International Hotel Dad Yazd

... imposing 15th century Jameh Mosque ("Jameh" means Friday in Farsi, so in most cities the central mosque is called the Jameh Mosque). Yazd's Jameh Mosque is unusually tall (it's minarets climb 48m) and slender, and looks particularly stunning when lit up at night. Continuing our aimless wander through the maze of backstreets we came across another beautiful restored 19th century house, the Khan-e Lari. This one is renowned for it's stained glass – in the evening light the interior ...

Fiona Posting. <br><br>We headed off after an early breakfast and promptly came to a halt when Steve's first gear change resulted in a very strange and unnatural sound. With 'Kristina&#8217;s&#8217; flip top head opened up, we soon secured the services of the best truck mechanic in Iran (or so Mustapha told us).<br> <br><br>While waiting, we wandered around the back streets of this lovely mud brick town, took some photos, smiled and ...

... pre-dates Islam. We've seen lots of ancient remains of their fire temples and burial sites, high on the top of mountains where they took their dead to be eaten by vultures (nice) since they believe that putting a dead body in the ground polluted the earth. The other thing that Yazd is known for is their "wind catchers", a chimney-like attachment to the houses that has huge slats which "catch" the wind and then force the drafts down ...

L'extra-ordinaire géographie iranienne avait eu cet heureux effet, en début de voyage, d'accélérer la prise de conscience de l'"altérité" de la republique islamique ; un pays en soi, aux portes de l'Asie et définitivement distinct des voisins arabes. J'ai donc passé ces 10 premiers jours en quasi-permanente altitude, montant jusqu'à très ...

... arrived on the divan (that is what you call the raised seating, isn't it). The waiter service appeared to die the death upon his arrival, and oru divan got chatting with him. Turns out he was a Paussie doing a tour on his own (how mad is that?) before heading back to Perth, Western Australia. His parents (and him) had moved to Perth in 1991 which accounted for his polite English accent with a hint of Australian. Thankfully ...

... the 1960s. Just to further add to your sense of wonderment (and possibly disgust) a Zoroastrian priest would sit with the body and watch to see which eye was plucked out first. I'll allow Mohsen to continue the story, "Depending on which eye they ate out, you were either going to the heaven or the hell." He then went on to explain what is in effect the concept of 'soul sleep' where the dead were considered to 'sleep' until the return ...

... Pasargade is worth the effort of getting here - it is 50km north of Persepolis..... [H]owever, these ruins are beautiful in a lonely kind of way." Bless. They are really being very tactful. The fact was that Pasargade was on our way to Yazd, otherwise a 100km round trip to a bunch of stones and pillars would have left you a tad annoyed. Sure the Tomb of Cyrus is impressive, but it's in the middle of nowhere, miles from anywhere ...

... the political and economic elites. I'm sure that over the thousands of years in the past a lot of these ideas and practices were cross-fertilized among the numerous cultures and peoples of the Middle East.<br><br>The last program of the day was checking out the local zoorkhaneh club. Zoorkhaneh is unique to Iran. It's a mixture of martial arts (without the fighting), religious worship and a circus act. It's performed by a group of men or boys standing in a circle inside a pit. The ...

... lined with concrete so that the services of the vultures were not needed any longer. I climbed up one of the towers and enjoyed a spectacular panoramic view of the city. In the centre of the grounds is a pit lined with rocks. I tried to imagine all the corpses deposited there and how the vultures circled above and swooped down for a raucous feast. I wouldn't mind being picked clean by vultures - it's a very sustainable funerary option.

... made it even more difficult to navigate. I got seriously lost for 20 minutes, as the map was useless, the communication with the locals futile, and there were no signs anywhere. But eventually I managed to find the guesthouse, which has a lovely central courtyard and a fountain. I took a long walk on the main street, feeling the last remnant of the desert heat radiating off the pavement. Yazd claims to be the oldest continuously settled city in the ...