BUSES IN MASHHAD: A METAPHOR OF MUSLIM MACHISM

Girls in the back, boys in front. The bus becomes an effective metaphor of Iranian society. While we can hardly understand their system, more than a few women there find it fair and protecting. Other women shy their anger. In any case, for a foreigner, it is a contradicting note in the pentagram, absolutely asymmetric with such a gentle society.

ASHUR ADEH, THE CASPIAN SEA’S SADDEST ISLAND

Our captain and host, about to leave Bandar-e-Torkman and take us to Ashur Adeh. The island was going to reveal as some sort of abandoned destination

Pedal swans wait for happier days…

What an oxymoron: a stencil of the censorship!

Iranian guard coast patrols.

THE SHAKY ELEGANCE OF TURKMEN HOUSES

STREETMARKET IN BANDAR-E-TORKMAN

The streets of Bandar-e-Torkman are literally full of fish…




Conveniently, salads are never far away…




Proud of being photographed, a local salesman victoriously lifts his vegetables...as he waits for the table to be invented.

Steven and I dressed with some weird fur hats…

Just like at home, nobody can afford to buy original DVDs, so people buy and sell them in the streets. You know, if some filmmaker in Hollywood believes it is ethic to spend 20 million dollars in a movie, we dwellers of the back patio of the empire believe it’s ethic to get them for free. In any case, we bought them the DVD burner…

ARRIVAL TO THE CASPIAN SEA: CAVIAR AND THE FOOTPRINTS OF GENGHIS KHAN.

Notice: to read the full story, have a look at my book “Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil – By thumb in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan”. Clic here to learn more. Order a copy and keep me on the road!

“Oh! You have magic hair!” – concluded a man at one of the tiny towns Steven and I crossed in our way from the Dasht-e-Kavir Desert to the Caspian Sea. His eyes couldn’t explain how my new dreadlock could be brown in the root and then change to blonde without any transition. Well, the dreadlock alone was out of the world for the man. He pointed me the sink once and again, and insisted I could borrow some soap from him. Better not to attempt explaining that the dreadlock was the present of Alba, a Spanish friend who had too many and decided to lend me some. Steven didn’t have more success in trying to explain the villagers that his boots –which we must agree had more cordons than a corset- where more useful than the sleepers they wanted to present him.

The way from Damghan to the Caspian had been breathtaking. The passage from a dry region as the Dasht-e-Kavir desert to the humid Caspian strip can be told from the road as the landscape unfolds. Stone displaces mud brick as building material, slopes become forested. Camels hide to give way to wetlands, green forests and flowers… That said, the first part of the road was desolate and we got stuck in the middle of nowhere, happily near an abandoned stone hut that sheltered us for the night. Two guys in a motorcycle gave us some cheese and bread and that was our dinner, together with the emergency chocolate Steven always keeps in his backpack.


Our aim in the Caspian was as simple as basing ourselves in Bandar-e-Torkman (literally, the Port of the Turks) and somehow end onboard of a caviar fishing vessel. Caviar is one of Iran’s more profitable exports (680 dollars a kilo). As always, our aims are shameless excuses, mere scaffolding we made up as we go so as to laugh at ourselves. A standard absurdity is set, and then real events area measured accordingly. That reminds me that Juan, Eze and me never actually launched an assault on the park’s carrousel back in year 2002 (we contented ourselves with organizing hitchhiking competitions).

Again, no track of the fishing ships (we hit the wrong season). Once in Bandar-e-Torkman, however, it was clear that the ethnic tensions between the Turkmen minorities (we are 25 km away from the Republic of Turkmenistan) was interesting enough to let us forget the ships. Since Iran nationalized the caviar industry in the seafront, local fishermen try their luck in the river. Since caviar ships were not an option, we shifted our hopes to catching a ride in a cargo ship to any other port. We visited one of harbor’s bosses who explained us different problems related to the level of the water were affecting the port’s capacity to export. But the conversation leaded us nowhere close to there.

Strolling around the somewhat grey harbor we even met an artist who proclaimed some sort of pan-Turkism, a return to the old Turkestan which extended from the Mongolian steppes to the Aegean Sea. Turkey, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are fragments of that long since smashed china pot, but our friend continues to fill his canvas with the geometric jaws and warring grinds of Mongol like warriors. Mr. Genghis Khan is in a bad mood today…

In the street, the houses with dented metallic (Russian influence) and the colorful garments of women grant the town a strong character that contrasts greatly with the black chadors found elsewhere. Most people speak a variant of Turkish rather than the Farsi they learn in school. As in Damghan, we observe a Central Asian feel reflected in the faces of locals.

Before going on, we decided to visit the island of Ashur Adeh, just a few miles off shore. We had no specific reasons for that detour. It just sounded fun to visit an island in Iran. The mere sight of two modern ships of the Iranian Coastguards seemed a bit bizarre, since we rather mistakenly take Iran as a camel-and-desert country. We crossed the scant distance in a small powerboat whose captain charged us a dollar each, but was kind enough to invite us to his house on the island. The island itself was a rather gloomy place, a once touristic spot abandoned for some reason. Here and there you could see traces of now derelict restaurant that had seen better days, sunk ships and weathered houses.

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As Iranian law deterred us from accompanying our last lunch with a real beer, we had to satisfy our genetic program with two malt ones. If one concentrates in the dark crystal and the gothic letters in the label, placebo effect takes place and one starts behaving as a drunk. Until the eyes make focus on the “0,0%” that the manufacturer claims proudly. Before taking a bus to Teherán, where he would catch a plane back to The Netherlands, Steven promised we would travel together next time my trip would face some challenge. He seemed particularly happy to envisage a winter in Siberia. And I started my way to Afghanistan via Mashhad.

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Mashhad resulted to be 6 cars, a pick up, a truck and a Honda 125 away from Gorgan, where we had drank our malt beers, and where I stayed overnight in the waiting room of a hospital. A 564 km long trip trough a semi deserted fully boring valley where the only mention is deserved by a driver that pointed to his fingerless hand and exclaimed: “Saddam!” Another ex soldier. Paradoxically Mashhad owes its status as Iran’s second city to the Iran-Iraq war, when the Iranians from near the bombarded regions in the South West migrated en-mass to Mashhad, which is as far as they could go without leaving Iran.

More significantly, Mashhad houses the Shrine of Imam Hussein, Shiite Muslims revered figure, which I gave a flat miss in order to have more time to navigate maps of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with Mohammed, my local Hospitality Club contact, and Victor, a French traveler from Grenoble. Mohammed will stand in my memory as the only Iranian I met that, instead of getting discouraged by the disadvantage of being Iranian when applying for visas, he is proactively planning a round the world bike tour. The most memorable moment in Mashhad was the exposition of my trip in the local Climbers Club. After going on for 30’ on the essence of hitch hiking, a woman stood up and asked if those “package holidays” were also available for women. Another guy furtively approached and inquired if I had any religion. After hesitating a while I admitted I had none, to what he replied: “My religion is Marx!” So my speech in Mashhad Climber’s circle was something of an absurd comedy. A day later a different comedy had its opening act: I hit the road towards Afghanistan.

THE ZOROASTRIAN TOWN OF YAZD

The Towers of Silence were Zoroastrians used to leave their dead for crows. They believed that burying them or burning them were impure ways of polluting the environment. The practice went on until the beginning of the 20th century.

The air cooling devices we observe across the city are ideal for the desert climate of Yazd.

WEIRD TRAFFIC LIGHTS IN BAZAZIYEH VILLAGE

Ok, I understand I must turn left….

PERSEPOLIS ¬+ PINK FLOYD

I made of Persepolis a musical experience, with Pink Floyd in my MP3… Walking around the ruined city once destroyed by Alexander the Great…

In the base of a stairway, a lion was sculpted in the act of hunting a gazelle. An eternal representation of a travelling moment.

At that time good soldiers didn’t need to shave. Legions of bearded Persian lancers align in the walls. With two weeks to go before entering Afghanistan I would love to just borrow their look in order to look more Afghan…

DASHT-E-KAVIR DESERT AND THE FIRST DREADLOCK TRANSPLANT IN IRAN...

Notice! to read the full story, have a look at my book “Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil – By thumb in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan”. Clic here to learn more. Order a copy and keep me on the road!

After making Persepolis a rather musical experience, with Pink Floyd in the discman. By night we were already in Yazd, the world capital and last stronghold of Zoroastrianism, a religion that one stretched from India to the Mediterranean, the first monotheist religion. Hasan, our Hospitality Club contact, had guests at home so he arranged a room in the Silk Road Hotel. The courtyard of the hotel worked as a restaurant where high class Iranians mixed with classic tourists from France or Britain and the occasional penniless backpacker.

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The menu, which abounds in camel receipts, the lateral perception of some London accented conversation two carpets to the right, and the architecture, conspired to create an aesthetic illusion. Alba laughs and confesses that she feels as a 19th century explorer. So as not to let her alone, I ask Steven with an accent that is not mine: "Sir Weijs, shall we tend a railway line along the Nile?" Many are the travelers doomed by the echoes of the long since gone caravans bringing silk from China to Europe, in the search of ancient times. "Ancient times that didn't exist" –points Alba. We agree we cannot figure out how their interest in the old trade routes doesn't lead them to become involved with contemporary movement. Isn't the truck stop the direct heir of the caravanserai? Isn't the Volvo the new camel? And the oil, the pistachio, or the illegal immigrants, aren't the new silk? Why do they prefer to step aside of the real world and just repeat postcards with their cameras? We don't know. Suddenly we are high with the idea of also trading something into Afghanistan, just to connect more vitally with the road we step, maybe tuna or saffron, scarce in the neighboring country.

In the short term, we expected to cross the Dasht-e-Kavir desert that lied ahead. So we couldn’t but smile when our host decided to take a day off from work and travel with us in his car into the desert. By the road side, signals warn: "Beware of camels". An hour later we cross a bunch of them, munching quietly all the roots they can find. Can a camel run fast? In the attempt of finding an answer I resulted humiliated by the camels that, indeed, run fast.

On the first night we camped in the oasis the surrounds Bayaziyeh village. While we spot crossing stars we listen to the radio that has tuned Deutsche Welle. A grave voice says the US is afraid about the uranium that lies exactly under or foot. (The mines are 100 km away). And here it is so calm and windless.

The second night we decide to camp straight in middle of nowhere, so we ask our truck driver to let us go. He cannot understand our demand, he feels responsible for letting us go in that harsh scenery. At last he stops and gives us water and fruits before saying goodbye. One kilometer from the road, with the background of blue mountains in the horizon, we set camp. Shortly after we spotted all those wolf footprints, also we find out we don't have anything to defend ourselves.

So Steven and I trekked around to see what we could find. The idea was to use road pole as cricket stick to hit the hypothetic wolves, but they were buried in concrete. What returned to the campground was the First Brigade of Armored Naives. Our weapons were, namely, 10 stones, a wooden stack, and a piece of car tire which we could set fire to keep the cannis ferocis away. Alba laughs: an engineer, a writer and a film maker cannot do better than the Stone Age man about such matters. We should blame academic specialization for the massacre. Then it's our turn to laugh at Alba, when she sates, trying to calm herself: "If the wolves get close, it may be just out of curiosity". (Alba Sotorra, 1981-2006, film maker but never biologist).

However, the wolves had different plans for the night, and after the most stunning sunrise I can remember we carried on to Damghan, on the other side of the desert, in the truck of a Zoroastrian driver from Yazd, who is happy that we know his god, Aura Mazda.

The bakery queue at Damghan, more than its ruins, is a history lessons, with all types of faces, Turkmen, Persian, mongoloids, etc. It's quite obvious this was in the middle of the trade routes. Damghan is home to Iran’s first mosque, called Tarikhaneh. For us it's rather a fork in the road, since Alba head back to Teheran.

Before, as arranged, in a mosque yard, she cuts one of her 6 years old blonde dreadlocks and sews it in my hair. It may be first dreadlock transplant in Iran, witnessed by half a dozen boys and girls that soon abandoned their playing ground to stare cheerfully at the loonies that smoked pipe and shared their hair. They may soon be taught to disapprove us as well. But for the moment being they smiled. And they smiled.

After saying goodbye to Alba, Steven and I headed on to the Caspian Sea…

AN ILEGAL WHEELED KARAOKE ON THE WAY TO SHIRAZ

Notice! to read the full story, have a look at my book “Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil – By thumb in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan”. Clic here to learn more. Order a copy and keep me on the road!

Is Shiraz nice? – we asked the driver of big Mercedes truck taking us there. As an answer he simply points the height at which the women wear their scarves, and laughs out loud. It’s clear our drivers are far from puritanism. When they take confidence they start calling their president “Ali Baba”. Soon they are loading their water pipe with opium and lit it. A surreal approach to Shiraz starts to take shape. Our guidebook praises the sophistication of the city, but then suggests that strolling around its gardens and mausoleums should be a sample. I guess our approach was a bit less aerobic. We put a CD of Manu Chao in the player and we were all soon chanting like enchanted loonies. The drivers accomplish a bit of a job by singing to the Spanish lyrics they didn’t understand at all, and repeated each chorus “Me gustas tu, me gustas tu…” It was impossible to know what this phrase meant for our new friends. The Mercedes is an illegal wheeled karaoke, an avenging light in the heart of Persia. Let’s not speak about road safety: let’s just face we were all trusting someone else was taking care of the road. Drugs end up stimulating brotherhood more than fear-inducting TV does…

Already on the outskirts of the big city, a smaller truck offered us a ride to the center, and we ended playing poker with the driver and three workers in a building for which his father was the responsible engineer. Go with the flow. With the tea flow. Our new friends is hyperactive, every half an hour se stands up with a new idea. He deserves to be nicked Mr. Nerve. It is 1 am and Mr. Nerve considers urgent to visit some friends who run a restaurant, so we jump in the old Mercedes 608 truck and drive there. When we arrive there are two guys in the door. One has a Marx like beard, his pal is bold. The bold guy throws lights matches and throws them in the air. Marx catches them with his mouth, putting them out. As a symmetric ending for such a senseless series of event, we end up sleeping in a power plant, whose guard is Mr. Nerve friend.

No need to say that Mr. Nerve had fallen in love with Alba. He appeared in the hotel we took the following morning, spotlessly dressed and with his car’s engine on. Mach to his dismay, Alba was out with two new friends she had met on the streets, two Iranian girls who lived in Canada. We were also in pain shock when Alba related to us his adventure the following morning. It seems that while we roamed aimlessly the streets of Shiraz in search of an opened kebab shop, Alba took classes in Iranian nightlife. Night happens in a street in the north of the city. The boys drive their cars and the girls board them. "If it's not a Citroen or a Peugeot, don't even look". –explain the two girls to Alba. "If it is a Peugeot or a Citroen, look at the clothes, and if you have time, at their faces". In that order. So they ended in the beautiful car of three ugly guy’s form that they had to run. As usual in Iran, prohibition leads to extremes. As alcohol is forbidden, people drink ethanol behind close doors. As socializing is forbidden, they jump in the cars of strangers.