12 – Iran August 2007

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Pictures from Sero, the Turkey border crossing, to Tehran

Turkey border to Tehran

Pics of Tehran

Tehran

I regularly seek solace in reading about Cornwall and Ealing on the internet…looking up the Cornishman Online every week and reading that the fire brigade had to rescue Mrs Pengelly’s cat from being stuck up a tree is strangely comforting. In this way I nearly got to hear about the deaths of David and Lyn Green…while I was in Iran I didn’t have a very good phone sim card and hadn’t spoken to Mother for some days. One morning, in an internet cafe somewhere in Iran I had looked at the Cornwall section of the BBC website and there had been a report of a horrific road accident near Penryn in which 2 people had been killed, but it was just after the crash and the names hadn’t been released. I thought nothing of it even though I also saw an email from Mother asking me to call her. I duly left a message, but it wasn’t until a couple of days later, when she called me just as I was extricating myself from Tehran’s dreadful traffic, to tell me that David and Lyn, 2 of my second cousins, had been killed in a head-on car crash – in fact, the very car crash I’d read about some days previously. It was quite an awkward situation, for I had been getting a bit pissed off being forced into an endless loop driving around Tehran trying to find the motorway south….I made the mistake of OBEYING the direction signs, you see, and they were WRONG! An Iranian had taken pity on us and had stopped to offer guidance. So we followed him and sure enough twice he went an opposite way to that which the signs said to go – and it worked. He had led us to the start of the motorway south and we had stopped on the hard shoulder to thank him. This we were in the middle of doing, when mother called me. I was dumbfounded, just like when I had heard the news about Jay, and I remember wandering off into the scrub land by the motorway to talk to Mother. Amanda and the chap were staring at me mystified – obviously I could explain to Amanda what had happened, but with language issues I hope I was at least able to gesticulate to the chap that I had suddenly had some bad news in a phone call. Of course, after this I got straight on the phone to Auntie Joyce and then had to go abruptly – I was in a queue of traffic for a toll booth and two police flagged me down. I thought they were going to tell me off for using a mobile while driving, but they simply wanted to ask where we were going. As I was travelling in Iran, and by vehicle, coming back to the UK for the funeral proved to be a tall order logistically but that was the ONLY reason for me not being there. Mother represented me, anyway. I wish now that I had seen them when I saw Auntie Joyce on my way out of Cornwall in January, but I was running short of time and had to make a decision about who I was more likely to be able to see when I got back. This reminds me of an occasion in 2001, when I was due to go to India for 6 weeks. Thus, a few weeks before I left I went down to Cornwall and Plymouth and saw both sets of grandparents…I suppose at the back of my mind was the thought that this was a good idea in case ‘something’ happened while I was away. Sure enough, after a lovely night staying with Gran and Grandad in Plymouth, Grandad passed away the very next weekend. Sometimes, you can never predict what is around the corner.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6936442.stm

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1602044.mostviewed.couple_killed_in_crash.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6944336.stm

Pics of Esfahan

Iran – Esfahan

Pics of Shiraz, Takht-e-Jamshid (Persepolis) and Nagsh-e-Rostam

Shiraz

Whilst in Shiraz, we went to a restaurant. This is the dancing and music we saw – there was some sort of party going on. Hossein reckoned the restaurant owners had to slip some baksheesh to the local Basij (religious police) to keep them from coming along and stopping the whole thing/arresting everyone there.

Pics of Yazd

Yazd

Pics of Kerman and Bam

Yazd to Pak border via Kerman and Bam