Nesfe Jahan, pt 55

Lake Ohrid, Macedonia. It’s amazing what you can do with a group of like minded individuals. Getting terribly lost in the middle of the night, for example. Or just waste time in the sun.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 54

Hasankeyf. Sometimes, I do get out of bed early. Most of the times I can’t be bothered though.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 53

Kashan. A medium city between Tehran and Esfehan, smack next to the Maranjab desert. The first place in Iran I don’t manage to find a host on hospitality exchange, even though I asked 24 hours before. But I manage to haggle the hotel for forty percent. Somehow, my dirty backpack and clothes are quite convincing. The city itself is mildly interesting. The hamman in the bazaar has tiny basins to wash, there is only one designated place to submerge yourself in. Dry town, water is very precious. Did anyone of you read the novel Dune? The only places where water flows abundantly is the palatial houses and the royal gardens. But I’m not here for that. I’m here for the desert.

Concerned family members might want to skip the next paragraph, until the first picture.

My preparations are a mixed bunch. I carry 9 liters of water, and food for 4 days. Clothes that have proved themselves in -25. But my maps are atrocious. Well, there are no good maps of nature in Iran. I must confess, my “maps” are a bunch of pictures taken from google maps. Covering ten thousand square kilometers. The only landmark that’s not huge is a tiny caravansary smack in the middle. My first destination. I take a taxi until the edge, and then start hitching. Two trucks later I’m staring at a huge military base. And a stop sign, with only Farsi underneath it. I stop, and look anxious at the guard. He waves me on. But I’m not so sure. I walk up to him, but I only manage to ask him where the sand is, and he continues to wave me on. I call an Iranian friend to translate. “He says their is no problem. The sign just says that if they motion for a vehicle to stop, it would be wise for that vehicle to stop. He’s also asking where the hell your car is”. I walk on, but i keep my head turned at all times, checking if they motion for me to stop. About half a kilometer down the line, I face my first hurdle. A branch in the road. I didn’t count on that. The road to the left has a small sign, incomprehensible to me. The other one just goes straight. Probably the right one, even though it leads a bit out of the way. Probably. I sit down. I have all the time in the world. But lo and behold! After ten minutes, I see a dust cloud rapidly growing in size. And of course they take me, right to the caravansary. Goal number one, check.

Welcome back, concerned family. The caravansary is small, and build right next to a spring. About five trees provide some shade when the sun is high. I thought it would be opened as a hotel, but it’s not. Ah well, I’m prepared for that. I hike two hours to get to the edge of a giant, dried out salt lake. There are about three things to see here. A huge field of dried up earth, shaped as polygons. A huge field of salt that has the shape of big earthworms. And a huge field salt balls, in average six centimeters in diameter. My sightseeing takes about 5 minutes. It’s so quiet I can hear my ears hallucinate some sound, so I wouldn’t go crazy. I pitch my tent. I eat. I’m bored. I wish I took a chair. Still three hours until sunset. Damn. Suddenly, I hear a very loud rumbling from far away. A slight panic. A sand storm? A salt storm? I have no idea, but the only thing I can do is to secure my tent for the worst, and wait. The sunset is disappointing, because their are barely any clouds. Night falls, and the stars are disappointing. The moon is waxing, and it’s so bright here it obscures the smaller stars. I notice two camp fires, far away. The Tehran liberal society. Casual sex department. I start walking towards one of them, but I realize quickly they’re too far. I would never be able to find my tent again, depending only on my Chinese made compass. And I’m too lazy to pack everything. I really wish they weren’t there, I was prepared to sleep alone here. But now, it’s just very very empty. I figure out where the rumbling comes from. It’s the airplanes departing from Tehran, pretty close to the ground. I can see the light of the plane very clear against the black sky. The rumbling is audible far away from them, sound travels slowly. The lack of buildings or plants to muffle the engines make the rumbling so loud. I notice the expiry date on the empty can of food is 89. I really hope it’s the Iranian calendar, even though I have no clue what they year is in Iran. Can’t be fixed now anyway. I have nothing left to do, so I go to bed.

At the end of the day, we drive to another village called Niasr, wholly unremarkable tourist attractions. We camp out in the park. Another great thing of Iran: it’s fully legal to camp inside parks, even in the city centre. Some cities even have special facilities for this. Even in this small town, toilets are open and lighted all night, and their is no vandalism. Iranians are full of respect, sometimes annoyingly so. The next day we visit a traditional house in Kashan, one where I have already been to. But this time, a first in Iran, I’m mobbed by a group of twenty schoolgirls. They all stand around me, taking pictures of the strange tourist with his yellow beard and blue eyes. I make a boo boo when I take one picture of them. They quickly point out that that’s not OK. Aha. The next day I take the early bus to Esfehan. An important place.

As a final remark, a proof that culture influences language. In Farsi, their are two words for desert. Kavir means sand desert, while biaban means dry, desolate place. In English, we have jungle, for subtropical forest, and forest. But Farsi has only one, translated by most dictionaries as jungle. About 2 weeks ago, I took a 3 hour bus ride to the jungle, to arrive in a forest. Tricky stuff.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 52

We arrive to Tehran, and I’m immediately reminded why I hate big cities. It takes me an hour to not find the subway station, and I look so confused I get a free lift on a motorcycle. Another mad ride. Here, everyone drives like a cab driver, and the cab drivers… well… they’re more expensive here, risk compensation I guess. Still not easy to find a decent restaurant, still not easy to find cheap tea places. Medium museums, the best of the country. I’ve got a sneaky suspicion this country is about buildings, nature and people. It really takes a different mindset to be a tourist here. But I’m done with Tehran, I’m giving up after 2 days. I’m going to Kashan, a small city, wedged between desert and mountains. Probably more my kind of place. And I do have to go into the desert.

I’m walking inside the grounds of the palace museum, and an old man asks me if I’m English. I reply I’m Belgian, and he seems a bit disappointed. He tells me that he’s looking for a native speaker to translate some things he’s found in Newsweek. I’m, surprised, but dare him to take his best shot. I notice the copy of Newsweek is inside of an Iranian newspaper, and when I ask he replies it’s to keep it clean. He’s been reading it for over a month, front to back, diligently underlining everything he doesn’t know. Next to him is a notebook, filled with the scribblings of tens of other tourists. Either he hasn’t found a decent dictionary, or he’s lonely. I explain him “standard fare”, “to swab the deck with something”. “pumped-up”. It gets funnier when we get to “chick”, “chick-flick” and “sexed up”. It gets really interesting when we get to “Freudianizing”. Never heard of the guy. I explain it in terms of “Khayyamizizing”. “mutagenic” is also complicated. He draws a bland when I talk about genes. He draws a blank when I talk about DNA. But his English is excellent, and I talk philosophy with him for a hour. Another tourist comes by and a three way conversation starts. And it falls apart over one word. What the other tourist, and me, call “what in Europe we see on the news”, he calls propaganda. And, in an instant, the two hours we spend is ripped as easy as a butterflies wing. He excuses himself brusquely, and goes off to have tea with a friend. When I get out of the museum, he’s coming back in to sit on his trusty bench. He walk up to me, and explains. “Don’t get me wrong, we really like you”. We. You. Both plural. This country is fucking hard, it can be amazingly subtle, melancholic and useless.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 51

Shah Alborz in Alamout valley, and the long, muddy road to Pichebon.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 50

Next stop : Qazvin. If you look it up, it will probably tell you it was a captial of the Safavid monarchy for a blink of an eye, and a couple of sites. But this is not why you go to Qazvin. You go there to visit the Alborz mountains, at it’s most interesting and stunning. Which is exactly what I do. I’m going to the Valley of the Assassins (tm).

But, of course, there are logistics to think about. When I leave Tabriz in the morning, I make sure to tell the driver I’m going to Qazvin. Not Teheran, the end stop of this bus. I tell the ticket salesman. I tell the seatchecker. I tell the guy sitting next to me. I tell everyone who makes eyecontact with me. Qazvin, Qazvin, Qazvin. When I wake up, it’s a bit later than it should be. I ask the driver where Qazvin is, and he points behind him. Sigh. I hop off at the next truck stop, and pay 4 euros for 40 minutes of driving a private cab back.

But luck is on my side. My host, S, is incredibly kind. And also a mountaineer. As are all his friends. Pretty much perfect for my plans. When I enter his house, his mother greets me enthousiastically, and extends her hand warmly. She wears no scarf. Sattelite tv, illegal in this country, is showing persian language news about the middle east. There’s a bottle of Absolut in the closet. And I’m treated like a king.

In the evening, we meet up with S’s friend H. H is his mentor, a died in the wool mountaineer with a passion. When he hears I want to spend a couple of days in the valley, and not just take charter a taxi for a day, he becomes deferrential. “I think it’s not a good idea, it’s dangerous” “Ok, but why?” “It’s cold, small villages” “I understand H, but what exactly is the danger? The cold is no problem, I have good gear” “It’s the villagers” “But what about them? Are they going to kidnap me?” “No no, you just have to be very careful” “But why???? What’s dangerous about them” “Just, watch your money. Tell me about what you did on your trip before.”

I knew what was happening, they just wanted to make sure what I was doing before they let me play without training weels. Partly because they are experienced in dangerous situatios, and they’re used to judging who to take and who not. And partly because they’re Iranian. Being a guest is a fully passive experience. But more on that later. I spot a book that is very familiar to me on his desk. I open it, and quickly find what I’m looking for.

“Here, H. I really like this passage”.

He reads attentively for a minute or so, and then he looks at me, eyes glintstering, head nodding slowly.

“Yes! Yeesss!”

Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyaat. It opens doors here. So does seeing a concert of Shajaranian.

I tell H briefly about my trip until now, the gear I have, and my plans for transport and sleeping in the valley. And it’s on. He opens a couple of maps, frantically scribbling the latin names of some tiny villages. Ghazor Khan, with Alamout Castle. Home of Hassan al Shabbas. And adding a little dot of own, Pidgibon. And, when he talks about Pidgibon, he is again deferential. Hard to get there. No cars go at this time of a year. Very steep road. Very cold. But I know this game. If it was not worth it, he wouldn’t be talking about it. When somebody keeps talking about something in the negative, but doesn’t drop the topic, it’s probably going to be something very special. And, at that moment, I know I’m going to Pidgebon.

The next day, it takes about 4 hours for the shared taxi to climb up the mountains, driving dramatically through the clouds, and then descending again into the valley. Before we even make it to the end though, the cab runs out of gas and me and the other passangers are forced to hitch our way out. No discount though. We make it to Moallem Khelaye easily, and there I spend about 2 hours waiting for the bus to leave for Ghazor Khan. The 3 other passangers are over 50, wearing shabby woolen sweaters, and warm hats. Old, wrinkled faces with white beards. Permanently muddy shoes. One of them offers me a sheet of his huge bag of bread, and tsks me when I spill a square centimetre of it falls to the ground. I’m guessing they’re not the most affluent people in the world. But it’s quite beautiful here. A thin strip of trees surrounded by grass hills, set against bigger, rocky mountain crest. I still had no idea what this valley had in store for me.

Alamout Castle is a very impressive place. Even though no walls remain, it’s easily to see how defensible it is. Set on top of a big rock, it seems tiny for what it was. But it’s hard to navigate alone, let alone with an assaulting force. Carcassonne is nothing compared to this. Supposedly, it also has a great view on the valley, for advance warning. But, in a stroke of bad luck, the whole site is covered in thick fog. I can’t see anything further that 30 meters from me. Definately not a view. Damn, I can’t even see the castle from the base, no overview. So, I decide to hitch a ride with some visiting Swiss down to the main road, and I go onwards. Towards Pidgibon. I arrive to the village at he end of the asphalted road, Garmarud. Population 2000 in summer, 400 in winter. About 100 meter wide, limited by sheer rockface. A tiny, tantalizing view of the snow capped summit of Shah Alborz. On the other side of the valley, a small village build on the mountainside. Clinging to it with hairpin dirt roads as if it’s fighting for it’s life. A very beautiful place. I spend the night there.

The next day, I wake up early, at sunrise. I decide to take all my gear, it possible from this route to make it all the way to the caspian, but in this season, all bets are off. A shepard asks me for a cigarette. And he’s dirt poor. Litterally. His mud caked fingers can barely grab it from the pack because of the cold, I have to do it for him. I set off on the muddy road, 17 km of uphill trekking before me. But not technical, I’m just following the road. There aren’t any alternative ways up, unless you’re a climber working in team. About 1 hours of climbing later, my jaws drops. I’m looking at Shah Alborz, big, very snowy. The valley beneath me is filled with fog, slowly moving upwards in a mesmerizing dance. The only sounds I can hear is the occasional tiny rock that falls down, due to subtle changes in temperature, and the constant trickling of  water from melting snow. And, for the next three hours, it stays like this. Inspiring, beautiful. Clean, cold air. Not another soul in sight. Just the road. It twist and turns so much I can’t predict where I will be in 300 meters. And steadily climbing. After four hours, I finally make it to the snow line. A funny feeling when I heard that first crunch under my feet. Only a week ago I was sweating in Turkey. And I will be sweating tomorrow too. But now, it’s cold. Not too cold though, I’ve lived in Berlin in winter, it’s perfectly manageable. And I see my destination: about 20 houses, huddles together on a white slope that goes on for another 600 meters. A mix of clapboard and more traditional, often abandoned houses. Small creeks everywhere to carry off the melting water. It’s gorgeous. Mostly because I worked so hard to get there. I ask a man how to get to the village store. While he explains, about twenty kilos worth of snow starts slipping from his sheet-iron roof and falls a meter from him. My bellylaugh is heard throughout a community. I get lost though, and an elderly lady decides to guide to me there. I’m slightly embarred that with her 60 years she jumps over the stream better than I do. And it’s good for me that she helps me, because going to the village store involves shouting the name of the shopkeeper for five minutes at the right spot. A 15 year old girl, but it’s weekend. My Farsi is not good enough to ask if they have a school here. I take one quick glance to check the road further, to the Caspian. It climbs another six hundred meters, and the villagers tell me there’s half a meter snow for a large part of the way. I fold, and head back to Garmarud. Downhill, it only takes me two hours, cutting through the hairpins. At the bottom, a shepard’s family is picknicking by the stream and invites me for tea and lunch, The father’s name is Hoessein. His elder son is Hoessein. So is the middle one, and so is the youngest one. I’m guessing they’re Shi’a. I can’t manage to get the name of the woman, she’s distant. I catch a ride with some youths from Tehran, playing around with a 4WD, to Qazvin.

The next day, S invited me to go hiking with the mountaineering group in the mountains of Gilan. A completly different world. Very mountainous, but it’s all covered with lush forest. It’s close to the caspian, very moist. Apart from the ruggedness, and the rice fields dotting the landscape, this could be anywhere in north-western Europe. A different world. On my first day in Iran, I heard that they have all four seasons. I was misinformed. They have all four seasons all the time. I enjoy the company of the others. Going in to nature is the favorite passtime of the liberals in Iran. As soon as we are out of sight of the main road, a third of the woman take off their scarves, and music is playign form a couple of cellphones. A very pleasant atmosphere. I laugh loudly when I realize I’m shocked at seeing a bare female neck. It’s amazing what you can get used to.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 49

Qajar palace, Tabriz. Revolution in 1979 happened for many reasons. One of them, leveraged by powerful leaders, is that Qajar shahs were very rich. And the people very poor. Very beautiful place though.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 48

I’m the only tourist on the minibus to the Iranian border. There is only one other man who speaks English. Unfortunately. It turns out he’s loud, obnoxious, and a terrible listener who can’t even give a straight answer to a direct question. Sigh. After hitchhiking, I feel that paying for a ride should give me the right to be left alone. But no such luck. As we walk to customs, he asks me if I know any farsi, and I reply with “salaam”, glad that after 30 minutes he shows the slimmest interest in something else than himself. But he asks me if I know “shalom”. “no”. “it’s HEBREW, you know. From ISRAEL”. God, I didn’t need that. I wasn’t nervous about crossing the border, too much research. But he was kinda stealing my moment. I speed march to the buildings, and the Iranian side is kind enough to give me preferential treatment, letting me in before the masses of Turks and Iranians. They give free maps and travel advice too. Nice people. I exchange part of my cash (Iran doesn’t have visa or international bank cards due to embargo) for 70 bills of approximately 3 euros, the highest denomination. I start to figure out the best way to get out of there, involving 20 Iranians standing around me in a circle, when I’m saved by a suit. An Iranian lawyer living in Istanbul, very calm, very congenial, offers me to share a taxi with him to Tabriz. Together with another passenger, it would come to 6 euro’s for 4 hours ride. Fine by me. He’s already found the other passanger. The ogre from the minibus. And, in that moment, I know exactly what that means. I quickly nab the font seat, with a look of “I’m a tourist, I’m entitled”. And what happens is exactly as I saw it. For 4 full hours the oaf bellows, emphasized by banging my seat, discusses every stupid news topic under the sun. As I exchange looks with the driver and the lawyer, I know they think the same thing. Maybe someone should put up the money for his seat, and leave him standing. But Iranians are too nice for that. I can only sush him for five minutes at a time, and end up getting a massive headache.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 47

I apologize for the lack of updates, but apparently, here in Iran, I am experiencing some “technical difficulties” in accessing my blog. And even more sharing my pictures  So, unfortunately, it will be harder for me to keep everyone as up to date as I managed to do during my time in Turkey. Rest assured that I am having an incredible time here. I have been in a tiny, isolated hamlet in the snow, I have seen the lush forested hills of Gilan. And tomorrow, I am going to Tehran, aka “the big migraine”. Many, many good experiences, days are very long and full. Keeping notes for later. It’s a complex country, but it’s very beautiful.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 46

Capadoccia. Objects may appear larger than they are.