All posts related to travel and touring in Iran.
The biggest risk of travel in Iran is not going to jail (or from getting shot or ripped off, as is the case in the streets of Europe and America). Here the risk is getting your gourd smashed in a traffic accident! Or at least think you’re out of your mind after witnessing what Iranian drivers are capable of. I’m in an incredibly beautiful land with people who are insane drivers but nonetheless have stolen my heart with endless kindness and generosity.
The biggest risk of travel in Iran is not going to jail (or from getting shot or ripped off, as is the case in the streets of Europe and America). Here the risk is getting your gourd smashed in a traffic accident! Or at least think you’re out of your mind after witnessing what Iranian drivers are capable of. I’m in an incredibly beautiful land with people who are insane drivers but nonetheless have stolen my heart with endless kindness and generosity.
The vista from Babak Castle – the home of the 9th-century hero who resisted the hated Arab rulers of Iran – is mind-mindbogglingly beautiful. To get to see the view, though, requires plenty of stamina during the arduous two-hour trek up and down two mountains. Bābak Khorramdin is thought of as a combination of Robin Hood, guerrilla fighter and a symbol..
I shot out of bed this morning but it wasn’t until later that I realized why. At breakfast, I felt the butterflies in my stomach. Then the image of the mountains I will face today flashed in my head and, viola, it finally dawned on me why I’m so zapped: I’m escaping Tehran once again. I’m..
On the coast of Iran’s Caspian Sea there is a museum that can’t decide what it is. It’s a museum of weapons, lots and lots of weapons, from 500-year-old daggers to Soviet tanks – enough weapons for one to question mankind’s sanity. But then step upstairs and there’s a vivid glimpse of the lifestyle of long-exiled..
Came across these mindbogglingly beautiful scenes just south of the Sefid Rud Dam in Gilan Province, while driving on Highway 1 from Manjil, Gilan, to Qazvin.
A postal route operated here when North America wasn’t yet settled by Europeans. International traders slept here in style 200 years before there was even such a thing as the United States. But today the caravanserai of Zafaraniyeh sits empty and abandoned, like thousands of other ancient jewels all over Iran, victim of time, cultural amnesia..
Near SABZEVAR, Iran – Iran is so old that sometimes even aimless tourists get to discover a village chock full of antiquities seemingly unnoticed by a government overwhelmed with the upkeep of thousands of similar jewels. It’s mid-August afternoon and wife Saeideh and I are speeding toward Sabzevar on the highway that used to be..
As any tourist would attest, Iranians can get extreme with for their hospitality – which is one of the rewards of living in Iran and something I greatly miss when I’m not in Iran. Persians see offers of hospitality as essential to one’s expression of dignity. Someone who does not profusely offer hospitality is seen..
IMAM REZA SHRINE, MASHHAD, Iran – Beneath giant chandeliers and surrounded by bewilderingly intricate mirror artwork and calligraphy sits this nation’s equivalent of the Wailing Wall. Dar-al Hojjeh is an immense underground hall adjacent to the burial chamber of Imam Reza (Persian: امام رضا), whose 1000-year-old shrine is Iran’s spiritual nucleus and the world’s largest..
IMAM REZA SHRINE, MASHHAD, Iran – It’s called the Window of Steel, through which millions of Shia pilgrims try to find hope and healing. For the tourist, it can provide a fascinating – and at times heart-wrenching – peak into mankind’s universal urge to touch something greater than himself. The Window of Steel (a.k.a Fulad..
Khorramabad, Lorestan’s Ethnography Museum is housed in the 800-year-old Falak-ol-Aflak Castle on top of a hill by the same name. It is Iran’s largest ethnography museum. It includes dozens of life-size or near life-size dioramas depicting the lifestyle and life events of the nomadic Lur tribes, who populate Lorestan. These include funerals – during which..