Iran 2018

During March-April 2018, Holly and I had the unique opportunity to visit one of the most exotic and unknown countries in the world - the Islamic republic of Iran. After discussing our trip with various people we realised the importance of passing on our experience and how many people were curious to understand more about this mysterious part of the world. Thus, our blog begins...

We have a simple goal: to de-mystify the many false assumptions about Iran and tell a story of our personal experiences. We want to share information and develop further understanding between Iran and the rest of the world.

For us, it has become our own peace mission; because what we share may help to prevent any escalation of conflict (for example with Israel). Many see Iran as a strict regime that is developing nuclear weapons and threatening the sensitive situation in the Middle East. If this is all you now, you should take a look at this video to see how different the reality is: Israel and Iran: a love story? video).

Before our trip, we were just like most people when it came to Iran: uninformed, fearful and ignorant. When the media portrays Iran, it seems to be about the bad: a secretive Islamic regime, revolutionary guards executing anti-government prisoners, massive UN economic embargos and developing nuclear weapons. Therefore, our expectations are that Iran is not safe.

We hadnt had any contact with Iranians whatsoever. And as they say, and the unknown is most feared. So you can imagine our surprise when we got an AirBnB booking request from someone "for their sister". We thought, 'What? Why cant the sister make her own booking?' Well, it turns out not if they are from Iran, where Airbnb is among many blocked websites/apps. We decided to accept, thinking 'what's the worst that could happen?'

And there she was, a petite 20-something year old Iranian girl "Jane" showed up at our doorstep. A citizen of an apparently extremely hostile and one of the most closed-off countries in the world (maybe after North Korea) was staying in our living room on a fold-out couch (yup, its not flash).Instead of fearing her, curiousity took hold and we decided to talk to her and find out as much as possible about her and her life in Iran. Initially, there was hesitation from both sides which then led to friendly conversations, sharing dinners and towards the end even an invitation to come visit Iran. Of course we politely agreed, but at the time never thought more of it. Who in their right mind would want to go to Iran, right?!

While planning our Easter holiday, instead of the usual European roadtrip, Holly came up with a crazy idea - why dont we take Jane up on her offer and travel to Iran! We started organising the trip and applied for our visas at the Embassy in Prague (50 Euro for Czech citizen and 120 euro for New Zealander). Not knowing if Jane was a one off nice Iranian or not, we met the Iranian Embassy staff who were ecstatic we were planning a trip to their home country. 'You must try this food, visit these places, April is the best time to go!!' Holly started to think so far Iranians are so friendly, I hope they are all like this!

Now came the time to tell our families we were going to Iran. They were immediately concerned, especially since neither of us has ever been to a muslim country before. What followed was an avalanche of questions and catastrophic scenarios of us being kidnapped or killed. It took a considerable amount of persuasion to make them feel comfortable about the trip. Next thing we knew, we were on our way my grandma's scarf became Holly's mandatory hijab on arrival at the Khomeini international airport in Tehran and in no time, we are off to an adventure!

In order to deliver the true full story, we have changed names of key characters to protect their privacy. If you wish to contact us, email us at david@rektorys.com or hollymarshnz@gmail.com.

Isfahan

Must-see in Isfahan:

• Naghshe Jahan square
• Ali Qapu palace
• Chehel Sotoon palace
• 33 Pol bridge
• Khaju bridge
• Masjid-e Jame mosque

We had to part ways with Jane after a few days in Tehran and travelled to artsy-like city of Isfahan. We took an over-night Royal Safar bus (which was very cheap and good quality with air conditioning and free snacks) and stayed in Isfahan as couch-surfers with a local family (please support locals as much as possible, you will not be disappointed). Thanks to the community, we were able to meet up with some very interesting locals. Mainly three people really stood out: a 16-year old yet very intelligent girl with big plans for her genetics science career and typical teenage problems, a lovely girl with great tour-guiding experience and historical knowledge, and the third was a 38-year old male who works for the local city council. He was interesting mainly because he represented "the other side" - fully supported the government with everything they were doing. Each story has two sides and he certainly delivered his point of view on why women are essentially men's property, why it doesnt matter that road workers dont have health insurance (but apparently get hit by cars all the time and the perpetrators never get found), respected more the boyfriend's "right" to Holly than her free will and explained why its better to have all banks nationalised. Holy cow, talk about a different perspective!

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In Isfahan, one of the main attractions was Naghshe Jahan square. We could spend the entire day there! :-) It was really massive, wide and long (most squares arent as big as this one), with many shops and cafes around the outskirts of the square. Holly got some of her beautiful jewelry here. If you are into shopping, here you can buy just about everything. What I really liked about it was that a lot of locals came here to meet with friends and family, so it didnt feel like a tourist trap. And how amazing it looked at night! But more about that later :-)

I would really like to point out one thing here - Iran isnt a super touristy place (yet!), so locals enjoyed talking to us pretty much all the time. At first, it felt a little uncomfortable, because we arent used to behaviour like this. But after a while, we realised the intention was purely from curiousity. This is important for the next part of our adventure - Couchsurfing has this amazing feature "Post a public trip", where you notify anyone at the area that you are coming and it lets them contact you. I never had much success anywhere else... but oh man, in Iran we used to get like 20 messages a day!! So of course we were utilising this a lot.

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In Isfahan, during our crazy 24 hours, we met some really interesting people we mentioned above. They became our tour group for the rest of the day and we had a lot of fun with them. After leaving Naghshe Jahan square and the Ali Qapu palace (recommend the guided tour there!) we went to Chehel Sotoon palace, which had some awesome wall painting portraiting Iranian history.

While we were walking through some of the parks (contray to assumptions, Iran has many!) David said he felt like a cup of tea. Out of no where a hot glass of tea was raised in front of him and a family invited us to their picnic! Next thing you know, there is selfies galore and friendly yet stimulating conversation. This is a typical aspect of Persian hospitality, it really makes you welcomed and involved!

Our next stop was the 33 Pol bridge over the Zayandeh river. As you can see from the photos, the river was completely dried out! We were told its been like this for the last few years because of some unwise decisions made that led the river to dry out. It was so sad! After a little while we arrived by the Khaju bridge, which we crossed again and went to get some coffee. Man, for a tea drinking nation, they can do some good coffee too. On our way back to the host family, we crossed the Naghshe Jahan square at night, which looked absolutely stunning! The photos just dont it a justice. The locals were celebrating and the whole square was full of people.

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Yazd

Must-see in Yazd:

• The Pink mosque (Nasirolmonk mosque)
• Hafez tomb
• Sayyed Alaeddin Hossein Mosque
• Quoran gate
• Shahcheragh holy shrine
• Persepolis

In Yazd we stayed at another hostel called Silk Road Hotel, which has a beautiful courtyard and overall nice touch to it. We had a full breakfast and then we were planning to explore the town, however something happened before we had a chance to do that. We were "inside" the hostel in the dining room, which was considered private but a shared space among others so it still fell under the Islamic rule of "dressing appropriately". At one moment, the hostel manager told us to "please get dressed, there is a man coming from the town". This meant Holly had to wear her head scarf, jacket and long pants again even inside a private establishment. This put a bit of a bad mood on us since we werent expecting it, however this might be just the difference between couchsurfing and hostels.

Afterwards we headed out to the city. First to go was the Zoroastrian fire temple. This is really interesting, because it basically is a different and religion from Islam and also a lot older (a couple of thousand years). So much for Islam not tolerating other religions. Inside there was this "ever-lasting fire" and mythology about the religion.

Then we visited Amir Chakhmaq Complex and there we randomly met up with some of our travelling friends from Germany and Portugal. They conviced us to take a taxi with them and go see the Tower of Silense outside of city (about 20mins drive). As a true Star Wars fan, David was super excited! Take a look at the photos and you will understand. It looks just like the houses at Tatooine, the home planet of Anakin Skywalker. But nevermind the Star Wars, this place is seriously ancient. At least a couple of thousand years! We explored the houses, walked up the Tower of Silense and took some photos from the nice view. The top of the tower was used as a massive firepit.

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Afterwards we visited the water museum, the prison where Alexander the Great was briefly held, a local bazzar (marketplace) and Jame mosque (city mosque) just before having our dinner at a lovely Iranian old cafe with a great rooftop sitting and a fantastic view over the city.

At this point it was the sad but inevitable end of our journey. The next day we boarded a train back Tehran (be aware, they require you to show your passport at train stations here and females must do it separately too). Here we shortly met up with Jane again for our last Iranian dinner and paid our last money to the taxi driver to take us back to Khomeini international airport.

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Overall about Iran - absolutely without question this has been the most fascinating and eye-opening trip of our lives. Iran will remain in our hearts as a very hospitable, welcoming country. We are both looking forward to returning one day. One of the main reason we were glad to visit Iran, is because we fear that it might end up just like Syria. There has been a lot of aggressivity between Iran and other countries such as US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. You never know what might happen (nobody expected Syria), so we wanted to see it while still in peace and we are so glad that we did! Therefore also we created this blog to encourage other travellers to go see Iran and spread understanding and respect among all people. We wish all the best to Iran and its amazing people! :-)

To finish off, we put together a few important comments which didnt really fit anywhere into our story, however we felt they are very important to share with the world:

• Dont be scared to travel to Iran and around the country. Its very safe, even at night. The most scary moment was when a cop asked for our passports at the train station (we only show them at airports). We met a few cops and even soldiers, they were all very curious about us but totally harmless :-)
• Iran as a tourist destionation is absolutely undiscovered and what they call "a hidden gem". Yep, pretty much the whole country! Forget the media labelled "war/terrorist country", its total non-sense. Its ideal for adventurous travellers like us, so please leave any potential prejudice towards Iranians at home.
• Again have to mention the miraculous hospitability of Iranian/Persian people. Even coming from New Zealand, where people are pretty friendly, this took our breath away. Maybe its because of how few tourists they have (and maybe only towards white western-looking and english-speaking people like us), so might change in the upcoming years.
• What also was pretty surprising was the level of Persian cosmetics, make-up and clothing especially of the local women. Again, we expected more like the "desert" style of clothing and were greeted by very fashionable, very beautifully dressed and looking women.
• This goes hand in hand with the level of education. We personally met a young girl espiring to become biology scientist, another had a great understanding of the current world affairs, they all spoke perfect English... just overall very educated society.
• One surprising thing was how crazy drivers they are!! I meant I was in Vietnam and other places with crazy drivers, but Iran definitely tops the list :-D you see a lot of cars with small damage to them, so I assume minor accidents happen on everyday basis, although thankfully we didnt experience any ourselves. But their style of driving can really be described by a Westerner as insane. No checking corners, nonexistent indication when changing lanes, our taxi driver from the airport was more interested in showing us photos of his family on his smartphone than looking at the road! Therefore we would definitely NOT advise any westerners to rent a car and drive yourselves around Iran. Unless you have nerves of steel :-)
• We carefully asked about their relations with Israelis (as we went during another "hot season" of international politics) and the normal people told us they feel indifferent towards them. Definitely no hatred, nobody wished to go to war or wanted the destruction of Israel. Its all the regime.
• Final piece of advise about Iran: GO SEE IT YOURSELF, ITS ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT!!! :-)