Iran - blessed with beauty

Issue 100

First featured in issue 5 - May/June 2004

Click here to go to the Issue 5 archives

Words Imran Hayes & Lucy Bushhill-Matthews

Photography Imran Hayes, Julian & Jeffrey Beere

"I've just returned from a Tehran that's covered in snow, where the  only camels I saw were being smoked by men in dark suits and white socks; as for goat herders...? Maybe I didn't look hard enough."

Welcome

The hospitality of the average Iranian knows no bounds. As a guest to their home, you will be plied with food and drink to your fill. Expect a weight gain of at least a kilo per week. And, yes, Iran is full of extremists - extreme in their hospitality!

Skiing in Iran

In winter the affluent jet-set head to the hills. Dizin, two hours from Tehran, has snow a-plenty, with facilities to match many European ski resorts. The skiing is fantastic, the views sublime, and the low prices justify the airfare - £3 for a day's lift pass! The main downside is longerthan- average queues, with similar behaviour to that seen on the roads, making Italian ski lift queues look positively orderly.

Rules of the road

After a week in Tehran, I worked out the rules of the road: If you see a space, fill it! It's quite brilliant. The local driving rules allowed the numerous ten-lane car parks in Tehran to double up as six-lane motorways at night time, which is, incidentally, the only time you can get anywhere by car in a hurry.

Public transport in Tehran was varied, and very different from London. 'Angry of Tunbridge Wells' would love the efficiency, speed, cleanli ness, and punctuality of the Tehran Metro, easily the fastest and safest method to get around, but his pen would run dry complaining about the state of taxis. In the road pecking order just above buses, shared taxis are the commonest transport for the average Tehrani. Like buses, Tehran taxis operate on fixed routes, but only start a journey with a full vehicle - that's three in the front and three or four in the back. Passengers sit patiently until the suspension groans that it can take no more, and then you're off. The journeys are broken at popular junctions where the experience is continued all over again in a different taxi.

The “Paykan” taxis themselves are treasures, often of dubious vintage. In one, the road could be seen through the passenger footwell. To India and Pakistan, Britain left a thriving civil service, to Bangladesh, the umbrella, but to Iran the legacy of a pseudo-colonial influence is the Paykan, a locally manufactured copy of Britain's Hillman Hunter of the 70's: a true car for the masses. Perfect for a rugged country, the Paykan, although inefficient by modern standards can be fixed by virtually any local mechanic with a screwdriver and/or hammer and chisel; a true gift to a developing nation with mostly unsophisticated garage facilities and vast oil reserves.

City break

350km south of Tehran, Esfahan was literally a breath of fresh air after the clogged streets and air of the capital. It was also bursting with history. The various mosques, palaces, bridges, and even churches (in the Armenian district) display some of the finest examples of architecture found anywhere in the Islamic world, and certainly in Iran. I stayed at the Abbasi Hotel, itself a worthy subject for any picture postcard, which used to be a Caravanserai back in the days when the Silk Road was more than just a tourist attraction.

On the outskirts of Esfahan, not far from the 2,500-year-old Zoroastroan fire temple, a quaint, unassuming mosque is known famously for its 'shaking' minarets. This evoked visions of a trembling building; somewhat unnerving given my close proximity to Bam so soon after the devastating earthquake. In reality, the thin, 20-metre-high twin minarets are flimsily constructed, so that anyone brave enough can climb one, and literally rock it with a back and forth motion, while the other minaret resonates in sympathy. And for a brief moment in history, I was that man. I shook the shaking minarets of Esfahan.

Letter from Iran