Seventeen days in Iran

Tehran and the Caspian

Tehran is a rapidly modernising metropolis of 12-15 million spread over an increasingly smog-choked valley. The city itself is fairly young, having been settled after the Mongols had razed the older sometime capital nearby of Ra’ay. During the Ottoman period in Turkey, the capital had been at Isfahan for security reasons. So Tehran has lots of museums but no antique monuments. The major timemark is therefore the flight of Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and the subsequent Revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into being. Since then, Tehran has rapidly increased in size. As urbanisation and an educated middle class increases, the streets and freeways struggle to keep up with the increasing number of cars. An embryonic metro system relieves only some of the pressure.

 A very long bus ride took us to the port of Bandar-Anzali on the Caspian Sea by way of Chalus, the nearest point on the Sea as a crow with an oxygen mask might fly from Tehran. The 170 km road winds up a long, steep sided valley to a pass at about 3400M and then winds down the other side just as quickly. Dramatic gorges and precipitous hillsides spectacularly tamed by Irani engineers in 1924 so that Shah Mohammed Pahlavi could reach his seaside villa on the Caspian. We followed a long and slowly snaking string of cars and the occasional bus (no trucks allowed) up the narrow road until a one-way section had been cleared soon after reaching the top. The traffic was heavy because it was the last long weekend of the school holidays and everyone wanted to visit the Caspian. So family parties were picnicing in every conceivable spot on the roadside and beside nearby rushing streams, catered for by numerous teahouses. Hotels and shops and a few high-rise condos now cram the seaside where the Shah and a few wealthy favourites had isolated grand villas. We wondered why we were there.

The seaward side of these massively high mountains are green and rainy in comparison to the dry semi-desert of Tehran. Rice paddies and tea gardens supplement fruit growing. The Caspian is 1000M deep close off shore and shelters the caviar sturgeon. Mountain streams have brook trout and the whole environment is lush with growth. We visited a mountain village, Masuleh, together with about 5000 other (local) tourists, all happy and relaxed. They were more than happy to have their picture taken and to take ours, to welcome us to Iran (most of our tour group is American) and invite us to dance to happy handclaps.

A warm and friendly welcome by a happy people. Women in head-scarves and a huge variety of dress from coloured tunics and tight trousers to full chador in all the colours of the rainbbow, sometimes on one person, with happy kids in tow. The speciality of the village has been forest produce in various forms of preservation including herbal teas, fruit leathers, pomegranite pastes, pickling spices and pickled garlic. People were very ready to engage and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

 

Then returning through a lower pass up wide valleys where rice paddies gave way to olive tree orchards and then broad acre wheat plantings. At Qazvin we visited a shrine to Hossein, one of the Shia holy men related to Mohammed. The shrine glittered inside from every surface in cut and decorative mirrors, lit by a great golden chandelier and a few other lights. Quite different from the somewhat morbid saints relics in medieval Latin cathedrals, but providing a secure place for the faithful to bring their problems in prayer. The castles of the Assassins were nearby on inaccessible crags, but they ve long since been dispersed by the Mongols.