PART 1

I do not remember exactly when I started thinking about a trip to Iran or about Iran as a possible destination, but it all started with friends talking about high mountains which could be done cheaply. Everyone seemed keen on going to the Alps or, some of the "braver" ones, to Caucasus, yet the map also showed a 5670 m.a.s.l. mountain in Iran, a mountain which none of the people I knew had climbed or intended to climb. The reason? The similarity (in people's mind) Iran - Iraq, the distance, the lack of information and, summing up, a huge layer of ignorance and blindliness which lay over people's mind. It is strange that people living in a country about which rumours say only about stray dogs, gypsies and street children, do the same about other countries without having the slightest idea about what there is to see and about what people living there are about.

As I was looking for further information on the country and I found nothing or almost nothing in Romania, the idea of going there raised and got stronger, out of ambition and being stubborn. So I started, ordering Bradt Iran guidebook in New York and the one issued by Lonely Planet in Krakow, as - obviously (for a country whose tourists are only interested in smuggling from Turkey, Bulgaria or Serbia, as well as in package holidays in Turkey or Greece) - they were not available in Bucharest. Then I slowly discovered the country, morning after morning while riding the underground train to work. Iran seemed to be much more than a country bordering Iraq or a country topped by a 5600 m.a.s.l. peak.

I went to the embassy and asked about the visa procedure. Both guidebooks warned that a quite extensive amount of reasons could end up with not being granted a visa for Iran. The very polite clerk in the Iranian embassy of Bucharest told me that I needed an invitation from a private person or organization, as well as a passport, two pictures, then I was supposed to pay the fee for the visa, about USD 70. So, finding three mountaineering associations based in Tehran on the internet, I wrote them all a message and one of them replied. They said that their visa-related services would cost USD 50, I agreed and they sent me a form to fill in. Lightly worried about going to Iran, a friend, Bogdan, decided to come along. We sent the forms to

Tehran and we found out that we were unlucky enough to do so on the Iranian Nowrooz, i.e. New Year's, which meant a 2 weeks holiday. Two more weeks and Mohammad, the guy from the mountaineering organization, sent an email asking for an itinerary which the people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had asked for, as we were not going through a travel agency. He then called to say that the visa was OK, we could refer to the embassy with our passports. Going there, I was told that only Bogdan's visa was there. Fact was that the Foreign Affairs Ministry considered us as a group and therefore listed on the fax sent to the embassy only one name and two persons, while the embassy wanted to see two names (i.e. two faxes) and could not understand the term of "group". After calling Mohammad a few times and after him calling Bucharest a few more times, the red tape broke and the embassy contacted the ministry, hence the solution. Eventually, after paying the visa fee, we had the visa in our passports, and were surprised to see that, although we had asked for a 2 weeks visa, we were granted a 1 month visa.

Despite these problems, none of the clerks in the Iranian embassy ever got angry or annoyed by my many calls, always remaining firm on their position, but calm and polite. On the other hand, Mohammad did not even want to hear about us paying beforehand: "Do not worry, you can pay once you get to Tehran, when we shall meet, talk about your itinerary and so on...".

This way, after initially deciding to go to Iran in February and sending the forms to Mohammad in mid March, we could go there in May and we decided to leave Romania on May 15. We had two options. The first one was the extremely expensive Turkish Airlines flight via Istanbul, with some extremely impolite clerks in the TA office that could not care less about their customers. The other one was the bus, also with a change in Istanbul. The price ratio was 4 to 1 in favour of the bus thing, and the ride would take, according to the guy from the bus company, 36 hours to Tehran. As always in the countries where the Turkish rule left a lot of influences behind, 36 hours would actually mean 72 hours, but, not knowing this, we opted for the bus, being pretty happy that this way we could take out Butan-Propan gas cartridges along. We left Bucharest on a Thursday afternoon, on a bus full of smugglers. Asking them about their business, they replied that it was not longer as it used to... "Now we only go there to pay and check merchandise, there are cargo companies nowadays which deal with all the waiting in customs, all bribing to the Turkish, Bulgarian and Romanian customs officers, as well as with all other hassles". Yes, indeed, now both Romania and Bulgaria could joyfully join the European Union, that all dirty jobs were done under the blue cover with golden stars around. Hooray, hooray.

After crossing the so-called "Friendship Bridge" between Giurgiu and Ruse, we were told the good piece of news: "We are the first of the three buses that leave Bucharest in the same time destination Istanbul, we shall get there at 4 AM or so...". We were indeed the first. We made a one hour stop somewhere in Bulgaria, in front of a Turkish owned restaurant where people could (illegally, but hey, what was legal about that bus?!) pay in Romanian money for meals. We then reached the Turkish customs in the middle of the night. The bus driver and a couple of clerks from the bus company went to the duty free shop there and started bringing a lot of whisky bottles and cartons of cigarettes, all of them packed two by two in plastic bags. There was one such bag already prepared for every passenger, and it probably contained the maximum amount of alcohol and cigarettes accepted by the Turkish customs law. They also had customs declarations with out names and with the contents of the bags, just in case of a checking. Another bus coming from Bulgaria and going to Istanbul arrived and they had the same situation. Through a simple calculus, only two bottles of whisky and a carton of cigarettes bought for not even half of the retail price of Istanbul shops and sold there for almost double that amount, meant a better business than the price of the bus ticket. Somewhere on the Edirne - Istanbul highway, the bus stopped as there was a small van waiting. They took all spirits and cigarettes and put them on the van, then we could go. We reached Istanbul at 5 AM and we were invited to the small office of the bus company, where we sat down and waited until 8 o'clock. The office was located in an area with many other bus companies offering transport of people and merchandise to Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Russia (even Kaliningrad), Armenia, Azerbaidjan. The area woke up slowly and offices started to be opened, people started to move, cars started to run, Istanbul woke up at its normal state of being a bustling city where trade and tourism aim high and sometimes reach higher, but also as a city where nothing is what it seems at the first glance. At around 8.30, after enjoying some overpriced borek and some baklava, we were shown to a taxi which took us to a travel agency called Tehran Tour. The guy there said we had a bus at 15.00, so we had half a day to surf through the city, enjoying a rather beautiful weather. At 2 PM we went back to their office and they told us that the journey would take 36 hours and that we were to reach the Iranian capital the second day in the morning.

We were put on a van together with other passengers, and they took us to a sort of parking lot where three large, air-conditioned and pretty new buses lay. The bus soon started and the driver kept it running without any stop for 8 hours, going with more than 100 km. / h. at all times. In the late evening we got to some restaurant where they stopped for people to have dinner and relax. The second driver replaced the other one for the night ride. In the morning we woke up as the bus stopped for another change of drivers and for another restaurant. The highway was long gone and so was tourist (and therefore rich) Turkey. We were at about 2000 m.a.s.l., crossing some wide pastures covered in a short grass layer. There were 2500-3000 m.a.s.l. mountains around us. Every now and then we would pass by some gorges or rocky cliffs. Then we could see some villages desolated by a recent storm, with many houses damaged in such a way that people were now hosted in the Red Crescent's rescue tents. These villages were rather poor, mainly inhabited by shepherds and their cattle or sheep, as well as by brick makers. We went up and down a few times, to 1600-2200 m.a.s.l. The slopes around us still bore large snow stains. Villages became more and more rare, smaller and smaller, poorer and poorer. Every now and then there was a military camp. It was raining at times, the wind was quite strong and there were compact clouds at about 2500 m.a.s.l.

After the lunch stop just before the border, we reached the Turkish / Iranian checkpoint. Unfortunately, because of the bad weather and many clouds, we could not see Mount Ararat which should have been pretty close to us. After briefly passing through the Turkish check, although I and Bogdan were among the last in the line of people waiting to get into the border police officer's booth, a clerk took our passports and made sure we were the first to be checked. Then when it came for the customs checking, although they were carefully checking all luggage belonging to our Turkish and Iranian fellow-travelers, they did not even want us to open the backpacks. We were enjoying the foreign tourist status, not being suspected of anything and being treated life respected guests. Just after crossing the border, the bus stopped so that people could buy some snacks or grab some food for the remaining leg. The reason was pretty simple: prices for foodstuffs were considerably lower than on the Turkish side. Then we started again, just to be stopped minutes later by some police guards which double checked our passports and eventually let us go. On the road again, we crossed an arid area where the land could only rarely be used for agriculture and even then with extensive irrigation systems consisting of an elaborate network of channels. There was a striking resemblance with the systems used in the Roman Empire. It was amazing (at least for us) to see how much these people praised water and worked to bring it from Allah knows where, while some others, Romanians included, were (and still are) looking for better and newer means of mocking at the legacy they were granted by mistake. We passed by Tabriz as evening fell and we could notice its straight streets and avenues. Then we fell asleep for the third consecutive night of bus rides that were supposed to take only 36 hours according to the clerk in Bucharest. I shall never understand those "tourists" joining those "European capitals in 14 days" - like tours by bus, where they travel by bus at night time and pretend to visit city after city at daytime for so many consecutive days.

We reached Tehran in the morning under a clear sky, some almost seventy hours after leaving Bucharest. The city was allocated at approximatively 1500 m.a.s.l. and just next to it there was a 3000 m.a.s.l. mountain. The traffic was very busy and drivers would care about anything but the other drivers and those poor pedestrians attempting to cross the street. Tehran was host of about 12 million people and some 4 million cars according to a fellow passenger from the bus. It seemed that all of these cars were out in the streets and being driven at the same time. They had wide avenues of 4 lanes in each direction, as well as a quite well organized system of highways crossing the city, however even these solutions were not enough for that traffic. When and where they worked, green lights would mean that cars SHOULD pass, while red lights meant cars COULD pass. Crossing the street meant that one had to go lane after lane, stopping between the cars which were running in high speed, as in most cases nobody would ever stop unless there was a traffic light. The traffic in Bucharest many people complain about, seemed nothing but a children's playground where drivers do nothing but trick and curse the others just out of boredom and stupidity. However this apparently hectic traffic in Tehran was fascinating in a unique way. This was not a city meant for tourists or meant to please someone, it was a city made for its inhabitants and it grew together with the number of its inhabitants, not necessarily according to some researched development plan or else. The city was so much alive, so anarchical but nevertheless captivating...

We got off the bus in the Western bus station, one of the four Tehran had, and a crowd of taxi drivers invaded us, asking in English whether we needed a ride here or there. A guy from the bus helped us get set on a taxi and negotiated the price for us so that we ended by paying half the money asked for in the first place, i.e. the equivalent of USD 2. We reached Mohammad's office and house and - before anything else - he invited us for breakfast. Then we talked about the mountains. Some acclimatization was necessary, so he proposed a 4200 m.a.s.l. mountain not far from Tehran, i.e. Khomeno Mountain. We were to take a shared taxi to Lalun Village and start hiking from there. We thought at first that we were to have a 10 minutes ride or so, but actually this place was about 50-60 km. away. In a country where the fuel cost about 10 cents per liter, it wasn't the fuel which meant so much for taxi drivers, but rather the time taken by a ride. This is why they were running their cars like crazy, with over 100 km. / hour, disregarding of whether they were crossing some mountains or going in a straight line. Eventually, after going up and down, we reached Lalun. The village was small and seemingly poor. But some villas, probably belonging to some rich people from the city, made the whole difference. We started hiking and just after exiting the village we reached the altitude of 2545 m.a.s.l., i.e. the highest mountain in Romania. We continued along a valley, just to see what working for a change meant. Because the valley had water (very important in a country like Iran) and it was therefore easy and convenient to pump it up for some score meters, the villagers had virtually raised fortress-like terraces on the very steep slopes bordering the river, organizing some lovely orchards there. We continued along some scenic gorges, then passed by a waterfall and then, at about 3500 m.a.s.l., I could feel the 3 nights on buses as well as the altitude. As evening was close anyway, we stopped and set the tent.

The following day we got up and hiked Khomeno Porch Peak (4200 m.a.s.l.), surrounded from all sides by mountain ranges of more or less the same altitude. The area was very beautiful and at a certain moment, we could see Mount Damavand, majestically raising above the clouds. The same day we returned to Tehran and later that evening we went to have a traditional dish in a local restaurant, together with Mohammad and his wife. Dislike the widespread rumour, women did not walk behind men and neither did they stay at home all day, cooking and washing the laundry. Apart from the fact that women did indeed wear those chadors (which, in many cases, were something formal and even fashionable, with scarves in many colours and styles), there was no obvious difference between the place we ate in and some regular restaurant in other areas. As we asked for a hotel, Mohammad and his wife invited us to stay over at their place. The following day, we had a logistical problem to solve before heading to the mountains, as Bogdan had some problems with his work and needed to be back in Bucharest sooner than planned. In this case it seemed that we could not afford more than 3 days in the mountains before returning to Tehran so that he could start off home on the lovely 3 days bus ride. We left on a shared taxi to Tehran's East Bus Station. These shared taxis worked in a very interesting - but nevertheless well organized - way. They would go on preset routes and they would only start when full, so that passengers could share the price. Then, when reaching the destination, one would take another one or so on. There was, of course, also the option of chartering a taxi, but that would mean that one had to pay the full price of the ride. From the bus station we took another taxi to the point where a dust road splat to Damavand's base camp. We were sharing a taxi this time with a lady originating in Iran but nowadays living in the Phillipines. The ride was anything but slow, with the driver running his old car in full speed and bypassing everything but planes on the very tight curves the road made while crossing some 3000 m.a.s.l. mountains. Michael Schumacher was definitely just a small baby playing with his expensive new toys in the sand. He was going one way streets from the forbidden direction, never cared about any traffic light and ran over truck after truck until the only thing in front of us was the blue sky. And then, all of a sudden, he stopped in front of a local restaurant where he asked for some shashlik and then politely asked whether we wanted some, insisting until we fell for it. He then ate so slowly that he looked like the most patient and calm man on earth.

Eventually we reached out destination, left Mohammad there and started hiking across those barren foothills covered from time to time with dry bushes and rare - but so beautiful - vividly coloured flowers. We reached the base camp, located at about 3000 m.a.s.l., made up actually of a mosque and a small other building. We were sharing the large room there with two Swiss tourists and their guide, while just outside there was a Czech couple camping. We decided to start early in the morning together with the Czechs. After eating something and after Bogdan's many loud and funny comments about our experience so far in Iran and his trip to France (with many hilarious remarks concerning the latter), we eventually went asleep. We started in the morning along a path that went up a mild slope covered at first in bushes, reddish dust and rocks and later on in snow and rocks.

After a while a local man reached us also going upwards. He was from Reyneh, the village down the hill, and he told us that the day before there was a couple of Romanians which went to the shelter and back too. He gave us his business card, offering to come and pick us up by taxi or host us in his house for a small fare. More than anything else, he was offering us a lesson, as people coming from a country where begging has turned into an industry and people expect money for a simple reason: "you give me money because I do not have it and you do". Both for us, as people sparing a dime from time to time to these beggars, and to those beggars, this was a well deserved life lesson. During all my stay in Iran, of 2 weeks, I noticed only one or two beggars, and during my trip there I crossed many poor areas or villages were poverty was nothing but obvious.

Eventually we reached the shelter 3 hours after starting from the base camp, finding there a few Swiss tourists which had come to Damavand for skiing. They had two porter guides and the old man we had met also joined these guides to carry the large pieces of luggage of the Swiss. Dislike the Iranians which were always greeting us wherever we went, the Swiss did not bother to even answer out "hello", strangely looking at us probably because were were all carrying out own luggage. Thankfully they left and our ad hoc East European group settled in, admiring the huge pile of garbage Made in Switzerland which had remained behind them. We ate something and then started going up for a bit of acclimatization and warming up. Soon after reaching 4700 m.a.s.l. and returning to the shelter, a local man arrived only dressed in trousers and a shirt, with his hands almost frozen because of the cold outside. We gave him some gloves and a cup of soup. He intended to go to the peak the following morning. Sunset soon arrived and the shelter got soon quiet. Later on a friend of the Iranian man arrived and after they exchanged a few whispers, everyone fell asleep. In the middle of the night a very strong wind started, making the shelter roof tremble. The wind persisted all night and diminuished in intensity only in the morning, but not much even then.

The two Iranians started at 06.30 AM and we started about one hour later, just to meet them returning; they had give up because of the weather conditions. We slowly went up and more than two hours later we reached 4900 m.a.s.l. The wind got stronger, blowing the snow everywhere. Soon we could notice a compact mass of clouds located at about 4500 m.a.s.l. coming from the West. Half an hour later, at 5135 m.a.s.l., we found ourselves in a mass of fog, stirred snow and in the middle of a strong blizzard. We could have gone further or we could have stayed for one more night in the shelter until weather would get better (actually we were to learn that weather improved only two days later). Maybe we were lazy, maybe we were cowards, maybe we were simply not able to go further because of the given conditions, maybe all of the above plus the fact that all of us had a limited amount of time in that country and wanted to have as complete and diverse a journey possible... Fact is that we returned from 5135 m., reaching the shelter in a pretty bad weather as well.

A group of Iranians arrived... (click here to continue)

IRANIAN SECTION 1 (you are here)

IRANIAN SECTION 2

IRANIAN SECTION 3