Waking early at the Hotel Strada (there was no sleeping in with the racket going on out in the corridor anyway) we pack our gear and I wake up the bleary-eyed Methrān [clerk] to pay our bill and retrieve our passports. Out on the street, we strike a taxi straight away and it takes us into the centre of Nōshahr, where we have to wait for about ten minutes for another to Chalūs.
People are camped out on the pavement around the centre of Nōshahr. They lie in rows across the footpath on mats, a few even have tents pitched. Several groups sit around gas cookers making breakfast. This seems to be a strange way to take a holiday, but when one considers how many people there are in Iran, they probably don’t have money to spend on hotels. But surely though they could find somewhere a little more attractive to doss down. In Chalūs, we only have to wait for about ten minutes before the crowded minibus we had boarded sets off around the ringway and back down through Nōshahr.
Traveling along the Coast Road, the escarpment of the Alborz Mountains rises sheer to landward, cloaked in a deep green swathe of jungle. Between the foot of the mountains and the sea lies a narrow stretch of fertile farmland with paddies of rice which are being harvested.
The harvest of the tourist Rial is also underway, and the coast is lined with beach huts and clusters of holiday cottages with gaily painted roofs of purple, red, yellow, and blue. Scattered between the holiday resorts, groves of orange trees grow behind high walls. Water towers stand in each grove, like Sputnik satellites freshly landed from another mission. All along the roadside, groups of people picnic amongst the rubbish next to the walls of the orange groves. Many of these walls have paintings of the Iranian trinity etched onto them: Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; Khomeini, Khomani, Rafsanjani.
At Babol, we change modes of transport to a Safārí — a beaten-up Paykan car — which speeds us along to Sari. The town of Sari sits twenty kilometres inland on the eastern end of the Caspian Plain. Near the town of Noor, the green-cloaked mountains turn southward, and a wide, fertile plain, verdant with crops of rice and vegetables, runs from the mountains to the sea. This rich land is well-endowed with trees, mainly poplars, not the tall, graceful Lombardy ones, although there are some of these to be seen, but the brightly-leafed bushy variety that is planted along riverbanks throughout the South Island high country. After Sari, aboard another minibus, the landscape begins to change, becoming drier and more hilly. Brick kilns dot the landscape, with rows and rows of newly-formed bricks laid out to dry prior to firing in the kiln.
We pass through several unremarkable towns whose entrance roads are guarded by men and boys selling fish hanging from long poles. The salesmen look like soldiers standing to attention.
Gorgon is a dusty town standing on the edge of the great steppe lands, which stretch away to the north into Turkmenistan and Russia. Its tree-lined streets all lead upward to a circular Maidūn, and in the back streets near the bazaar, many examples can be seen of the classic Mānzandarānī style of architecture: sloping tile roofs and wooden balconies.
Standing at the bus station, we look lost until someone comes over to give us assistance and takes us in a taxi to the Hotel-é Khayyam. It is quite expensive at thirteen thousand rials, three pounds twenty, but quite comfortable, and our room has a shower in it. After settling in, we walk up to the main square and eat some tasty sandwiches of spiced sausage, potato, tomato, and gherkin in bread rolls washed down with Zam Zam orange juice.
We walk clockwise around the square. A man is selling doves from a cage. Some men ready a car for a wedding, decking it out with flowers and ribbons. A sullen-looking soldier armed with an SLR rifle guards the police station. Walking back down the street towards the hotel, we strike up a conversation with some Afghani women. They have brown-weathered faces with bright hazel eyes and mischievous smiles. Linda asks if she can take their photo, but they laugh and jabber and wave their hands, saying no.
On a whim, we wander off the main street and up into the maze of narrow alleys that make up the central part of the town. There are some good, although decaying, examples of the Manzindarani architecture along the streets, and we stopped to photograph some of these. The streets are muddy and rutted, with open drains running along each side. Above the roofline can be seen a large array of dishes and antennae, standing atop a wooded hill on the edge of town, a final outpost of modern communication before the wilderness of the steppes.
The evening is dark and stormy. We venture out at seven p.m. for a snack and walk up to the main square. The street is lined with merchants out to catch a few late shoppers. Drizzle falls from a sloe-black sky and a cool breeze shakes a few early autumn leaves from the maple trees which line the street. The stores are lit by light bulbs hanging from poles and casting a myriad of shadows among the piles of melons, fish, bananas, and knickknacks for sale and the crowd of Friday night shoppers. As we walk back to the hotel, a loudspeaker hidden in a tree gargles a call to prayer: “La ila ila ala Muhammad Rasul Allah.”
CurseOfTheTraveller 