Trip to Iran

To start with: In the 12 days we spent in Iran the main food we had was rice, plus meat. You don’t travel to Iran for the food. It is quite monotonous: every time you enter a restaurant you are asked: chicken or meat? Which is in itself a funny question, because where we come from, chicken IS meat. The meat tends to be accompanied by rice, and often yogurt, whether in the form of a drink or more solid together with bread. This is the daily routine, almost twice a day and it happens maybe because waiters seldom speak english. For the same reason they tend to offer sodas and not those refreshing drinks made with herbs. I guess it's one of the downsides of being a tourist and not understanding the local language, because the times we had a local with us we had a taste of a more varied cuisine. Like saffron icecream! (sounds strange, but it's really tasty!)

So, if not for the food, why go to Iran? More than one reason can be listed. Perhaps the most important is to see with your own eyes if it is true that music is banned, if it is true that they live under a conservative regime, if it is true that women have a secondary role in the society, if it is true that a persian holiday is a detox time from alcohol. All of the above are true… and not true, at the same time. How is that possible?

The trick is that the dividing line between public and private spaces is thick in this country. Many of the women we came across, immediately took of the hijab as soon as home, despite the presence of at least one unknown man in the group. Yet, one cannot say that discrimination does not exist in the country. It does exist and operates in a very subtle way that showed itself in two occasions. One, in Esfahan, when I want to talk about politics with a new friend and she replies: you know, I am not the right person to talk to, you should speak to my brother, cos women are not so much into politics here. The second occasion presents itself very unexpectedly. We are on the highway, on the way back to Teheran. We decide to stop to eat something, together with our ridemates: a talkative fresh graduate in linguistics and her 60 years old uncle. While collecting the orders, I announce that I would rather avoid meet. Instead of replying to me, the talkative graduate (that sits on my right) talks to my partner and tells him: your wife can perhaps have a salad. Really?! As a result of the inconscious move, I no longer talk to her for the rest of the day.

The journeys from one place to the other are long. It is not because of its infrastructures, which are surprisingly good. It’s simply that Iran is huge, approximately 50 times Belgium, or bigger than the combined surface of France, Spain and Germany. Cars ride on the highway at approximately 80-90 kilometers per hour. And they connect to almost everywhere we want to. The “almost” is due to one road that we want to cross and are not sure it is open: from the Alamut Valley to the Caspian coast. We want to avoid the boring way via the main road, and rather go over the mountain, where there is a pass that opens in spring when it gets hot enough for the snow to melt. When a local tells us that the road has just been opened, we look for a 4WD to cross and find a lovely blue Nissan (or Saipa Zamyad) Z24, that is used daily to bring food and goods from one village to the other. The crossing is by far the most fun adventure of the whole trip. The blue Nissan, driven by an unequalled driver, crosses rivers, gravel mountain roads and a little snow left at 3,000 meters high. With it we first reach the peak of Pichabon, where there is still a 17th century caravanserai that is still in excellent shape and that would be worth reopening, for tourists at least, since traders might have discovered new ways. After the souvenir from the old silk road, we start the descent towards the sea and assist to a big miracle of nature: in the space of one hour we move from Switzerland to Thailand. The landscape changes dramatically, going from Christmas trees and small bushes, to rice fields and gorgeous green jungle. Here we join locals in a picnic with fresh made bread and grilled trout. On the way we feel almost as cool as Freya Stark, who probably parcourred a similar way in the early 1930s, but with a donkey instead of a 4WD. Her book, The Valley of the Assassins, is the proof of an unmatched spirit of adventure combined with a sensitive eye of its brave and passionate author and it is a trip inside the trip.

Pichabon peak

Riding towards the Caspian

Roads are not the only good infrastructures. Water seems to be drinkable in most places… although we did not dare to experiment for obvious reasons. Electricity was fully functioning even in the most remote corners of Alamut. There are banks everywhere and it is not rare to see people paying by card even for small amounts. Those banks and POS, however, are not meant for foreign credit cards since they are banned from international networks like Visa and Mastercard. The one infrastructure that does not give us much peace is gas. It’s not that we do not appreciate the pleasure of a warm shower. It’s just that in some cases, the price for it, is an old boiler which, we guess, is not subject to regular annual controls. It is not rare to smell gas in the corridors of hotels and to leave windows open – youneverknow!

As decent social scientists, we check GDP per capita data before departing. The output per head of population in Iran is, on average, 400 dollars per month. As indecent social scientists we conclude immediately that the country is poor. Once there, we rivisit our rushed conclusion based on the observation that:
-prices are low, which means that the average output per capita translates in a much higher figure once the purchasing power parity is taken into account (and then becomes 1450),
-Where we go we do not see people begging in the streets or sleeping outdoor
-wealth seems to be well distributed,
-everything can be purchased in the country and a lot seems locally manufactured,
-as mentioned above, infrastructures are quite good.

Another proof of the relative wealth are the well maintained public spaces you find in most of the cities. Along all the main streets of a city like Esfahan you can see trees on both sides of the road. They are standing close to eachother to make sure pedestrians can have a walk on a pleasant shady boardwalk, and along the river a long and broad park is stretched on both riverbanks in the centre of the city. The age of many of the trees and the beauty of the blossoming flowers in the parks shows that this attention for qualitative public spaces is not an upcoming trend of the last decades. It’s a result of maybe centuries of carefully sustained attention, certainly if you know that a citywide irrigation system is needed to let any tree grow in this dry climate. With parks like these it’s no wonder the Iranians made picnicking their national hobby.

There is also a widespread feeling of security, which contradicts the image of Iran that was automatically created by Western media covering extensively the speaches of Ahmadinejad between 2005 and 2013. As a local reminds us, security is a valuable asset in a region that is deeply unstable from the political point of view. All in all, the system is not perfect and not 100% democratic, due to the lack of separation between the temporal and the spiritual power, but seems to deliver better results compared to what is happening at its borders. (Iraq, Afghanistan)

Here starts the puzzle: the country is rather modern and relatively rich… yet its isolation is immediately visible. There are very few capitals in this world where one cannot find a pizzeria and fastfoods every second block. We barely spot a small Ikea and an even smaller H&M in Esfahan. In a era where everyone complains every day of worldwide chains that sell the same products from Buenos Aires to Singapore, ending up in an island that appears to be sheltered from globalisation is quite interesting. This is partly due to the sanctions, another of the words frequently provided by locals. The sanctions started after with the 1979 revolution and were upgraded as a result of the plans to build nuclear weapons.

As a result of the sanctions, very few people ventured into the country since the revolution in 1979 and therefore there is no investment into the tourist business. The choice of hotels is limited and the middle range one offer a very poor service. Particularly difficult to tolerate are the poor cleaning standards. Moreover, it is impossible to do any booking on the internet. Many hotels do not have a website, which reflects the fact that the local economy relies on the phone as main vehicle for information.

Undoubtly, the main asset of the country are its people. First of all they are honest: in the first days is was difficult to deal with a currency with so many zeros for such small prices and they never took advantage of that, nor cheated on us. Second, they are the most welcoming one could ever come across in this world. Probably to disprove the idea that foreigners get about them from the media. It can easily happen to be invited for tea at someone’s house. In one case a group of wealthy friends in their 50s even left us their room in the hotel and, as if that was not enough, invited us for dinner. Third, these people are not only generous but also very, very keen to share their story. This includes talking about our favorite topic: politics!

It’s a generalised view among our acquaintances that President Rouhani is doing a great job in opening the country again and makes a much better match between the society and its leaders, compared to his crazy conservative predecessor. Despite this, to our great surprise, we hear more than once that people were better off at the time of the shah.

Ilaria & Naten, May 2016