The book and ensuing film might have brought the name Persepolis back into vogue, but this place was already rocking when Alexander the Great came a knockin’ then burnt it down in the ensuing bacchanal. Superlatives don’t do what remains justice and if ancient ruins are your thing, then this is your Mecca. History lessons come to…
Up here the mythically infamous Tehrani smog thins out just enough to get an idea of how massive this city really is. Clear cool water rushes out of the mountain backdrop, down culverts lined with enormous green trees that would seem unimaginable just a few miles south. In fact this is a place where myths…
The only thing bizarre about Kashan’s bazaar is that it isn’t overflowing with tourists. The adobe beauty of this covered market screams out for travelers, but in reality ends up calling the locals to do their daily business. Cooling mudbrick domes filter in shaped beams of light, illuminating everything from carpet wool to dates. Laid-back…
The Crusaders might have had a more difficult time getting here and the bus is surely faster than Freya Starke‘s donkey, but the windy trip into the ancient realm of the mythical Hashshashin is still a modern day adventure. Deep in the Alborz mountains an 11th-century sect hounded the invading Crusaders with fierce warriors stoned out of…
One of the strongest memories I have of Iran is standing outside a regular neighourhood mosque covered in the black mourning flags that are so typical there. Decades of negative imagery on T.V made my wife and I unsure about entering the courtyard. Finally we ventured in and ended up parting ways. Suddenly I heard…
I usually get various reactions from editors when I send them submissions about traveling in Iran. They usually range from complete silence to cheeky replies regarding the sanity of those who travel in such places. So it was with great surprise that I got an email the other day from Trazzler asking me to write…
It seems like it is everywhere. Twitter feeds every minute and retweets every 2. This ‘revolution’ will be twitterized. The enormous country that links the Middle East with South Asia but is neither, is on everyone’s lips and in every flickr. The world has briefly stopped worrying about Nukes and is suddenly worried about its…
If you’re familiar with the terrors that taxi travel can pose around the world. Click over to Go Nomad’s site and check out my latest piece on the perils of heading to the Azeri border in a shared taxi through Northern Iran.
On my first encounter with Tehran, I didn’t even leave the airport. Though it seems like an odd place to transit, I had found a cheap flight from Baku to Dubai with a very long layover in Tehran. Customs was long, but so was the stopover. The second time was arriving from the north in…
View from the Oljeitu Mausoleum in Soltaniyeh, Iran.