Spring In My Step

In Tehran leaves are budding on trees and flowers are blossoming, the days are longer than the nights, birds have returned and are beginning to sing and build their nests and I've managed to add three visas to my passport (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). All of which means that winter is over, spring is here and it is time for me to pack my rucksack and hit the road once more. My upcoming route will take me through the 'Stans of Central Asia, a collection of countries that have fascinated me for some time and whch I am really excited to explore. It's a region with a rich cultural and historical legacy, but which is off the radar for most people unless there is some heavy civil unrest or uprising. Even when the 24-hour news channels report the global weather they manage to metion such insigificant countries such as Mozambique, Honduras and Timo l'Este but skirt past the entire Central Asian region. Perhaps there are strange weather phenomenon going on there that make forecasting difficult?

My first port of call will be Turkmenistan, a country which keeps pretty much to itself but which is without a doubt one of the most closed an repressive countries in the world, on a par with North Korea and Eritrea. For 15 years following the break-up of the Soviet Union it was ruled by Saparmurat Niyazov, who styled himself as Turkmenbashi ("Head of Turkmen") and created one of the craziest cults of personality the world has ever seen. Not only did he emulate the likes of Mao and Gaddafi by writing his own book (the Ruhnama, which is pretty much the only book studied in school and its knowledge essential for anything from geting a job to obtaining a driving licence), but he also changed the names of two of the months of the year after his mother and himself. Bankrolled by the fourth largest reserves of natural gas in the world Turkmenbashi went on a megalomaniacal building spree that has seen no equal in the world, creating vast new building complexes in downtown Ashgabat, complete with shopping malls, five-star hotels and wide boulevards that are completely empty and unused by the poverty-stricken population of the country.

Of course a country such as this doesn't let people in willy-nilly and you can only really visit on a transit visa which is valid for five days, meaning an in-depth taste of the country is nigh-on impossible. Internet is also non-existant in Turkmenistan (and severely restricted in most other countries in the area) so it may be a while before I can post again.

Persian Paradoxes And Politics

In my time here in Iran I have come to regard it as a country of paradoxes. I've already mentioned a few, such as the surprisingly good transport infrastructure paired with the complete lack of respect for road rules, and the Iranian love for camping and the outdoors, as long as they don’t have to leave their cars. Today I want to cover a few more as well as touching on some political issues. So please bear with me as this post may be slightly disjointed.

Perhaps the biggest paradox in Iran is that of its women. The overwhelming view of Iran’s women in the West is of a poor, repressed underclass, forced into submission and degradation, hidden away behind chadors and hejab. I have found the truth to be very different. First there are the simple facts: women form the majority of university graduates, they can work, run for parliament and drive cars. Significantly better than most countries in the region. Sure, there are many limits to their rights, and in theory permission from male guardians are required although often not in practice. I find the obsession of the West of the mandatory wearing of the headscarf to be very much misplaced. It is a very small, cosmetic annoyance and is the least of women’s worries in Iran (what Western media fail to report is that there is also a dress-code for men as well, which, although less restrictive, is also a reality). But then there are also the women themselves: fiercely independent, resourceful, spirited and clever they are universally the driving force within any household. They don't let the restrictions of the regime get in the way of chasing their dreams. Throughout the country I have been surprised by the strong women who are bold and outgoing and unafraid to air their opinions. Unlike their more emancipated Western sisters who take their freedoms for granted Iranian women are aware of what they have fought to earn and guard it jealously.

A simple wristband but one that could potentially get you arrested, symbolising, as it does, the pro-reform green movement.

Life Is A Picnic (But Then Again Sometimes It Isn't)

The No Ruz (New Year) holidays were the perfect opportunity to visit my extended family in Tabriz. Although my immediate uncles and cousins are from Tehran the family is originally from Azerbaijan (not to be confused with the country of the same name, which traditionalist Azeris claim has stolen their identity). I love going up there as I get swamped in various second and third cousins numerous times removed, all laughing, smiling, joking. I don't get much of what's going on as everyone is speaking Turkish (Azeri) and I understand very little of what's going on, although pertinent exchanges get translated into Farsi for me. Not that it matters much as my main preoccupation is trying not to burst from all the baghlava, dried fruit and nuts, kebabs, sweets, rice and dolme that is coming from all angles as I'm carted from one family get-together to another. Luckily I do know how to say yemiram (I can't eat) to counter the insistent cries of ye! ye! (eat! eat!) of Azeri matrons for whom hospitality is second nature.

Typical Iranian picnic: park car by side of the road, unload boot, grill kebabs right there.

An Ode To Tehran

Tehran is a huge, sprawling mess of a city. With an official population of 8.5 million, and an unofficial one pushing 14 million, it is a choking nexus of cars, buses and jostling humanity, all elbowing each other to get ahead. It takes forever to get anywhere; bureaucracy is rude and stifling; prices are prohibitive; people are perennially bad-tempered; and the air pollution is amongst the worst in the world (at least it used to be a few years back, though it’s getting better of late). Nobody could mistake it for a beautiful city.

From the northern suburbs of Tehran you can very quickly find yourself in wild, mountain landscapes (though you can still spy the city down the valley through the haze).

A Fire That Can't Be Put Out

If you were to have walked the streets of Tehran last night you would have been forgiven for thinking that there was a civil war going on: bonfires were burning in many streets, riot police were out in force and explosions could be heard throughout the city. However this was just a standard Charshanbe Suri in the Islamic Republic. As I mentioned previously, the biggest holiday in Iran is No Ruz, or Persian New Year, which takes place on the spring equinox (usually the 21st of March). The festival predates Islam by about a couple millennia and is intricately related to pagan and Zoroastrian purification rites. Due to its non-Islamic roots the current regime frowns upon its celebration, especially the more exuberant parts, most notably Charshanbe Suri.

A traditional haft sin table with ritual objects to symbolise health, wealth and happiness for the coming year.

Off Road

Many Westerners think that Iran is a dangerous country to visit, fearing terrorists, Islamist violence, corrupt officialdom and rampant theft. Unless they are really stupid and go mouthing off about the regime to all and sundry their fears are very much misplaced. Nevertheless there are a couple of real dangers whilst in Iran: being suffocated by the overwhelming hospitality, and being run over by a crazy Iranian driver. Although I enjoyed the road trip I was also a little glad to get back to Tehran in one piece and ensconce myself in the traffic-free zone of our apartment.

Luckily the roads in the desert interior of Iran are relatively empty.

Kurds Away

Our last stop on our little road trip was the Howraman valleys in Kurdistan close to the Iraqi border. From the mountains of Luristan the route wound northwards to the mountains of Kurdistan. Finally, as opposed to most of the mountains in Iran which are separated by wide, flat valleys, here they were squeezed together to form proper, vertiginous mountain valleys more reminiscent of the Hindu Kush.

The mountain road from Nosud to Nodesheh rises to over 2000m with stunning views over the nearby mountains and the Iraqi border just down the valley.

Unexpected Diversity

Iran is by no means a homogeneous country by any measure. We've already covered the landscape and climate, but the people are a mixed bag too. Only half of the population are ethnically Persian. Another quarter are Azeri (known locally as Turks) with the other quarter made up of a motley crew of Kurds, Lors, Bakhtiari, Turkmen, Arabs, Laks, Baluchis and Mazandaranis. During this little jaunt down to the south I've met most of these different ethnic groups and although they all have their own languages, cultures and histories there is a uniting factor amongst them, and that is their Iranian identity. This pride goes far deeper than religion and the current Islamic regime and its ubiquitous slogans and propaganda: even fervent Muslims will often have a pendant or sticker on their car of a farohar, an old Zoroastrian symbol. More than once I've heard people say that they are Muslim in name only and that in fact they identify more closely with the tenets of the older, indigenous religion (for non-Muslims the bureaucratic machine can pose unwelcome hurdles). The biggest holiday is also No Ruz, a spring festival that predates Islam by millennia and which the ayatollahs, much like the Muslims who conquered 13 centuries ago, strove to ban when they initially came to power, but without success. The following encounters are a sample of the seemingly contradictory cross-section that there is within Iranian society.

A farohar over the lintel of a Zoroastrian temple in Yazd. The symbol, although religious, has been adopted by Persians, proud of their non-Arab heritage, as a national symbol.

Gulf

In all my previous visits to Iran I had never visited the Gulf coast. This is mainly because I had always come during my summer holidays, and in summer the Gulf is as hot as Hades and horribly humid to boot. Unbearable. Instead winters are balmy and pleasant

Along the coast the landscape is dominated by dry, rocky mountains, with the occasional village eking out a living from fishing or an isolated palm grove or, that local standby, an oil well. Despite the barrenness of the landscape there is a mesmerising beauty to it too, which is particularly evident on the islands of Hormoz and Qeshm, where vegetation plays a cameo role. Instead strange geological processes have created a dry dreamscape of multicoloured mountains and narrow canyons crafted by the wind. The Hormozis are so proud of their many-coloured sands that they've even incorporated them into their local cuisine: a popular speciality is called sooragh and is composed of fish and fine red sand mixed together and left to ferment in a jar for a few months. Naturally we had to buy some (I'm just lucky that I'm allergic to fish as it really smelt foul).

A narrow canyon on Qeshm, sculpted by wind-blown sand.

Kaluts And Castles

The past few days have been a demonstration of the diversity, both natural and human, that is to be found in Iran. I had been to Kerman before, but I hadn't really strayed from the main northwest-southeast axis, and this time I wanted to correct that. My first goal was to visit the kaluts in the Lut desert to the north. The kaluts are the largest expanse of yardangs in the world (For those who aren't aware, including me, as I had to look this up too, yardangs are sand and rock formations that are caused by unidirectional prevailing winds in deserts, which create long ridges that can be tens of metres high and hundreds long. For more info click here.). To get an idea of the vastness of the area covered by the kaluts check these co-ordinates on Google Earth, and then zoom out to see what looks like the traces of a god's combing of the desert. From Kerman the road passes through a spur of the Zagros mountains which rise up to over 4000m. So despite the southerly latitude (it's at the same level as Cairo) there was still plenty of fresh snow around. The day we went was the 22nd of Bahman (11th of Feb), the anniversary of the Revolution, and a public holiday. The road was packed with cars crammed full of people and a fair number, for some strange reason, had inflated inner tubes from truck tyres lashed to their roofs. The purpose became clear as we reached the col and saw the road swarming with soldiers. The road had been turned into an impromptu car park as local Kermanis took advantage of the double blessing of a holiday and snow to head to the mountains for fun and frolics in the snow - the inner tubes are used as sleds. The soldiers were there to try and keep some semblance of order to the traffic, an almost impossible task with Iranian drivers even at the best of times. Less than an hour later we were at a road junction in the desert with a sign indicating a dirt track to the "hottest place on earth". I would have dearly liked to go there but unfortunately you need a guide and a 4WD - sadly our trusty Pride wasn't going to cut the mustard. Instead we carried on to the kaluts, which straddle the road for kilometres on either side forming an eery landscape of protruding rocks and nature's sandcastles.

The otherworldly landscape of the kaluts.

Road Trippin'

One of the things I had wanted to do whilst here in Iran was to head south to the Gulf. Firstly because it's a part of the country I have not really seen, and secondly because winter is the best time of year to visit, when the temperature and humidity are bearable. Normally I would travel by public transport, but as my father has also come over and wants to travel with me I thought that it would be more interesting to make it into a road trip by taking my mum's dinky little Kia Pride, the workhorse of Iranian passenger vehicles, on an epic tour of Iran.

An extraordinary Martian landscape just off the road in the middle of the kavir.

TV Politics

In a few days I plan to head south to discover explore some parts of Iran that I have yet to see, but in the meantime my days are mainly spent working on my pictures (less than 1500 to go now). The TV is often on in the background, which is something of a novelty as I rarely have the opportunity, or even feel the need, to watch TV whilst travelling. Like everyone else in Iran we have satellite, even though it is illegal, and so have been listening to the news quite regularly. These are certainly interesting times to be in the Middle East as revolutions rock Tunisia and Egypt. Personally I am very happy that the people of these countries are managing to overthrow their brutal governments and I wish them better ones in the future (and if the protests spread to other countries in the region then so much the better, as there isn’t a single one that has a legitimately fair and representative government, not even Israel or Lebanon).

The reactions of other countries has also been fascinating in terms of worldwide realpolitik. The West, and most notably America, have been very muted in their response because these were secular dictatorships propped up by Western money and influence. The paradox and hypocrisy of Us calling for greater democracy and freedoms in the wider world whilst supporting such regimes is blatantly apparent to the people of the region. Last week Obama called for “restraint from both parties” in Egypt, somehow implying that the ordinary people, who after 30 years of repression were protesting for their basic civil rights and an end to the endemic corruption of the Mubarak government, were somehow as much to blame as the latter. Such pussyfooting about has left a vacuum where opportunists have stepped in: the Iranian government is claiming the protests are inspired by the revolution of ’79.

And therein lies the crux of what I see as the fatal flaw in America’s dealing with other countries, especially those of the Middle East. They spout rhetoric about democracy, moral high-grounds and universal human rights, and yet they back unsavoury regimes for the sake of expediency, believing that the ends justify the means. Unfortunately for them, when the ends are ethics and the rule of law, the means are the ends. By that I mean that you cannot act immorally to promote the spread of justice and morality. By doing so you undermine any credibility you might have. Every regime here is pretty much equally corrupt, venal, oppressive and unfair. But by labelling some as “good” and others as “bad” based solely on how much the regime toe’s Washington’s line, yet couching the rhetoric in human rights, America ends up alienating the local population who are far more savvy about world politics than their Western peers. And so you get the surreal situation, where the Iranian regime, which is far from democratic, is supporting pro-democracy protests in a country that has long been an adversary, whilst America, the leader of the “free world”, is praising an oppressive dictator and seeking to keep him in power.

Similarly, if you compare the reaction from foreign powers to the protests both in Tunisia and Egypt to those in Iran a couple of years back there is a world of difference. Back then they were incredibly vocal in their support of the protesters’ rights and demands and did their utmost to ensure that communication was maintained via the internet and other media. Now, when the Egyptian authorities have taken the unprecedented step of blocking off the entire internet in the country there was barely a peep to be heard.

Geopolitics really is depressing when you start looking at it closely.

A Kafir In The Kavir

Travelling as a cheap backpacker, reliant on public transport, makes visiting certain places, especially remote, natural sites, particularly difficult. So when my cousin's cousin (Amir) told me that he and a friend of his (Kiarash) were heading off to the kavir (desert) and asked me whether I wanted to tag along I jumped at the opportunity.

Iran is a big country and about two thirds of it is either desert or semi-desert. You can't say you've really seen the place until you spend some time in the deserts. The deserts in Iran are not your cliched sand dunes, but instead are rocky and occupy a high plateau ringed by mountains that are ever-present, which is what really makes the beauty of the area. It also means it's far from warm in winter. What little rain that does fall collects and forms salt flats and marshes.

The tidy desert town of Anarak, nestled in the lee of a mountain range (every town in Iran has its own mountain looming behind it).

... And Breathe Out

The road from Kurdistan to Iran is called the Hamilton Road, after the Kiwi engineer who designed it (he also wrote a book about his experience, and by all accounts it is a great travelogue), and it cuts an elegant swathe through some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes in the world (even though a gloomy, January morning didn't show it off in its best light). Just before the town of Soran it is at its most spectacular, squeezing its way through a narrow canyon lined with gushing waterfalls. The road was built by the Brits when they were still in their colonialist phase and was intended as a quick link between the British-controlled Levantine coast on the Mediterranean to the heart of Iran and the oil-rich region of the Caspian.

The town of Soran, up until recently, was a scabby little village, but now, with the opening of the Iranian border it has mushroomed in size with cross-border trade and the return of refugees. Therefore the charms of the town are in the lively bazaar rather than any physical sights (although the surrounding mountains are certainly worth a stroll). The shops are crammed with all sorts of tat, most of which you really don't need or want (see picture below). Here Turkey and Iran are battling it out for the hearts and minds of the Kurds via their consumer goods and it looks like Iran is winning. Luckily for me it also meant that almost everyone spoke Farsi, making my life particularly easy.

Snail shampoo? No thank you.