Jewels of Persia

Dear readers,

So at the moment i am already travelling for more then a week with my old man and I like it. We are currently in Shiraz in the south of Iran and tomorrow we are going to see the Persian Gulf.

I don't know if it's a smart decision because at the moment the temperature can reach well above 50 degrees!!! Some say it's 55 degrees and that is 20 degrees hotter then in shiraz at the moment. but hearing nice stories about the clear sea at the gulf makes us enthousiastic how it's like.

A small overview of what we saw the last week. On sunday the 4th of August I picked up my dad from Tehran Airport at 4 o'clock at night, spending a few days in Tehran and showing him the Iranian customs I learned from my stay in the north.

The night before I was invited to the home of one of the guys I met in Jawerdeh and I was welcomed by the whole family as you can see on one of the photos in my last post. They invited me and my dad to come and have dinner with them and we will after returning to Tehran in 2 weeks. We took the nighttrain to Esfahan where we hangout for a couple of days.

Esfahan or Half of the World, as the name litterly means can be seen as the Paris of the Middle East. Its architecture is amazing... The blue mosques, the palaces and the huge Imam square (being the 2nd largest square in the world) I hanged out with 2 backpackers (Suni and Michei) at night playing frisbee and smoking gheylan (waterpipe) in some theahouses.

In Yazd a city more to the south we shared with the 4 of us a taxi to some very old villages some dating back thousands of years. Yazd is one of the oldest cities in the world and you notice that when walking around. Cause of the heat we didn't do much between 12 and 16:00 and relaxed in our hotel with other travellers. A few days ago we went to an indoor swimming pool with only men, as swimming mixed with women is forbidden in Iran.

The day before yesterday we arrived in Shiraz (hotter but still do-able as the hummidity is ok) and yesterday we saw magnificient Persepolis. An ancient ruine site dating back 2500 years when the Persian Empire was one of the most powerfull in the world. A photo of me standing at the gate can be seen in this post.

My dad and I have developed a game when travelling in Iran, actually more of a competition. As we handsome western men, when we walk across the city many iranians want to talk to us and often ask where we are from and welcome us to Iran. Also many Iranians want to have a photo taken with us, our competition is who can get as many iranians on the photo as possible. Yesterday I held the record of 20 boys from a school (see the photo) today my dad beat the record by more then 30 iranians and himself.

Also when crossing the street we classify its complexity of crossing it on a scale between 1 and 5.

Well as I mentioned it before, tomorrow we are going to the Gulf for a day as we will try to do some swimming or even snorkelling making our way back to Shiraz the day after to fly back to Tehran on Saturday. My dad is flying back the day after to Germany. I will spend a few days after he left with some friends in Tehran and in the west of Iran.

I still enjoy Iran a lot, meeting so many nice people random on the street and learning much of how people think and live here. This is trully an amazing country unregarding of what its government does or of how strict the Islam law is here. Its people, the beauty of the cities and villages, the environment and traditions are amazing. But I will tell you that inperson when I'm back.

greets joost.