city, just go there. If you can't have a look at the photos to get a taster and see what you're missing.

By this time I'm down to my last week of my visa (and not wishing to extend it so that I can see the Caucasus before winter sets in) and have Kashan and Tehran to go. Kashan is a small city near the desert's edge a few hours south of Tehran, and famous for its traditional merchants' houses and rosewater. During my last visit there I met some people there and spent my time there visiting them (and sleeping for free on the floor of Abi's English language school). I did a few daytrips with them to Abyaneh (an ancient hillside village famous for its apples, but not its cider) and the weekend picnic spot at Niasar.

Tehran was a pleasant experience for a different reason: cousin Helen's Iranian husband has family there and so not only did I get to meet extended family during my last few days in Iran, I was treated like a king (complete with banquets). However, time waits for no man and soon it's time to board a bus from Tehran to Yerevan, in Armenia. The bus leaves at 2 pm which means that, yep, it's another overnight journey.

A+

Stephen