Day 21 & 22 November 7th & 8th - Back to Tehran

Day 21 – November 7^th

The time has come to say goodbye to Kerman. I have enjoyed the 4 ‘slower’ days in this laid-back city and am now ready to face the hustle and bustle of Tehran again. I leave Kerman at 2pm and arrive at my hotel in Tehran around 6pm. I decide to catch up with emails and my blog and have a night in. Plenty to see and do tomorrow....

 Day 22 – November 8^th

After lots of to-ing and fro-ing in my mind, I decide to forego the sightseeing on my last day i.e. I won’t be visiting the Shas’ palaces in the North of Tehran, but will go antique hunting in a few shops suggested by The Lonely Planet... I start out at Di Rouz Em Rouz Anciens Livres, where I expect to find older, rare books on Iran in English, French and German...  But alas we unfortunately live in a world where few people are interested in old books... The bookstore is in the process of being turned into a Cafe’... No sign of any books. The owner Mr. Afshar isn’t there, but I’m allowed into the store by Elia, a handsome young Iranian (the better-looking version of Adrien Brody!), who explains to me that Mr. Afshar can no longer live from the meagre book sales. My disappointment shows and I suggest to Elia that Mr.Afshar should nevertheless include a part of his rare book collection on the Cafe’ shelves, as it would be a pity to ‘lose’ these to storage. He promises to pass on the message. Elia is a Christian and has visited Rome and St. Peter’s. He asks me to pray with him, but I have to politely decline, as it’s been about 30 years since I last prayed in the 'Catholic church' sense. I leave Elia headed for Manucheri Street, the hub of currency exchange as I am to discover, but also the location of Moses Baba’s antique shop (and opposite the ‘closed’ British Embassy). I forgot, though, that today is Saturday i.e. the Jewish Sabbath (he is one of the remaining members of Tehran’s shrinking Jewish Community – there are about 25,000 Jews left in Iran) and I find Moses’ shop door bolted. No worries, there are plenty of antique stores in the area and I lose myself in the unique pieces I find in a tucked away alley chock-a-block with antiques. I find some beautiful old books, handwritten in Arabic calligraphy, some pages decorated with red and gold borders... These are hand-written books of Sa’adi and Hafez poetry published in the mid-18^th century during the Qajar era... Price tags? $750 and 1500. Not this year, Tania! I leave the shop, reach the main road (right opposite the now closed British Embassy) and am about to get into a taxi, but a little voice tells me I’ll regret not buying one of the old books I’ve seen. The shop owner offers me only a negligible discount. This time I’ll have to pass, but not completely...;-) I walk out with a little gem with a more modest price tagJ

The taxi takes me to the ‘US Den of Espionage’ – the ex-American embassy. The posters and murals on the outside walls of the building are quite interesting, as is the worn out relief of the United States great seal... Take a look. By the way the building I photographed on my Day 1 blog, wasn’t the ex-American embassy after all. Sorry!

For dinner I meet my ‘desert’ guide, Mehrdad, and a few friends of his and we have an interesting evening out with lots of laughter, but also talking about my travel experience around Iran and my impressions of the country. Mehrdad has also brought a client of his with him... An Italian runner who has just completed a 250 km run through the Dasht-e Kavir desert in 4 days, with Mehrdad and his team following him by car. Impressive, but a little crazy!

Time to go now...:-( At 10pm I take a taxi to the airport for my 3am flight back to Istanbul and London. I have really enjoyed the sights, sounds and experiences of the last 3 weeks. It’s a land definitely worth visiting. I’ll be returning!

Dat 20 November 6th - Kerman

Today is Kerman day. I sleep in and get off to a pretty slow start. In the hotel lobby I meet two Spanish travellers who have lost their Lonely Planet and ask whether they can join me and my guide book exploring the city. We start out at the mausoleum of the Sufi mystic Moshtaq Ali Shah (the person responsible for adding the fourth string to the ‘setar’, who was famous for his singing, to the point where he fell out of favour with the religious leaders and was stoned to death), followed by a visit to the 15^th century Masjed-e Jameh (where Moshtaq Ali Shah met his death),  the early Islamic era Imam Mosque, the partly restored, beautiful Golshan Caravanserai and the Ganj Ali Khan Square, a good place to observe Iranian families relaxing on the courtyard benches... Somehow I suddenly find myself back at the Vakil Chaikhaneh teahouse sipping my tea, whilst my Spanish friends savour a lemon flavoured ‘qalyan’...

At 2 pm I meet Ahmad, my guide, at the Masjed-e Jameh. He and his business partner Jalal are in the process of transforming an old traditional Kerman house into a guest house for tourists and they want to show me the result of the restoration work to get some feedback. I like the layout of the small hotel and the attention given in the rooms to details such as small wardrobes, niches, arched doors. Main piece of advice from my side... To please remove the neon lights and replace them with more soft lighting... I soon learn that they have a far bigger problem though... Three quarters of the way through the renovation work they were informed that a large transformer will be placed right in front of the new guest house. I soon find myself being filmed as a potential tourist/guest stating that I would not spend the night in a hotel room next to a transformer because of safety concerns. This footage will now be given to the Kerman Tourist authority and the Court dealing with Jalal’s request that the transformer be placed in a nearby park... I may still become famous in this lifetime...:-) My performance is rewarded with a cup of tea at Jalal’s home. I finish off my day in Kerman with a visit to the beautiful Hamam-e Ganj Ali Khan, another dream-like bath house (where one pool hall leads to the next, all beautifully decorated with simple frescoes) and lastly to the more disturbing Museum of the Holy Defence, dedicated to the Iran-Iraq war. Much of the exhibition is in Arabic script (i.e. impossible for me to decipher), but the photographic documentation is quite striking and at times quite gruesome. What a waste of precious young lives. It’s sad. Soon after the Shah fled and the Islamists took over in 1979, Saddam Hussein (supported by the US) decided to exploit Iran’s apparent weakness (as the ‘old’ army had been dissolved due to its allegiance to the Shah) to attack Iran and lay claim to the oil rich Khuzestan region. Iraq’s aggression actually ended up having the opposite effect as it galvanised Iranian nationalism and support for the newly-born Islamic Republic. Iran countered Iraq’s military superiority through the sheer number of fighters driven by a sense of righteousness and religious zeal, ‘basijis’ prepared to die as martyrs for the cause. On occasions such as Moharram, commemorating  the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, bazaars, roadsides, city walls are covered with images of young men who died as ‘shahid’ (martyrs) during the 8 year Iran-Iraq War.

I walk back to the hotel passing by two interesting architectural structures – the Yakhchal Moayedi, a conical adobe structure built in the 16^th century to store ice, and the Kerman National Library with its beautiful column front supporting vaulted ceilings.

Day 19 November 5th - Kerman area (Rayen and Mahan)

If you’re gate crashing the party you can’t set the rules... The ‘Spanish’ tour is leaving at 8 am and, much to my chagrin, I have to get up at 7amL

First stop Rayen, about 100 km away from Kerman. Some of you may well have heard about Bam, the 2000 year old desert mud-brick citadel oasis, once ‘the’ tourist highlight of a trip to Iran. An earthquake in 2003 raised it almost completely to the ground. Only a part of it has been reconstructed. Given the 3 hours necessary to get there, most tourists (such as myself) nowadays opt to visit Rayen, closer to Kerman, and also a remarkable ancient adobe citadel ringed by ramparts and towers built by the Sassanians over 1000 years ago. We relish the fantastic views of the surrounding desert and mountains from the roofs and ramparts and have fun wandering through the nooks and crannies of the ‘shahrestan’, the area within the citadel where the dwellings of the ‘common people’ were to be found. The governor’s palace has been restored and gives an idea of the luxury he lived in compared with his neighbours.

After a quick lunch stop, we visit Mahan and the tree-lined fountain terraces, palace and hammam of the Bagh-e Shahzde gardens built by the Quajars in the late 19^th century... A refreshing break from the heat of the surrounding desert.
Mahan is also famous for the mausoleum of the famous Sufi, dervish mystic Shah Ne’matollah Vali, built in 1436. The highlights of this stop are witnessing the spiral calligraphy of the walls and ceiling of Shah Ne’matollah’s tiny prayer room and crawling up the narrow, old minaret to command a view of the mausoleum’s beautiful turquoise tiled dome against the mountain backdrop. I almost got stuck with my backpack whilst climbing down...

Enrique and Antonio carry on with our taxi to the Kaluts and I return to Kerman with Oscar, where we head for the Kerman bazaar and the Vakil Chaykhaneh (teahouse) in the old hammam. Check out the photos, it’s a very atmospheric place... Arches, vaulted ceiling, beautiful lamps... I’m really getting into this form of Iranian ‘hanging out’... Spend the afternoon in a beautiful hammam, sitting/lying on a ‘takht’ (daybed), sipping my tea and nibbling away at date biscuits. If I hadn’t stopped smoking years ago I’d have also gone for the apple ‘qalyan’ (water pipe)...
Oscar catches his bus to Mashhad in the North West of the country to visit the shrine of the 8^th Imam, Reza, Iran’s holiest site (one for my next visit!) and I spend a relaxing evening at the hotel.