Finally, after almost two months in the country, we made it to the Iranian capital, Tehran. We heard that Noruz was a great time to visit as most people return to their villages or hometowns for the New Year celebrations leaving Tehran much quieter and much less smoggier than it usually is. This proved true – the roads were very quiet, it was possible to get a seat on the metro and the air was fine to breathe! We headed to a lovely area […]
Iran
Couchsurfing in an Iranian Village
Aside from our first 2 weeks on Qeshm island, the following 6 weeks in Iran were almost exclusively spent staying in cities. There was one night in the desert and one other exception- when we couchsurfed in the village Nasrola Mahaleh, (near Fouman) in Gilan Province, with our host Hamed and his parents. This was quite a different experience and just wonderful. The village was in a green rural valley in the north of Iran. Cows and other animals wandered freely along the roads. […]
Iranian Village Wedding
We had the opportunity to attend an Iranian wedding party with our couchsurfing host Hamed. It was just across the road from our host’s house in the village of Nasroleh Mahaleh, near Fouman in Gilan Province. The bride was in a typical white western style wedding dress and had her hair unveiled (!!) but that’s where the similarities with weddings as we know them ended. There were hundreds of people there, it seemed the entire village was present, but instead of sitting around tables, […]
Qazvin
Once the capital of all Iran, Qazvin these days is a smallish city with a population around 400,00 and home to a few pleasant sights. The main reason for us and many other tourists to come to Qazvin is the city’s proximity to the Alamut Valley & Castle of the Assassins. We had an amazing day trip exploring these places and it was great to be in the mountains again. But Qazvin itself was also nice to wander around. The highlight of the town […]
Alamut Valley & Castle of the Assassins
Don’t these names, the Alamut Valley & the Castle of the Assassins conjure up some kind of dramatic image? To me they sound so exotic and exciting. I had been looking forward to visiting them since I first arrived in Iran, but I had to wait to the last couple of weeks as we started in the south of the country and this area is in the north. We hired a local couchsurf host who couldn’t host us but helped us find a hotel […]
Iran’s most beautiful & interesting spot?
Deciding which place is the most beautiful or most interesting in Iran is a little futile… there are of course so many fascinating places. You can fall in love (as I did) with the moonscape-like emptiness of Qeshm, the colours of Hormoz, the history of Yazd, the Jolfa river valley & the 360 degree stunning snowy views from Babak castle (OMG -incredble place- blog post still to come!), the historical village of Kharanaq, the mosques of Esfahan or the bedazling shrine in Shiraz. Each […]
What’s different in Iran?
We encountered a few curious things in Iran, things we would not see in our own country, New Zealand. Of course the language, the landscapes, the food and the people are different, as they are in every country. I might get round to writing a post about the food one day and some of the differences I touch on in my various blogposts. But here are some things I can think of that stood out for me as ‘different’ in Iran, that I haven’t […]
Dezful – West Iran
Dezful doesn’t even get a mention in the Lonely Planet Guide for Iran but we had a fantastic stay here and used it as a base to get to a couple of amazing places – actually some of our favourite spots in a country of outstanding destinations – but more on those in a separate post. Dezful itself is a town of around 420,000 people located in the west of Iran, about halfway between where we started our trip in the south (Bandar Abbas) […]
Persepolis – Ancient Persia
Known as Takht-e Jamshid in Iran or to others as Persepolis (the name the Greeks gave it), these ancient ruins offer a glimpse of the grandeur of the ancient Achaemenid Empire. An easy day trip from the southern city of Shiraz, Persepolis and Shiraz itself feature on almost all Iran travel itineraries. (More about our time in Shiraz here). Now the history in Iran is quite long and complex and while most Iranians we met refered with ease to this empire and that era […]
Shiraz, Iran.
After a seven or eight hour bus ride overnight from Esfahan we arrived in Shiraz nice and early. Thankfully we could check in at our hotel (Niayesh) upon arrival and rest for a few hours then catch up on some work/ trip planning before exploring the city. We didn’t really know where we’d go when we first headed out in the late afternoon, just that we’d have a walk around the neighbourhood and perhaps find something to eat. We came across a mosque that […]