From Tehran to Bam - towards the desert, or: how camera and toothproblems reappear

The guide (a sixty year old man the name of which I have never understood) and the driver (his son) came to the residence. It took us quite a while to get out of Tehran, as the driver took a wrong turn with considerable consequences as we ended up in the middle of Tehran's traffic chaos and it took ages to get back on the right track (especially because the two were from Shiraz and did nit really know the city..), but there the first trouble with the guide started: he told us (probably thinking we were stupid...) that we did a detour to buy water for the trip... (Right... ;-) ) While not understanding anything of what they were saying  we realised that they were arguing about where to go... But eventually, we got on the right highway towards The holy city of Ghom, passing the mausoleum for Ayatollah Khomeini (which is still being built and is just huge!). While Ghom is the second most important religious place in Iran (after Mashad) and the centre of religious studies, I was quite disappointed about this visit as we were not allowed to enter the (allegedly very beautiful) shrine of ???, which was the very reason why we came here. It was also not very clear why, as our guide had been here with a group the week before and entered without any trouble. At the entrance to the vast complex, we were asked to join an Italian tour group to make it easier for our "guards" to "control" us (i.e. telling us what to do or not and where to go - or rather NOT in this case ..). So we could only enter two of the courtyards and were not even allowed to approach the entrance to the mausoleum, which meant it was not even possible to take a decent photo... At least, I told to myself, I got here very easily with a private car and guide because I would have been really angry if I had come here as originally imagined, by interrupting my train ride back from Kashan to Tehran with all my luggage and by taxi back and forth from / to the train station... 

After this first disappointment, we continued towards Kashan, quite a nice place, but of which - after more than three weeks - I finally do not have any particular memory of anymore, so no need to say anything more here... (How quickly one forgets... Especially once over 40... ;-) )

On the way from Kashan to Kerman, we visited the city of Na'in, with a nice little and very old mosque, another traditional house and a very interesting ancient water mill, about 30m under the ground and using the water of the canal-system used to bring water from the mountains to the desert cities (See below). We also visited a traditional underground (since cooler...) weaving workshop (where I was "forced" into a traditional costume and the guide forced himself into the photo (no joke, this guy really had a crush on me...., which at some point later in the week really started to be annoying...) These workshops, which produced traditional and very heavy camel hair coats that nobody wants to wear anymore, so they partly now produce carpets, but mostly it is a dying profession, which the local who showed us around said was not a consequence of modernisation as such, but because the modernisation was rather "Westernisation" (as everyone in Iran now wants to wear the same clothes as we do in the West). And - more or less simultaneously - I experienced (yet another time!!!) the limits of our western civilisation: after having repaired the lense of my camera before leaving, after it broke again in Turkey, then buying a new one, in Na'in, the camera itself gave up and showed "error 99" on the screen, while giving the advice to switch off the camera and on again and/or taking the battery out in order to fix it. But unfortunately, nothing of this worked and also an extensive search for troubleshooting on google did not help: while there were many discussions about the error (including videos on YouTube), there was no real indication how to fix it. I continued taking photos with my iPhone... And hope that the camera can be repaired in Shiraz in about 3 or 4 days ("I will keep you posted ..." Is what I originally wrote here, but by the time of finalising this post, I can take out the suspense of this story and just tell you that they fixed it in Shiraz (for the relatively modest cost of 50$). And - at least so far (touch wood!!!) - everything is working fine.

The city of Yazd, according to UNESCO one of the oldest cities of the world and an important centre along the Silk Road, is an oasis in the desert and is one of the centres of the Zoroastrian religion (named after their prophet Zarathustra), the oldest of the mono-theist religions (believing in the god Ahura Mazda and the holy book of the Avesta), but Judaism and Christianity have actually taken over important concepts from Zoroastrianism, notably the contrast between good and evil (God versus Satan), paradise and hell, existence of angels and life after death. Zoroastrians are officially recognised by the Iranian state since 1906, a status which continues even after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The about 91000 officially declared Zoroastrians even have one seat reserved in the Iranian Parliament (as by the way the other officially recognised religious minorities like Jews, Christians and Sunnites). Of course, this alone does not mean a lot in terms of protection of minorities, but still...  We visited the temple of the eternal fire, where it is said that a fire has been burning all the time since the year 470 AD as well as two "towers of silence", round fortresses, where they performed their burial ceremonies: they put the dead bodies in this open structure and let the vultures eat the meat off the bones. From time to time they would then collect the bones, clean and treat them and then properly bury them. It was quite a special atmosphere to climb up these towers and to imagine what had happened there.. While their fellow Zoroastrians in India are still allowed to perform this ceremony, in Iran this is prohibited for hygienic reasons.

In Yazd (but also in Kashan), there are beautiful Persian gardens, which are also part of the UNESCO world heritage. They have a very sophisticated irrigation system with small water canals running everywhere, even through the houses for cooling purposes, all of them getting their water from the Khanehs. As one can imagine, life in the desert is a lot about access to water and about cooling and it was amazing to see all the technologies, which were invented thousands of years ago to collect, store and distribute the water and to keep places cool. And the are all based on the Khanehs, which are underground canals bringing water from the mountains to lower areas, usually there are up to 30km long, but in desert areas , like in Yazd, can measure up to 60km. They are usually 1,80 high so that a man can stand upright in it. In total, in Iran, there are more than 130 000 km of these Khanehs!!! The cooling system is enhanced through the Badgir, a wind tower, which captures the wind on the top through large openings, cools the air down and cooler air is released on the lower end, which is in the house. Even when there is not much wind outside, it is amazing how efficient the system is. but the badgirs are not only put on houses but as well on the water storages as natural cooling systems. In the houses, you often have a fountain just underneath to increase the cooling effect, but e towers also serve to cool the water in the cisterns. One of the cisterns we visited had 6 of these towers!  And, of course, they are "climate-friendly", I would even say "climate-smart" solutions... (Sorry for yet another job-related reference, but I cannot help it ;-). A nice encounter here was with a guy carrying heavy sacks of flour into a bakery where we bought delicious fresh bread. He was quite white from the flour and suffered quite a bit from carrying the heavy sacks in the midday heat. We started talking to him and it turned out that it was actually an Arabic teacher, who just helped out his father who sells flour. He spoke some English and we shared some of our bread with him and had a very nice chat (photo).

In the village Faradja, close to Kashan, we visited one of the oldest mosques of the country, entirely made out out of traditional mud and brick and, right in front, on the local "playground", we joined the kids playing and admired the retro-style of the father of some of them (see photo!) on a motorbike. ;-)

We then continued to the actually very nice city of Kerman, with it's very nice bazaar, will stay in my memory for a not so nice reason. While eating another "Dizi" (the attentive reader will remember from the Tabriz-post (if not go back and refresh your memory... ;-) ) that this is a traditional Iranian dish, which contains pieces of meat), I chewed on a tiny little bone and a piece of my tooth-crown broke off!!!! Nooooooooo!!!! This cannot be true!!!! To my Turkish dentist-friend Ahmed I can only say: I know this is not your fault (there was already a small crack in the crown which he glued back in, I had realised this...). On the contrary: I would say it is thanks to the strong glue he used that the remaining (major) part stayed in!! So: thank you very much... And to also cut this story short (as I am three weeks behind he schedule with this blog): I went to a very nice dentist in Shiraz (a Jew living here in Iran... !!! Yes, they do exist..see info on religions in next paragraph...) who spoke English and even a bit of French! After having looked at it he told me that it was not possible to fix it, that I would have to stay for at least a week to make a new crown (which I could not..) and that actually I would not have any pain (as they had done a canal root treatment on it...), so I should just wait until I am back in a Brussels in September... He also said that I was quite lucky, because only the inside part broke off, while the outside and the surface where you bite on were without any damage...so: no worries! Thanks you! ;-) (no further damages three weeks down the road... also touch wood... ;-) ). The other memorable story from Kerman is our visit of the modern art museum, where they have several quite high profile exhibits from famous artists like Kandinsky, Ernst, Moore, but also had a photo exhibit, which was the result of a local photo competition and which they sold for the benefit of a local organisation taking care of orphans. I actually bought one of the photos (see photo of it), which I found very impressive, and fortunately Gabriele offered to take it to Brussels. The youngsters in charge were really happy that two foreigners bought photos and took photos of us with the photos we bought and said they would publish them on their Facebook site, but so far I have not seen anything... ;-). In the museum, there was also one work (photo) of the "Heech" (meaning "nothingness") series  by the famous Iranian sculptor Tanavoli, which I have met twice at social occasions during my stay in Teheran. He produced this "heech" in all kind of materials and variations. And finally, we also visited a former hammam-bath, turned into a museum, with very beautiful tile work ..

Photos at: https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A65n8hH4GT56u7