First visually speaking. You’ve all seen pictures from Imam Square, Blue Mosque or Si O Seh bridge. And as you guess, it is much more impressive live. And obviously, there are lots of tourists and travellers (more than 20 french speaking persons just here) we’ll meet again later on our trip.

Esfahan is one of the major cities in Esfahan, the city is rich, and developped (as an important part of tourists coming here is iranian). People are also much more used to meet and deal with foreigners. Locals come to talk on “equal to equal” basis.

And I wasn’t expecting that at all. I mean to meet randomly so much cultivated and so well balanced people that just wanted to discuss and exchange ideas about different cultures.

From an old guy just passing by, who gave us a 5 minutes speech about ancient persian mythology, to a local textile salesman who closed his shop for 10 minutes in order to show us directions. From youngsters with strong opinions against their ismalic regime and our HC host, a syrian/iranian guy, english teacher, with whom we had great times talking freely about various topics from iranian economy, islamic revolutions from syrian point of view, which passport from iranian or syrian, girls ans boys in Iran, and much more.

But don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mean I was before considering Iranian people as underdevelopped or so, neither as hypocrite perverses or mafiosis. Never (or at least very rarely) being considered as a walking wallet was nice.

Probably one of the (only???) benefits from the state-controlled egonomy and regime : a purchasing power “less inequally” shared.

So we spent 5 days gazing in the Half of the World (the so-called Imam Square), the ity, from tea rooms to mosques, green parks and bazars, spending hours talking with random strangers.

Before going to Shiraz.

A first rigorous stop in a very traditional city, where the only coloured clothes you see in the street are the ones from (very few) foreign tourists. Black everywhere. (A bit) frightening. But no worries, Anahide bought a nice iranian manteau in Bazar.

Welcome in Kashan

Kashan from top, 40°C wind at 8PM

Tea time

Just before finishing this post, 2 pictures from Abyaneh, a small village 70 km from Kashan where you can meet one of the last zoroastrian community in Iran (these ladies with coloured hijab).

2 weeks in a totally crazy country, far far away from all the stereotypes we could have from our western civilizations.

Let’s go

Yerevan, 9.30 AM : our “Volvo” bus ( very comfortable, i.e. with A/C, cold water, toilets) was standing like a giant among all those little soviets marshutkas.

Let’s go for a 24 hours ride to Tehran with Parskahay peopple, form the Armenian community from Iran, coming back to see the family (in hell, was saying to us an old lady “Watch out, don’t go to cheap hostels : you could get harassed or raped, watch out for taxi drivers blablabla, we had the impression of going to one of these destroyed third word countries :()
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On the road

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So 24 hours, at first from Vayots Dzor & Syunik valleys in Armenia, to the desertic landscapes on north western Iran.
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Green/Brown

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The geological border between the two countries is pretty much impressive, on one site, the green “Armenian” side, on the other, the brown & desertic Iranian.
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And it was interesting to have the first contact with Iran through the Parskahay armenian community, who’s been the largest christian community in the country, and allowed to have their own churches and schools in exchange of respecting the islamic laws.

And when I mean respecting, it’s pretty much funny. When you expect heavy hijabs (scarves) and massive manteaux, you just see light scarves and slightly transparent jackets over sexy pink tops. This wasn’t what I was expecting

24h hours later, arrived in Tehran, just time to change to the southern bus terminal, and we were heading to Kashan (next episode).

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Bye bye Armenia

That’s all for the moment