Long distance buses Iran’s long distance buses are of two types. The older and the newer buses: The older buses are by Mercedes Benz and the newer once are from Volvo, Scania and MAN buses. The Benz is about half the price as the other 3 but much slower. Comfort wise as well the other 3 looks better than the Benz. You go to the terminal and tell them where you want to go and by the ticket. In Esfahan the price seemed constant however in Tehran you can negotiate. First I was told the Volvo bus from Tehran to Istanbul [View Full Entry]

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Woke up at 6:30am and hurried to the Bank Melli Central branch only to find out that they don’t change TC's. Well now my only hope is the good old Sri Lankan embassy. Mehdi had the address in his diary and we went there. To see they have shifted. They had shifted 2 years ago but information wasn't updated in the Tehran direct inquiries. Then we stopped by at the Syrian embassy and asked them if they knew the new address of the Sri Lankan embassy. I figured that if an embassy is to move they should at least notify the [View Full Entry]

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Woke up around 7:30am, had Lavash, Nutella, Honey and Butter for breakfast. Mehdi and I went to the National History Museum. Mehdi showed his pass as he is doing Tourism planning for his degree and only told them that I was a student and they gave a 50% discount. Even though I am not much of a museum fan, there were a few impressive things. I liked the Iranian Salt Man, some of the old characters and statues. Some palatial ruins like artefacts which reminded me of Anuradhapura. Where you have the wooden columns in this instance like the stone columns [View Full Entry]

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Woke up around 7:30am, went across the street bought some Barbari (one of the four types of bread in Iran) came back to my dorm and ate it with cheese and Nutella. Afterwards checked my email at the hostel and called Beyruse. He said he will come at about 11am. I checked out of the hotel and put my luggage in Beyruse’s car and went roaming around the city centre. Afterwards Beyruse took me to the Soffeh bus terminal and I took the 1pm bus to Tehran. Once in the bus I continued to read Pet Semetary and then I suddenly [View Full Entry]

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Esfahan (Isfahan) 27th January 2006 Woke up early morning as Hadi had to go for classes and he dropped me at the Imam square. I called Ali and finally he answered and we decided to meet at 9:30am. Until Ali came I sat down and wrote my notes as I was already had quite a backlog. When Ali came we went to the Manar Jomban (Shaking Minarets). Unfortunately it was raining and they weren’t shaking it. People had been stopped from going up and shaking it themselves from 2003. Instead there is a person the “minaret shaker” who goes up and [View Full Entry]

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I woke up around 7:30am and the rest of the people were fast asleep. I tried to go into one of the rooms to get my stuff and to shave and have a shower but the room was locked and I didn’t know where the keys were. I spent the next two hours with my mobile deleting text messages and updating my contacts list as I couldn’t do anything else till these guys woke up. They finally woke up at 9:30am and we had breakfast. I love this Iranian breakfast of cheese, walnuts, butter, honey and Lavash (one of the 4 [View Full Entry]

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I got into Esfahan (Iranians sometimes spell it as Isfahan too), Kaveh Bus Terminal at 8:30am. I am at this massive bus station, no guide book, no mobile phone (it doesn’t work in Iran), no one speaks English and don’t know where to go. Last but not least only USD4/= i.e. Iranian Riyals (IRA) 36,000 in my purse. Wow what a feeling. The situation gets even better as I learnt later that Iran didn’t accept travellers cheques, no ATM’s, visa card not accepted due to US sanctions and I had changed my last USD10/= bill in Quetta, Pakistan. This is situation [View Full Entry]

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We took a taxi from the Mirjaveh border to Zahedan. It only took 50 minutes to travel 88kms. The road was brilliant and most of it was pretty straight. On the way we went along the mountains which were quite beautiful. The brown mountains had an occasional maroon / reddish patch. The area near the mountains was very clean; we passed a dead bull on the way. The clean area disappeared at the 15km post and a dirty area appeared. Can’t imagine how so many plastic bags got there. The taxi rıde cost Iranian Riayls 30,000/= [View Full Entry]

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Tafton itself is a very dry place with nothing interesting. I was at the back of a double cab with another Pakistani guy. The cab suddenly stopped without fuel. The driver went off and came back in a car with can of fuel. I saw him paying the car driver with Iranian Riyals. To see at the border area, since fuel from Iran is so cheap they buy the fuel from across the border. The area looked pretty deserted. The geography of the area is such that, its amazes me to think that all this was a part of India at [View Full Entry]

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The border immigration opened in the Pakistan side around 9am. At the border people were burning plastic cans to keep themselves warm. I guess the Pakistan government should run an Environmental Studies 101 in this area to make people aware of the harmful effects in what they do. Since there was no queue for foreigners like in the Wagah border I was put in front. All the while my backpack was resting on the Iranian border wall; I kept watch from the Pakistan immigration queue to make sure no one was putting anything. I think have got quite paranoid of this [View Full Entry]

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