Technically, things got off to a rocky start here in Iran. Three punctures in one week. I'm starting to suspect my tubes are trying to tell me something. Setting aside the mild irritation this caused, the general mood has been one of mellow contentedness. This has nothing to do with any mindblowing scenery, because so far the surroundings have been, well, a bit drab. More discarded bottles and nappies than birds, trees and flowers. The stretch along the Caspian Sea was a particular letdown. I didn't manage to even glimpse that salty pond.
But, as I'm beginning to find out, traveling is not just about the magnificent mountains, cities, castles and deserts you lay eyes upon. Chance encounters, real conversations and wordless acts of kindness give a trip like this its hue. Realising this blog is getting more sentimental by the week, I'll state the obvious: it's about the people you meet. When I think of the places I visited, be it Cappadocia or Padua, it's not the fairy chimneys or the Capella di Scrovegni that first come to mind but the people I met there: their faces, the things we talked about.
I have an inkling this won't be any different in Iran. Forty kilometres into the country a car overtook me and pulled over. The young man who got out embarked on a monologue in Farsi with the odd English phrase thrown in. I gathered he invited me to dinner. It turned out he lived in the town where I wanted to spend the night, so I gladly accepted. He escorted me a good twenty kilometres to a slightly run-down hotel, knocked down the price, helped me carry my luggage upstairs, and returned later that night to take me to a restaurant. Conversation was lively if fraught with silly misunderstandings. 'What? Your brother got married to your sister? Ah, you mean your wife's sister...'
A few days later I teamed up with David, a German fellow with an excellent command of Dutch. We'd first met in Mardin, in the southeast of Turkey. He's touring Europe and Asia by motorcycle, and somehow we keep bumping into each other: first at the Turkish-Georgian border, later in Batumi and Tbilisi. This time we made a point of meeting up. Low on funds, he desperately needed a cash injection. As a matter of fact, money is one of the major headaches for foreigners traveling in Iran. Economic santions have left the country's banking system pretty much isolated, which means you need to bring all the cold, hard cash you may need. David, now, suffered a motorcycle accident on one of Tehran's many expressways, a broken arm his souvenir. Unable to travel, he needs to spend more time in Iran than he anticipated. A hefty hospital bill left him counting his last dollars. Fortunately, he sent me an SOS when I was still in Azerbaijan. It was good to see him again. We shared a tatty hotel suite, gorged ourselves with king-size pizzas, and talked at length about the people we've met so far. Encounters that are often, paradoxically, humbling and uplifting.
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| Cookies from Fuman: as good as the sun |
I have an inkling this won't be any different in Iran. Forty kilometres into the country a car overtook me and pulled over. The young man who got out embarked on a monologue in Farsi with the odd English phrase thrown in. I gathered he invited me to dinner. It turned out he lived in the town where I wanted to spend the night, so I gladly accepted. He escorted me a good twenty kilometres to a slightly run-down hotel, knocked down the price, helped me carry my luggage upstairs, and returned later that night to take me to a restaurant. Conversation was lively if fraught with silly misunderstandings. 'What? Your brother got married to your sister? Ah, you mean your wife's sister...'
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| Saying goodbye to David (again) |
In Rasht I was hosted by a fiercely independent middle-aged woman suffering from an incurable case of wanderlust. However, it's nearly impossible for her to venture far from her own doorstep. Her husband prefers to stay at home, and it's practically unheard of in Iran for a woman to travel unchaperoned. Couchsurfing is her window on the world. She loves to explore the area around Rasht with her international guests, talking about the places she has been or still wants to go, and eagerly soaking up their travel adventures.
A few days later I teamed up with David, a German fellow with an excellent command of Dutch. We'd first met in Mardin, in the southeast of Turkey. He's touring Europe and Asia by motorcycle, and somehow we keep bumping into each other: first at the Turkish-Georgian border, later in Batumi and Tbilisi. This time we made a point of meeting up. Low on funds, he desperately needed a cash injection. As a matter of fact, money is one of the major headaches for foreigners traveling in Iran. Economic santions have left the country's banking system pretty much isolated, which means you need to bring all the cold, hard cash you may need. David, now, suffered a motorcycle accident on one of Tehran's many expressways, a broken arm his souvenir. Unable to travel, he needs to spend more time in Iran than he anticipated. A hefty hospital bill left him counting his last dollars. Fortunately, he sent me an SOS when I was still in Azerbaijan. It was good to see him again. We shared a tatty hotel suite, gorged ourselves with king-size pizzas, and talked at length about the people we've met so far. Encounters that are often, paradoxically, humbling and uplifting.
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