Mud, mud, glorious mud!!!
Trip Start
Jan 08, 2005
1
52
135
Trip End
Ongoing
Yazd,
Iran
Sunday, September 25, 2005
We got on and sat together and the person who had the seat next to me got on and looked at us. As it was a man, he couldn't sit next to me anyway so just moved off and sat elsewhere. Easy peesy lemon squeezy.
We got a taxi in Yazd and tried to get to the Silk Road Hotel. The guy had no idea and tried to off-load us somewhere else. David was losing it. Eventually we found our way and he wanted commission for taking us there but you can imagine what David said. The idiots at the Silk Road paid him though! We had emailed them twice but to no avail so when the guy asked us if we had a reservation we said we'd emailed but no one had answered. He just shrugged his shoulders and showed us to our room. It was expensive but lavish compared to Amir Kabir. Our own bathroom with a sit down toilet complete with squishy seat!!!! White fluffy towels, air conditioning and a fridge!! What luxury! We were paying for it though. The hotel is a renovated traditional house so had a big courtyard with a fountain and some plants. Very relaxing. They also have a restaurant so we had some lunch but weren't so relaxed when we saw they added 15% on to everything. Even if you just have tea!! We decided we wouldn't eat there again. It was expensive enough staying there. There were a load of people there that we had met in Esfahan. A Dutch couple riding bicycles, Debbie and Peter, a German guy, Joerge and Dutch guy, Robin also on bikes and few others. They were all camping out under the stars on the roof because all the dorm beds were taken. It was boiling hot during the day so was nice and cool on the roof at night.
We went for a wander round the old mud laneways that Yazd is famous for. It's also famous for 'badgirs', windtowers that catch the slightest hint of breeze and send it down into the houses. Apparently Yazd is said to be one of the oldest inhabited places in the world. We went off to find the Jameh Mosque which is always interesting in any town and wandered around the lanes a bit more and then went to find a place for dinner. We went to another old house that had been restored. It was much more impressive than our hotel but still added 15% to the bill. It was a really nice place but surcharge was annoying.
Next day we got lost in the old town again which was great. I love wandering round the old laneways. There are hundres of the old windtowers everywhere. It's sooooo hot though. I know why everyone takes the middle of the day off!!! We eventually came across Alexander's Prison which they say was built by Alexander the Great. Across the way is the Tomb of the 12 Imams from the 11th century but none of them are buried there so don't know why they called it that. We went into the tourist office near by to ask about tours of the surrounding area. We waited our turn for about 15 minutes and this other guy walked in. I could see what was going to happen so I went to a closer part of the counter. As soon as the other people had gone this other guy just butted in, but the annoying thing was, was that the tourist person was actually going to speak to him!! I really hate that so I was in there, guns blazing!!! Success!! We booked our tour for the next day and left. When we got back to the hotel the spanish girl that we had met in Esfahan was getting a few together to go and see the sunset at the Towers of Silence so we bagged a lift with her. We got his hell taxi driver! Obviously taught himself to drive. David and I were squashed into the front seat and the other three in the rear. Our lives flashed before our eyes. Mine in David's and David's in mine!!! That's how much dodging and swerving he was doing!! He was the Formula 1 Dodgems driver of Yazd!! Lucky to reach out desination alive we climbed the higher of the two towers and positioned ourselves with a good view of the quickly setting sun. It was glorious! The towers weren't as I had imagined. I think 'tower', 'tall'. But they are shorter, wider towers set atop hills. After sitting there a while I could imagine the dead bodies being brought up there and the priest watching over them. The towers were used right up until about 1967 by the Zorostrians who don't believe in buring the dead as it would pollute the earth so they used to put the bodies up on these towers in a seated position and wait until the vultures had picked the bones clean before bringing them back down and putting them in tombs. A priest would sit up and watch which eye was picked out first. If it was the right, you were on your way to paradise, but if the left, you were hell bound!!!! From the top of the towers the view of the ever increasing sprawl of Yazd was very evident. The old town was clearly visible in the distance with the newer higher ugly blocks of modern flats in the foreground. In a few years time the buildings will have eaten all the spare land up right to the walls of the Towers. Pity, it would have been so peaceful once. That night the roof campers invited us up for pizza alfresco. It was the most tasty pizza I've had for ages, and they didn't even use an oven!!!!
Next day we had to be up at the crack of dawn, well 7am, for our tour. The guys were a bit late but we hadn't paid yet so it was fine. They arrived and the usual questions were thrown about. Religion, politics etc. The guide was an English student and the driver a student of English literature but he only read books translated into Farsi (?). They were well in thinking with so many other young Iranians we had met. They wanted the scarf law abolished as they thought it was an insult to men (that they can't control the animal inside!) and they wanted intervention from the US. I said that I thought that women wearing the chador would make them seem more aluring for men as it would increase the fantasy aspect. They both agreed whole heartily! Our first stop was the town of Meybod where we were taken to a restored caravanserai which was much bigger than the turkish ones. Then we went across the road to an old, disused ice house. It's a huge mudbrick domed structure where they made ice during the winter for use during the summer. David climbed down the stairs and made echo noises. On the way out we were told to tip the old guy that had opened the door. It wasn't much but we were a little annoyed because we thought our tour fee covered entry fees too. Next off we were went not far to the old and falling down Narein Castle. They are slowly restoring it. Just before we went in I decided to clear up the entry fee question. They said we had to pay all our own entry fees on top of the tour price. We explained that we thought everything, including lunch, would be covered as that's how the tour operator had sold it to us. We paid for the castle though (it wasn't much either) and wandered round. Although we didn't pay for anything more that day. We did some climbing and I crawled into a few holes. Not much in there, except more dried mud. There was a man in the parking lot making more mud bricks for the restoration. They have a long way to go. On the way out of town there is an old bird tower where they used to keep up to 4000 pigeons and collect their shit to use for fertilizer. The only pigeons in there now are stuffed ones. It's weird. They've tried to make it as life-like as possible though and included a couple of stuffed ones going for it. Nice touch. Next town was Ardakan where we walked the old laneways and went to visit an old house that was being restored. It originally belonged to a rich merchant and was huge! They had separate door knockers for the women and men so that they knew how to answer the door. Very important to Muslims (cover for the ladies, etc). Then we went to see the Jameh Mosque and to visit another house. This one was a little smaller but still the traditional style with a little pond in the middle. They build them according to the sun so there are living quarters for each season (ie, cooler end for summer and warmer end for winter with spring and autumn parts being opposite each other). It was the ex-president's, father's old house (mouthful). We went to have a camel kebab for lunch. I won't be going back for seconds! We then went to see Chak Chak. One of the main reasons for coming to Yazd. It's the most important site for Zoroastrians. It's right in the middle of no where, at the end of a long, long road through the desert and set up into the mountain. It is said that a Sassanian princess fled to the site after an Arab invasion where she prayed to the gods for water. She threw her staff at the cliffs and where it struck water started to drip (chak chak means drip drip). It's been dripping constantly since about AD637. You'd think they would have bottled the stuff and sold it!!! We climbed the hundreds of stairs and got our breath back in the cool sacred temple that covers the rocks that drip. There's also a couple of trees in the middle. It's quite relaxing listening to the dripping of the water and just looking out to the nothingness of the surrounding desert mountains. The last stop on our day trip was the old mud village of Kharanaq. We looked at another caravanaseri whilst waiting for some keys. Everyone was moved out from the village quite a few years ago as it was becoming unstable but one family refused and still live there. They reckon some parts of the village are over 1000 years old too! I loved it. We wandered round and I climbed in and out of holes in floors and found old stairs leading to upper levels. I took loads of photos. I wanted to stay longer!! But then the premier site was there. The shaking minaret. The stairway was really really tiny. David had lots of problems with his broad shoulders. The driver went up first and then me. When I got to the top we started shaking it. It's such a spin!!! It really feels like it's going to topple over! The guide came up, but not all the way out and then we managed to squeeze David out to see the views! They both freaked pretty quickly and tried to race down to the lower level (marginally safer). I stayed up for a while shaking and freaking myself out. It was great!!!!! The views were spectacular as well. It all had to come to an end though and we climbed back down and returned to Yazd. The shaking minaret had been the highlight of my day. For dinner that night we went to a beautifully restored Hamman that is now a restaurant, and they only charged an extra 7%!! Marvellous!
Even though we had had a great time meeting up with people and seeing the sites, we still both preferred Esfahan.
Continuing our journey towards Pakistan, Kerman was our next stop. The Lonely Planet recommends this was the place for more carpets, so I knew David would be on a mission.
