Finally, some other travellers! And a great hotel
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2005
1
63
77
Trip End
Aug 25, 2006
Yazd,
Iran
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
It was in the dormitory that I met up with some old friends and some new ones, and together we hired a taxi and headed out for the day - to the Towers of Silence. An onimous name for an amazing place - where the ancient Zoroastrium followers (most of the faith of the region before the introduction of Islam) used to put dead bodies to get eaten by vultures. The Zoroastrium faith does not believe in burial (pollution of the earth) or cremation (pollution of the air) and so this was a very environmentally friendly way of getting rid of the dead!
From the Towers, we headed back into town to the biggest Wind Tower (33m) in Iran - designed so wind would come down the tower and hit the water at the bottom, a kind of old age air conditioning! From there we wandered the charming streets of Yazd around the city (via the Jame Mosque and other places) to home sweet home.
The highlight of my time in Yazd however was a small tour we arranged through our hotel to take us out and around the desert around Yazd. First stop was the tiny and ancient village of Karangh (also known as 'mini bam'). Here, for thousands of years, the inhabitants had carved out rooms and houses from the rock. It was only 20 years ago that they had been 'relocated' a few hundred metres down the road for the town to be restored. There WAS a bit of restoration going on and a few families had moved back in, but it was much like a ghost town, but a lovely one! There was the occassional old folk walking around the village or doing their washing in the river. And it was here that I officially met my most favourite old person in the world, a little old man (pictured below with me) but the name of Mohammed Ali (and who had never heard of the boxer) whose hobby was, in the great Iranian tradition, reciting poetry. I sat there fascinated while he told me poem after poem - most about growing old and now being by himself, one quite romantic one, and countless countless other beautiful sounding rythmical poems. Unfortunately it was all in Persian but my guide did his best to keep up with the very sprightly 82 year old Mohammed!
After an hour or so wandering around Karangh, we headed to the much larger city of Meybod. Meybod is dominated by a huge fortress overlooking the mud built houses of the city and was part of the ancient trading routes. As such, scattered around town were such delights as old Caravanseri (old hotels where the camels and owners used to stopover), water canals and even an icehouse (to store ice through the summer)!
Finally, as the desert heat started to wane, we headed deep into the desert to the Zoroastrium holy place of Chakchaku. Legend goes that a princess was fleeing with her bodyguards from the Muslims (or perhaps it was the Monguls?! argghh!) attacking and headed to this area. She climbed the mountain and was never seen again, but from the moment she disappeared, water appeared in the mountain. The water drips, making a 'chakchaku' noise, and so the area is called Chakchaku and is the holiest place for the Zoroastrim faith, and a place of great pilgrimage. For those wanting to know more about Zoroastrimism, see below!
Another day or two was spent relaxing in the Silk Road Hotel and Yazd before heading north, to Kerman and Masshad.
Zoroastrium Religion
Zoroastrianism is the oldest of the revealed world-religions, and it has probably had more influence on mankind, directly and indirectly, than any other single faith... Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence. For more information see http://www.avesta.org/
