Sara | Chaos roaming the world

Set timer, run … smile!

Not having to camp meant that we slept in a little. Fereshteh made us an early breakfast as other members of the family were still sleeping. Afterwards, when everyone was up, we took a round of photos as we hadn’t taken enough yesterday. Packing up was comparatively quick and we were good to go on the “short” ride to Hamadan, about 180km away.

Bisotun, the ancient inscription site, lay on our way. Again, we had to pay the standard price of 400.000 rials as tourists (about NZ$20) to gain entrance. The site is big though. We started with a short hike up to a rock which has carvings of human figures on three sites. One is identified as a king while the others are not as clearly marked.

charming greek decor

Further into the park, you pass a Hercules statue. Hercules, you might ask? Yes. Well, the Greek left it as a “hah, we conquered you” gift. Originally, there was a lion statue depicted there; the Greek then added the Hercules on the back of it, making a rug out of the lion. Charming fellows all around.

There used to be a Parthian relief of Mithrades II next but it has been defaced with a giant inscription plate in Arabic. I didn’t even take a picture of it.

Sadly, all hidden away behind scaffolding

Next up was the main attraction: Darius as a bas-relief with inscription panels in Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian around the scene. This was an utter disappointment. Almost nothing of it was visible as a scaffold told of renovation efforts. You could only take a picture from far, far away or have only the scaffold on it. I even hiked up to the beginning of the closed off zone to see if there was any way of getting a look but nope. Especially Flo was disappointed. He didn’t feel too well to begin with as I might have given him my sniffles.

The site stretches out quite a bit after Darius but we were hot and tired already. So we walked to Farhad Tarash to have a look and then turned around. Farhad Tarash is a huge, cleared area on the rock face some 200 meters long which was dedicated for an inscription which has never been done. So now, it’s just a huge, smooth, vertical surface at the bottom of the cliff. So odd. From here, we also had a view to an old caravanserai but didn’t go anymore.

He gave us a free lunch because we are guests

Time to head back to the bike and get on the road. Our excursion had lasted longer than we expected. Hunger caught up with us before we reached Hamadan and we stopped at a roadside eatery which advertised a burger on its door. When we went in, two guys just bought ice cream. There was a little kafuffle when they left and one of them pointed at us while refusing to take his change. So the next thing that happened was ice cream, appearing in front of us. Those guys had just shouted us ice cream! How nice is that? We still needed real food though and went with falafel sandwiches. When we wanted to pay, the owner didn’t take it. Instead, he showed us a word in Farsi on an app similar to google translate: Guest. What were we supposed to do? We thanked him for his kindness and felt really good about the world and its people. 🙂 Not much else you can do after that.

Now Hamadan was only a hop away. The Lonely Planet listed some cheap options and we found the perfect place in the Ordibesht Hotel. A spacious room (3 beds), clean toilet facilities and even a small kitchen with a samovar providing hot water. If we could have exactly this place in every city, we’d be so happy.

Nina’s normal reaction to a cake shop

Flo felt off so he got to have a two hour nap while I updated the blog and commented the photos for it. At 5.30pm, we left in search for dinner. Right next to the hotel, I stumbled upon a cake and sweets shop. Everything in here looked delicious. The owner didn’t speak any English but speaking with hands and feet we got the information that he would close at 8pm tonight. Enough time to go for food, come back to choose a dessert and go back to the hotel.

Searching for dinner was a tedious thing. Both restaurants we wanted to go to were closed (Friday). So we wandered back towards our hotel, looking for food and ended up in a fast food joint at Imam Khomeini Square. The fast food was Irani for once so I got to try the large “samosas” (that’s how they look like to me) filled with potato and herbs while Flo had a bun filled with salmon or some kind of sausage and a very meaty looking pizza pie. My food was really yummy so this is something I would go for again.

Hamadan in general was nice to us. The sun was shining and while wandering around looking for food, many people smiled at us, greeted us and welcomed us in their city/Iran. Some even stopped for a conversation. One young lady must have followed us for a bit (I think) as she had three questions which sounded like she spent some time thinking on how to phrase them. She was lovely, as were all the others. Hamadan doesn’t see that many tourists so the feeling of being famous or a rockstar returned.

Nina struck gold 🙂

One last thing needed to be done…buy dessert! Going for the smallest available box, I was slightly overwhelmed with the choices. I got cream-filled puffs, chocolate cupcakes, slices of a creamy looking cake, cookie sandwiches and dry cookies where I had no idea what they were. My box was full to the brim in the end. And the owner wanted to give it to us for free. Trying really hard to pay this time while buying “luxury” for us, the owner only accepted half the money it would have cost us. Leaving the shop with a box full of sweets that I bought for NZ$2.20. That’s maybe a euro fifty for you European folk.

Everything in it was yummy though one thing needs to be singled out as heavenly. Flo had spotted the cookie sandwiches and I am very grateful for that. Between two crumbly cookies was a gooey marshmallowy cream which had softened the cookies a little bit. It had something of an overly large macaroon but with marshmallow in the middle. Divine!

: Sara’s mum and aunt with Nina

: Set timer, run … smile!

: Hiking up to the first site

: A life size carving

: Shepards were driving their flock through the site

: charming greek decor

: Nina liked the little one

: Probably what made this site so interesting in the past: a natural spring

: The rubble from the clearing still visible, thousands of years later

: they looked nice, but I was too tired to go there

: Sadly, all hidden away behind scaffolding

: He gave us a free lunch because we are guests

: The flat back where we came from

: The city was designed by a German. Roads go off like spokes from a main plaza

: I forgot what this one was for

: The namesake of the main square

: Nina’s normal reaction to a cake shop

: Nina struck gold 🙂

: Sooo tasty

: Pretty much all tasty

Camping spot in the morning

Right, there exists something called weather in most of the world …

We woke up in between showers. The rumble of thunder was still audible somewhere in the valley. When I poked my head out and tentatively started to make breakfast, the drops started falling again. All around were dark clouds, except for one small patch of blue that sparked our hopes. By the time breakfast was ready, the rain was in full swing again, though. So we climbed back into our little bubble and sat it out.

Sun…over here, please. Epic sun beams on the other side of the valley

By 10 am we had packed everything up again. We had some luck and just got all in during a brief pause in the rain. The tent will have to be dried at some point within the next two days, though.

I must say I enjoyed the change of landscape and weather. For the first time that I can remember, we were both wearing the full Compañero, including the rain proof layer, so the cold and wet did not phase us at all. Besides, we only had 150 km to go to reach Kermanshah, where we would likely stay overnight.

…except for sheep…

I am not sure if it is just the lack of a direct route or my setting the GPS to shortest distance, but we took a real back country road for the last 90 km or so. It was nice and quiet, but could have done with a pothole or two less. The quiet road made the contrast all the more stark, coming over the last hill into Kermanshah. From subsistence farmers with donkeys to the three lane boulevards of a ¾ of a million people city within 10 minutes.

We stopped soon after getting into town to set a waypoint for a recommended food place near the city centre. Open street maps are pretty reliable, but most waypoints are only stored in Farsi, which the Garmin does not handle well. So instead of searching, I usually have to set waypoints manually by matching them with the maps in the Lonely Planet. Kermanshah is big, so it took me a while right there on the side of a busy road. A few people stopped, until Hesam came out of his car to check up on us as well.

Into the city

A moment later, he got his sister Sara on the case as well, who’s English was even better than his. Instead of fiddling with the GPS, they offered to lead us there with their car. Once again, we are blown away by the kindness and hospitality of the Iranian people. It is a strange thing, on the one hand, we are getting used to these random acts of kindness, on the other hand we have to laugh hard imagining this kind of genuine “Menschenliebe” anywhere else. In Germany, people would probably rather call the police than follow a stranger.

We only went for 20 meters, when Sara and Hesam stopped again and Sara came to talk to us once more. She asked if we were only looking for a simple room. If so, we could come and stay at her family’s home, where her mother and aunt live. She and her brother were also just visiting at the moment. We had not gone with an invitation since Azemeh’s home and with the rain still going on, we were really glad for a dry place, so we kindly accepted and followed them there instead.

We got a very warm welcome by mother Fereshteh and aunt Shahin, got immediately treated to tea and biscuits and when we remembered that we had still not eaten, Hesam went out to organise Felafel sandwiches for everyone. They had a spare room in the cellar which was just perfect for us and while I unloaded our gear, Nina got the chance to take the shower first.

Flo was moderately excited

After we got everything sorted, plans were made. Sara was only in town till tomorrow and had family matters to attend to this afternoon, which left plenty of time for us to explore the city’s main attraction Taq-e Bostan on our own and sort out some things in town. We got back on the bike and headed for “the mountain”. Taq-e Bostan is a Sassanian era bas relief at the foot of a massive mountain that rises almost vertical and forms the natural northern end of town. We took a little detour up the public park that stretches one third up the slope of the mountain, to watch all the picnickers and weekend frolickers out and about. At the sight, the restaurant next to the entrance was kind enough to let us park our bike under the CCTV and we got in to once again pay the ridiculous 400.000 rial ticket price. This time, I was really a bit annoyed, since there is little to the site but the relief, a spring and a pond – no explanation or much of anything else given. The annoyance lasted only for a moment, though, since the setting was rather nice and the people were continuously lovely. We sat on the grass for a while and took some photos with a group of polymer chemistry students while generally having a good time.

A group of chemistry students swarmed us at the park 🙂

Back at the bike, we made the day of the young soft ice cream seller’s daughter by letting her hop on Rocinante for an Instagram. Pa was in a good mood as well and outright refused to take our money for the two soft ice cream we had.

Back at the house, we had a good time showing Shahin and another aunt some of our pictures from Oman and Iran and communicating without pretty much any shared language. When Hesam came back later, he asked if we would like to join him catch up with a friend at his restaurant. We tagged along and had a good time with even more tea, tochmeh (roasted sunflower seeds) and cheese flavoured popcorn.

We did explain to Saleh how this sign could be misunderstood 😉

As a bonus we got to observe friend Saleh and his crew try to improve the decoration of the place.

After such a full day, with many great and unexpected moments, we had to retreat to our room pretty soon after coming back to get some good sleep. On top of the long day, I was also coming down with Nina’s plague from last week …