This morning we visited the Zoroastrian temple Ateshkadeh here in Yazd, one of the most important in Iran. A part from the garden and a room with a fire continuously on since 460 AD, there’s not much to see.
On a bench of the garden we took a couple of pictures with some local ladies… or so we thought! The husband in reality was able to zoom the mobile phone camera and only captured Luca and me, leaving out the two ladies. Shame. I thought he wouldn’t mind because he was the one who asked to take pictures of the four of us. But he kept the good ones for himself.
Amir Chakmaq Square
Later we went to Amir Chakmaq Square and its complex: a mosque, the Hosseinieh (so are called the buildings that commemorate an Imam), a small swimming pool with no water and a qanat (a well of the particular Iranian water system) that is now a gym (there are also some shows with bodybuilders from time to time).
Below the Hosseinieh there are some small shops. Among them a kebab restaurant, specialized in sheep heart and liver. Here we had lunch with the above mentioned skewers and dazi (but the one we had in Kashan was much better), later on a stop at a pastry shop and then quickly to the hotel because I needed the toilet.
This morning I bought a hejab, that scarf that covers your forehead and goes below the chin, covering the ears too,because the scarf that I was using to cover my hair keeps falling down and I have to check it all the time. Because I don’t know how people could react if my scarf fell in the middle of the crowd. Probably they wouldn’t be shocked, but annoyed yes. Better not to run the risk.
Yazd Old Town
After a coffee we walked around the old town of Yazd, made of clay and straw. The base of the walls is clay bricks, that are covered with a mixture of clay and straw instead of mortar.
Walking around these little alleys is magical. They are very narrow and still you can find a car sometimes; I don’t know how they can drive here, I would rather walk all the time.
All houses are surrounded by walls about 2-3 meters high, so you walk this alleys between walls.
9.30am. We are along the highway, waiting for a bus from Tehran to Yazd. There aren’t many, unfortunately. Probably the first one will be around 11am, we’ve been told. There are many buses, but they all go to Isfahan. How silly, I should have checked last night, we could have taken the 8am train to Yazd; we’re going to waste the whole day traveling (it’s 4 and half hours to Yazd from here). In Tehran we got a bus so quickly, we didn’t even enter the E-Jonub bus station, they picked us up on the road, so I thought it would be equally easy to go to Yazd. No, all buses go to Isfahan. The guidebook advised me about this. I should have listened.
1pm. We are at a gas station for a break. Our bus arrived at about 11.30am, luckily! A bit old, compared to the one we took to Kashan. And always really hot.
7.40pm We are at the Silk Road Hotel in Yazd, waiting for our dinner. The room is not as nice as the Ehsan House in Kashan, but it’s only 30 euro (for 2 people, breakfast included). I used the 500.000 RIL that I found in the street to buy a long dress, because the jacket is too hot.
We’re having ram tonight too (two days ago we saw one on the street that had just been slaughtered, it was still moving and blood was dripping on the sidewalk), chicken curry and banana shake. I love the ceramics they use for cups and bowls.
We are spending about 60 euro per day, much less than the 100 we estimated, good!
A German lady asked me to take her picture. Her friend and she (both about 50 yo), a scarf covering their hair like peasants in the 40s, are really loving their Iranian trip. Apparently they are particularly happy/excited because here they’ve found beer, but maybe they didn’t realize it’s non-alcoholic. There are many Germans traveling, maybe because in Germany there’s not the common (wrong) belief that Iran is dangerous.
We arrived in Yazd at about 5pm and we only managed to see the Masjed-e Jameh, the mosque overlooking Yazd. Beautiful at night too.
I can smell baked bread. They make this round bread about 50cm large, thin, baked in a round hoven, sometimes with fennel or sesame seeds, they buy 2 or 20 pieces, carry it around in their arms, with no waste of plastic or paper. Then they offer it to us for breakfast or dinner and we love it. For the sandwiches we have at lunch they use a bread similar to baguette, but soft and chewy.
Fin’s Garden
2h15pm We’re back to the hotel to drink a cup of tea and rest a bit. Today we had our share of walking. We went to Fin’s Garden, Bagh-e Fin, a Unesco World Heritage Site, where’s there’s a magic source of water, because they can’t tell where it comes from. Here Amir Kabir, a Prime Minister that annoyed the wrong people, was first kept prisoner and then killed, while he was bathing in the hammam.
While we were waiting for the bus to go back to town (the gardens are about half an hour by bus from the town), a shop keeper gave me a terrible perfume (here rose water is quite popular, but the one he gave me was particularly old) and in exchange he asked for a pen from Italy. It was an exchange I did happily.
Bazaar in Kashan
Back to town, an elder lady that hold my hand for quite some time wanted us to take the taxi to the bazaar; I think she was disappointed when I told her we preferred to walk; I guess she hoped to be helpful.
At the bazaar, Ali (a “guide” of the bazaar; basically he catches tourists and takes them to see his “cousins'” shops) showed us his friend’s carpets, but the friend got upset when he heard Ali was offering the carpets at 50 dollars, while their cost (for tourists) is 100. Maybe Ali knew the price is 50 for Iranians; but I don’t think so; probably his friend wanted to negotiate a bit more. Anyway, we couldn’t have bought a carpet for any price. We are at the beginning of our trip, we would have to carry the carpet in our backpack for 10 more days.
Another sandwich, this time with sausage, and later here, at our super quiet hotel, because I couldn’t walk any longer. It’s also very hot, I wasn’t expecting it. My winter coat is too heavy, but I can’t take it off because I need something to cover my behind.
Abbasi is one of the traditional houses of Kashan.
Earlier we were at the Tabatabei, another house with beautiful plasters and mirrors; then at Hammam-e Sultan Mir Ahmad, a beautiful turkish bath, very well renovated, rich in majolica, one of the best of Iran; the roof has small domes partially in glass, to let only the right amount of light in. And here, the Abbasi, is a traditional house with 5-6 floors.
Almost all houses are doing some renovations. Walls are made in sand and straw and plasters are very delicate, they need costant maintenance.
Eating in Iran
With tea (called chai, like in India) or coffee they bring you spiced biscuits or dates. In Tehran I saw people taking dates from trays at the entrance of some shops; I thought they were stealing, but they were actually gifted. Where we had dinner in Tehran there were some delicious pralines, that were offered before dinner.
Tea for two in Kashan
The Dizzi is served in a bowl narrow and tall; inside there’s a soup and the meat with chickpeas. You have to pour the soup in a dish, while meat and chickpeas are crushed inside the bowl. At the end the mixture is put in a plate and eaten with bread. Luca says he hasn’t eaten anything this good in his whole life. He was very satisfied.
We ate a lot and all delicious, all for 10 euro. It’s nothing, if you consider that in Italy you don’t buy a pizza for one person at 10 euro. But we have a 100 euro per day budget, and we have to pay attention to what we spend. Today it’s ok, it’s Valentine’s, but we can’t afford this every day.
Anyway, walking back to the guesthouse I found a banknote of the same amount of money… 10 euro, that here feel like 50!
We are in a traditional house in Kashan because Sarah Tabibzadeh invited us to see a movie that she directed. She’s a young Iranian director that we met this morning on the bus from Tehran. She even paid the taxi to the town centre. It probably wasn’t expensive, but it was a nice thing to do.
Sarah’s movie is “Lady with Flower-hair”; it’s the story of a girl, who is very sad because flowers grow among her hair and when she drinks tea she also has to water her hair; this thing makes her feel out of place all the time. One night while she was walking around town she thought she saw someone similar to her, but it was only a drawing. At the end she kills herself and finally her nature makes sense because from her buried body many flowers are born. A short cartoon-movie, similar to Persepolis. Sarah reminds me of the young generation that don’t like much the restrictions they have to live with. On the bus she was dressed in Western style, more traditional at the movie presentation, very elegant and modern at the same time. It was very kind of her to invite us to the movie.
7.33pm We are in the dining room of our guesthouse. In the middle there’s a pool with red fish.
Kashan is famous for the bazaar, that we’re going to see tomorrow because today it’s Friday and it’s closed, and the traditional 19th Century houses, built with clay and straw. The Khan-e-Ameriha where we went for Sarah’s movie is huge. It’s formed by many buildings and has 8 courtyards, the largest ones with a pool in the middle; in the Summer the wind comes down to the water, collects it and brings a bit of freshness to the underground floors; there’s a boutiqute hotel now among the various buildings of the Khan (that means “house”, while Ameriha is the name of a famous Iranian family, like Medicis, Sarah told me). They are restoring another part of the house to make the hotel bigger. It will be huge. I don’t even ask how much it might cost to sleep there.
Our hotel is also in a traditional house and is very nice. We pay about 40 euro per night; it would be at least double the price in Europe. The rooms with three windows (like ours) are for less important guests; those with 5 or 7 windows are suites, and were once reserved to the most illustrious guests.
While we were walking around town a guy invited us to his home: it’s been owned by his family for 180 years; he lives in Tehran, but in the days off he comes here to renovate it: he hopes to open a hotel in a couple of years. It has the usual central courtyard, with no pool but some ancient trees, and various buildings around.
I guess I will sleep very well tonight. Last night I couldn’t sleep because the heating was too high, even with the window open it was too hot and I couldn’t turn it down, and there was a lot of noise from the road. Here it’s perfect. The heating is on, but not too hot (and the room is big, three times the one we had yesterday; there’s even a matress for a third guest, if anyone wants to visit us) and it’s super quiet. The food is also very good. With 10 euro we ate ram stew with peas and carrots and a dish with aubergines and other vegetables and I can’t remember what else. All with some nice white rice with a splash of saffron and a lovely yogurt. After the sandwiches of the last days it was a bless. Some Germans were complaining with a girl from Taiwan that they only eat well when they cook at home (they’ve been living in Tehran since last Summer), because the only vegetarian dish is falafel (it’s probably not easy to be vegetarian in Iran).
We don’t know yet what we are doing tomorrow. We could spend the night in the desert for 70 dollars (for two people) but with the cold nights of this time of the year maybe it’s not the best time to try. We’ll decide in the morning.
8.52pm We are sitting on the sofas around the pool of the hotel drinking tea. It’s a bit chilly now. It must be beautiful in Summer, to chill out here after the heat of the day.
I must improve my ability to wash after peeing. Like in many other countries, here you can’t throw the toilet paper into the toilet, so rather than keeping it in the basket for days, I wash like locals do (near the toilet there’s a tap for water); but so far I haven’t learnt how to do it without getting completely wet.
At the end the Visa that worried so much me was not a problem at all. All thanks to Mousavi. We met Mousavi and Rita in Istanbul, while we were waiting for our second flight. They set in front of us and she was saying that she couldn’t stand any longer without a cigarette. She must have seen the kindness in me when I told her there’s a terrace where you can smoke. When she was back she started to talk to us. She’s from Milan, celebrating her 70th birthday in Tehran in a couple of days. He is Turkish born in Iran, has lived the last 25-30 years in Italy. She’s a former manager of a company working for hospitals (she knows all hospitals in Italy), widowed too young, has been living with a cat and Mousavi for the last 14 years. He trades in carpets and has a natural instinct for business.
We talked a bit of everything but understood little because they like to talk at the same time (ahah). They were really funny and nice, lovely people (after 5 years I still have nice memories of them, I hope they are good). Mousavi says that Iran is like Italy in the 70s, the country that made rich the Agnelli and Berlusconi families. He would like his son to move to Iran, to make the money that people with his initiative can make, but he’s not eager to. The daughter moved to Tehran after studying in Italy, and she now has a sweet baby girl that drives grandparents crazy. He spends various months in Iran. Basically his life is divided between the two countries. He would like to move to Iran, but he went crazy for this blonde lady 20 years older than him and can’t stay away from her for too long.
Mousavi took us under his wings and when we arrived in Tehran granted for us. They asked for no insurance, no hotel booking or return ticket. There were other people requesting a visa and nobody had any problem. Plus Rosa and partner took us to our hotel on a taxi. It was a big time saving: with public transportation we would have spent little money, but it would have taken us a long time. They didn’t even want us to pay our share of the taxi fee, and we didn’t insist.
Dangerous traffic in Tehran: an elder man trying to cross the road among the running cars, that don’t really mind about the crossing lines
When we arrived at the airport in Tehran the air was full of flowers scent. When someone goes to Mecca on pilgrimage, when they are back they find the whole family welcoming them at the airport, at 4 in the afternoon or in the morning; everyone with flowers. It was a nice party and a nice sight.
At 7 am we were at the hotel; it took us some time to get there because the airport is 32km from the town centre. I had read somewhere that they drive like crazy, and we immediately had a confirmation of it: they do the turns at all speed, change line without looking at other cars, people cross the road in plain night with cars running fast.
At the hotel they offered the room in advance without waiting 2pm for the check-in, for half the rate of the room; and we accepted. To save money we took the room with shared bathroom. 31USD + 15 for the early check-in. Plus we had an extra breakfast (included in the early checkin). We slept for about one hour, had breakfast with eggs, bread, cheese, tomato and cucumber, tea and grapefruit juice. Then we went back to bed because we were really tired. We woke up at 12. First thing we did was finding a place to exchange money: 15,6 millions of Rial for 400 euro .We have three packs of banknotes that we don’t know where to put. Later lunch with kebab, and off we went to see as much as we could of Tehran because the other Mousavi (at the hotel) suggested not to go back to Tehran before the flight but to take a bus from Isfahan to the airport and we will probably do this.
We walked by the Park-e Shahr where people go to relax after work, in the middle there’s a long pool and if you look North at the horizon you can see the snow-capped peaks of Mount Tochal; skiing slopes (the fourth in altitude in the world) can be reached with a cable car departing from a square in Tehran. The slopes are full of wealthy young people on Fridays (their day off).
I went to the Golestan Palace. Luca didn’t want to go because he’s not interested and saved 2 euro for food. Well, it’s amazing. The garden alone is worth the visit, very well kept, away from the traffic and surrounded by sparkling palaces. I visited only the Hall and it’s amazing: some rooms are covered with mosaics from floor to ceiling and one has the ceiling decorated with plasters and small pieces of mirror. Unfortunately you can’t take pictures inside (I saw someone doing it despite the prohibition, but I preferred not to risk to go to jail – there’s no kidding in Iran), if you wan you can buy a DVD. Or look for the pics on the web.
We scrolled around the bazaar. It was late (about 4 pm) but there was still a big chaos. In the areas outside the bazaar, that had already closed, there were people carrying super heavy carts and others searching in the rubbish for missed out treasures. People say hello all the time and they try to communicate despite their poor English and our zero Farsi (Luca is happy because he too can understand their simple English). Dinner with chicken and potato salad (with a lot of majo) and tongue, then back here at the hotel, to shower and rest our feet.
To get to Iran you need a visa, that you can get at consulates that in Italy are in Milan and Rome. You have to go there in person because they take your fingerprints, with other documents, so it’s not convenient for people that don’t live in those cities. And you should take in account one month of time, even though the consulate says that one week is enough.
Italians that spend less than 15 days in Iran can get their visa at the airport, showing:
passport valid for at least 6 more months with two pages free and no Israel stamp
2 passport pictures (with no glasses and no hat and no scarf)
travel medical insurance
hotel voucher for the first night or name and phone number of the booked hotel
(This is what was requested in February 2015. Rules change every day, so it’s better to check with the embassy/consulate before leaving.)
I thought I had everything right (a part from the insurance, because I have a regular travel insurance that includes medical expenses, it should be ok but I’m not 100% sure), when last night at 11pm, when I was ready to sleep, I get an email from the hotel that I had booked in Tehran, the Firouzeh: they can’t confirm my booking because the visa was denied to some tourists that booked with them; if the frontier police calls them to check my booking, they will deny they have any. They thought I already had a visa. All this 15 hours before departure, with a night inbetween that is night in Iran too, and little more than one day before my arrival in Iran, where I have to show a hotel booking. So I start to get nervous. I turn the TV on to calm down but Sanremo is not helping. If only they had told me a few days ago I could have called some other hotel, right?
After a while I get another email from Mr. Mousavi, that suggests I contact hotel Gollestan. He called them for me, they said they will confirm the booking immediately. Ok, I send an email, I wait for half an hour but no reply. My eyes are burning for tiredness but how can I sleep? No way. At the end I fall aspleep with no news. I leave my mobile phone on, just in case I get an email. Nothing, but at 4am I wake up and one email is there. Of course they are not confirming immediately, they want to know if I want a room with or without indoor bathroom. Who cares?? I can sleep on the floor, as long as you let me get into Iran! I reply and go back to sleep. At 6am I wake up again; another email: do I prefer a twin or a double? Really? Come on, send me this fu..g confirmation email that in 4 hours I’m leaving home! From then on it was difficult to fall asleep again, but I did manage somehow, and at 7.30 I had my beloved hotel booking confirmation and tons of sleepiness.
Ok, I print my hotel confirmation because you can never be safe enough, I print the return flight details that I forgot and we go.
Luckily there wasn’t too much traffic on the way to the airport. In the opposite direction an accident had caused kilometers of queue. If it was in this direction, the flight was lost.
At the airport the lady at check-in wants to kill me. “Do you have the pre-visa or the reference number?” WHAT??? Which pre-visa? “Yes, you need a visa or a pre-visa to go to Iran.” Listen, if you want I can show you the email by the consulate where they tell me that I can get a visa at arrival and they explain what I need for it. They also suggested I called the airline to check they made no problems at check-in, and I did, the lady on the phone said there wouldn’t have been troubles. “I must see the confirmation by Pegasus that you can leave, because from this site bla-bla where they explain what is needed for every country, it’s clear that you need a visa or pre-visa.” Well, I can’t show you the confirmation by Pegasus because I was reassured on the phone; if you want I can show you the email by the consulate. “I give a fu-k about the consulate email! (these were not the exact words, but the meaning was the same). Wait in the dumb corner while I check with my supervisor.” After 15 minutes of shame and fast-beating heart, we get the supervisor go-ahead. But what is this pre-visa? I’ve never heard about it, or I would have done it! Do you have to go to a travel agency? “No, you can do it online”. Well… She sweetens her tone, explains that EVERYONE that goes to Iran go with a pre-visa so she is right despite everything. Ok, I don’t really care about what you think, as long as I can go.
Fiuuu. I say hello to mom that can go home without me, and I pass the passport and luggage control.
My friend Paola later explains to me that until not long before my trip a pre-visa was required, now no more. So my check-in friend, please update your flight requirements that you made me lose five days of life.
Now I’m calmer, but until I’ll be out of the IKA airport in Tehran I won’t be sure this country that seems to be so beautiful will be eager to welcome me.
Furthermore, we’re going to have a pretty hard journey, as usual. Three hours to Istanbul, where it’s snowing (and for this reason the flight coming from there is late and so ours will be), 5 hours wait at the airport in Istanbul, 2 hours flight and at 4 am we’ll be in Iran. Let’s say two hours to get out of the airport, one hour drive to the centre of Tehran, what are we going to do until 11am when they’ll let us check in at the hotel? 4 hours of breakfast? I’m not going to walk around town with a heavy backpack and no sleep.
Anyway, next time I go to Iran I’ll get a visa beforehand, no matter what, at least I can sleep before leaving.
