Click here for the slideshow

Where are your fellow travelers from?” the police officer asks Kamran as we are about to board the train.

“The Global Arrogance,” Kamran answers. The police officer laughs, stamps our tickets and sends the three of us through the gates where we hurry to meet the overnight train.

The train leaves the station exactly on time. A couple of minutes after departure, a porter comes by with clean sheets. We fold the seats down and make our beds. “This is great,” our British friend says. “I just love the train. It’s so comfortable, so great to sleep in.”

“The cabins were larger when I was a kid,” Kamran comments. It’s his first train trip in Iran in more than 25 years.

“No, you were smaller. Trust me.”

At 5 the train stops and we are woken up by the call to prayer booming in over PA system.

“They never let you forget where you are,” our friend says sleepily.

We pull into the train station and take a cab into the city where we are meeting friends of friends who will take us out to a Nomad encampment some 2 ½ hours outside Esfahan.

We make our way through highways, small towns, dirt roads, gravel roads, and tarred roads and, after a spot of car trouble, head towards our destination where there is one teenage boy and some sheep.

“They’re at the wedding,” he tells us. “They’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

There are weddings everywhere in the encampments. We passed one on the way here and now our hosts are at another. We manage to get ourselves invited and are quickly surrounded by huge groups of young and old, women and men, boys and girls, all curious about the two foreigners in their midst. “George Bush is very, very dangerous,” a teenage boy says to me.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” I ask jokingly.

“Afraid of you… No!” they laugh. “You are afraid of us!”

“Terrorist,” says a boy pointing at his own chest. The others laugh. They know we think of them as terrorists.

Read the complete account at View From Iran…

Click here for the slideshow

You can view it here: http://ashtarydesign.com/saveh.htm

In Persia is the city called Saveh, from which the three Magi set out when they came to worship Jesus Christ. Here, too, they lie buried in three sepulchres of great size and beauty. Above each sepulchre is a square building with a domed roof of very fine workmanship. The one is just beside the other. Their bodies are still whole, and they have hair and beards. One was named Beltasar, the second Gaspar, and the third Melchior.

Messer Marco asked several of the inhabitants who these Magi were; but no one could tell him anything except that they were three kings who were buried there in days gone by. But at last he learnt What I will tell you.

Three days farther on, he found a town called Kala Atashparastan, that is to say Town of the Fire-worshippers. And that is no more than the truth; for the men of this town do worship fire. And I will tell you why they worship it. The inhabitants declare that in days gone by three kings of this country went to worship a new-born prophet and took with them three offerings -gold, frankincense, and myrrh – so as to discover whether this prophet was a god, or an earthly king or a healer. For they said : ‘If he takes gold, he is an earthly king; if frankincense, a god; if myrrh, a healer.’

(This quote is from Robert Latham’s translation of Marco Polo’s book The Travels and was found on Farsinet

Saveh is a strange place just a couple of hours west and south of Tehran. Maz Maz, an Iranian snackfood giant has a factory nearby, a branch of the National Oil Company is located there, Azad University also has a branch in Saveh, and the best pomegranites in Iran, and perhaps the world, are reportedly grown in the fields surrounding this town.

It is reported that Marco Polo stayed in the ancient caravanserai in Saveh. He wrote about Saveh in his book The Description of the World. In that book, he relates that the people of Saveh told him that the three kings were buried at Saveh and that at least one of them was a Zoroastrian Priest.

One the National Geographic website, the authors write that the translations of Marco Polo’s books were filled with biases, editorial judgements, and errors.

For example, when some translators were presented with the news that the three Magi were buried at Saveh in Persia rather than in Cologne, they inserted that the people of Saveh tell many lies.

The fact is, that when the ticket taker at the caravanserai told us that Marco Polo stayed there, we had a hard time believing him too.

Links:
The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1
The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 2
Were the Three Kings Persian?
National Geographic on Marco Polo
Farsinet’s round-up of information on the Three Kings

Click here for a slideshow from our trip to Hamadan

Where are you from?” The traffic cop asked, leaning into the window.

“America,” I answered.

“No that is not possible,” he laughed.

“They’re Italian,” a passerby offered.

My travelling companion was exhausted after driving at night behind long lines of trucks on the 2-lane highway between Tuyserkan and Hamadan. “Just tell us how to get to the Ferdosi Square,” she said.

Eventually we wandered into our hotel — what was it’s name? — on Takhti street near Ferdosi Square.

Hamadan is a more interesting place than people give it credit for. For one, the drive to it is stunning. It is easy to imagine silk road travellers coming to this amazing place in the mountains and marveling at its riches: cool summer weather, water, trees, a gentle valley. It is easy to imagine the ancient city from today’s modern city. Ancient ruins pop up in the strangest places. There is the Alavian tomb in a schoolyard. Another tomb sits next to an apartment block.

I enjoyed visiting Avicenna‘s tomb. What an amazing man he was! It is thanks to our philosopher friends Joep and Yeganeh that I know even the small amount I do about Abu Sina / Avicenna.

And, of course, there is the tomb of Mordecai and Esther. I don’t even care if Esther is not buried there. The monument is still great. We had the bad luck to visit it on the Sabbath and on Purim, so the tomb itself was closed.

Many travellers go to Hamadan expecting the ancient city of Ekbatan and are, therefore, disappointed. We went with lower expectations and loved it.

Click here for a slideshow from our trip to Hamadan

What others are saying:

About Hamadan
More about Hamadan
The account of a Russian spelunker about exploring caves near Hamadan
Quotes from Habakkuk
Habakkuk on Wikipedia

Click here for the flash slideshow of Kurdistan and here for a slideshow of Kermanshah.

Before flying to Kermanshah, Kamran and I ran into the city’s favorite son, Shahram Nazeri, in a bank on Jordan Street in North Tehran. “Kheli big fan hastam,” (I’m a big fan) I told him. Kamran and I first saw him perform in 1990 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM: not in Kerman) and then a few months later at Town Hall in Manhattan. He gave me a few tips about Kurdistan and Kermanshah, which I felt was a good omen for our trip.

What a trip! The flight was beautiful enough. We flew beside one snow-covered mountain range after another before coming in for a landing over rolling green fields. The mountains in and around Kermanshah are terrifying. They look as though they were wrenched from the Earth with cataclysmic violence. The clouds that formed around the peaks of the cliffs felt like the remains of dragon fire to me. “I don’t think I could live with these mountains,” I told my friend Kate. “They scare me.”

Kermanshah is on the road to Karbala. It must have been really hopping right after Iraq was invaded when pilgrims from Iran were travelling to Karbala in great numbers.

From Kermanshah, we made a one-day trip into (Iranian) Kurdistan or Kordestan (however you choose to spell it.) The landscape was just awe-inspiring with the first touches of green. We headed for gorgeous Palangan: a village that straddles two sides of a river. There the women were happy to visit with us. We were called over to talk to several groups as they watched their children, wove horse bridles, and chatted.

On the way back, we saw huge lines of cars and trucks backed up at gas stations. Apparently rationing has begun in Kurdistan: mainly to prevent gasoline from being smuggled into Iraq. On top of that, the Iranian government has set up customs patrols on the border between Kermanshah and Kurdistan. Hmmm…

Anyway, click here for the flash slideshow of Kurdistan and here for a slideshow of Kermanshah.

What others are saying:

Blog by the rock climbers at Bisotun (In Persian, but with great photos!)

From Onze Man in Teheran (in Dutch)

From Shiva the Spy: Long Live Kordistan

The nature of Kurdistan in Persian and English

Bisotun World Heritage Site

From Angus McDowall

Travelling to Kermanshah

Kordestan: Stunning Scenery and Paranoid Police

Review of inscriptions at Taqe (Taghe) Bostan

About Shahram Nazeri (My favorite Iranian male singer):

Buy his music online at Iranmehr.com

Read about him here and here and listen to song samples here.

At The Jazz Breakfast, an album featuring Shahram Nazeri is rated as one of the best of 2006.

Pomegranite juice stand on Valiasr.

Click here to see a flash slideshow of featured images from our walk from the bottom of Valiasr Street to the top.

“What time 2morrow?” I smsed.

“8.”

“Yr nuts. 9.”

At 10:30 the next morning, Angus McDowall and I arrived at the foot of Valiasr street. It’s a bustling area that features Tehran’s railway station and a digital pollution monitor. The pollution was below the warning levels as we set off up the street.

Valiasr street is the longest, continuous city street in the Middle East. It runs the north-south length of Tehran from the train station to Tajrish.

At one point, Angus got pulled into a discussion about world affairs with a group of men who were gathered around a tray filled with dates and “denmarki” (delicious pastries named for Denmark). “We don’t want war,” one man told him. “But if war comes, we will fight. You have to remember that when we kill in war, we are victorious. When we are killed in war, we are also victorious.”

One of the young men Angus was speaking with tagged along for awhile, worried that we would get lost. I am not sure how that would be possible since we were planning to stay on one street for about 8 hours…

My favorite places were the fruit juice shop where I had amazing carrot juice followed by a chaser of sweet lemon juice (not lemonade: sweet lemons are an Iranian fruit unlike any other that I have ever tasted. Its taste is unlike a Myer lemon or any other sweetish lemon that I had before visiting Iran.) and the stamp shop with the owner and his one inch long pinkie nail and the 150 year old collection of stamps.

Oh yeah, and we had amazing Gemeh at a traditional restaurant off of Valiasr Square.

Look at what others have to say about Valiasr:

First read what Angus had to say about our walk: Vali Asr
Avenue Vali Asr
Sycamores of Valiasr Street
Inside Tehran
Photos from Sa-ee Park

Click here to see a flash slideshow of featured images from our walk from the bottom of Valiasr Street to the top.

Our guide through the mangroves on Qeshm: a 12-year old boy named Ahmad. He threw the shark back into the water shortly after we snapped this photo.

Click here to see a flash slideshow of selected photos from Qeshm and Minab

Qeshm is a dolphin-shaped island in the Persian Gulf. In fact, it is the largest island in the Gulf. The waters surrounding it are a beautiful, glowing blue-green, that clearly reveal the marine life below them.

Qeshm is very different from the mainland of Iran. Most of its population is Arab and Sunni. There are more tall women on the island than in other parts of Iran. Women wear brighter colors and floral patterns. Seafood is easy to find in the restaurants.

One of the best meals we’ve had in Iran was on this unassuming island. Near the ruins of a Portuguese castle is a dive that serves seafood. We ate shark with bright dill; crab with a mix of spices that we did not recognize; the most tender squid imagineable cooked in a slightly hot tomato sauce; and shrimp that tasted more Cajun than Iranian. Normally I like seafood cooked with a minimum of spices, but the cook at this ramshackle restaurant really knew how to use spices to enhance the flavor of the seafood rather than hide it.

Don’t be fooled by people telling you to eat at Bani or any other restaurant. Don’t be put off by non-existent service or the slightly dirty surroundings. Make sure to have dinner at this seafood dive (there’s only one Portuguese castle, so everyone on Qeshm can guide you there) at a plastic table by the sea.

See what others say about Qeshm:

Travel photos from Qeshm
Scroll down the page at Savvy Traveler for a story on Qeshm
Vast Crystal Blue Skies
All about caves including the salt cave on Qeshm
In Dutch from Onze Man in Teheran: Straat van Hormuz