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Published: April 30th 2007
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Tower of Silence
A classical air-conditioner built above an underground waterway, cleverely cooling and cleansing hot air carrying sand and debris. Sadly I don't do the sleeping-on-the-bus routine very well, and to top it off it's quite tough for me to even sleep a wink on the longest plane ride. You have obviously come across one of those really ANNOYING PASSENGERs sitting next to you on a long haul who just have to :
(a) get up a million times and walk up and down the aisles
(b) exercise for ages at the back, chilling with other sketchy passengers and stirring up a mob
(c) keep the $%&@ing light flashing at your face all the time as you sleep (grrr!)
(d) furiously shake their heads listening to the crap on their Ipod
(e) anxiously chew nicotine gum and eat their pen as a cig alternative
(f) chug down 3 alcoholic drinks straight, followed by sleeping tablets but STILL returns to (a).
That's probably only half of the things I do in reality. I apologize to all fellow passengers I sat next to in the past....
My Ipod decided to take on another life of its own again as we were driving the long 400km ride along the old Spice Route. Alas, with everyone completely exhausted from the prior
Tower of Silence
Energetic before the climb days the bus was carrying zombies (very pale ones, anyhow) passed out with their limbs spilling into the aisle.
Luckily the woman who always happened to sit near to me with the confectionery was gone too. She's usually the one who throws a ton of goodies at my head (ranging from melting chocolate to huge packs of rice crackers) while I'm drifting off into my own world listening to Vivaldi or airbanding away to japanese angsty grundge.
Anyway. Out of all tunes, Whitney Houston's Bodyguard theme blared in my ears until everyone's snoring seemed more like a plausible option. I had no choice, it was that or Snoop Dogg.
THE TOWER OF SILENCE - how did it get its name? We had yet to find out. Arriving in Yazd, the scenery was endless desert accompanied by little villages in the distance.
I am very aware that Star Wars/the English Patient were filmed elsewhere in northern Africa, but this place would have done quite well too. The ancient burial site of the Zoroastrians was a sight! Tow huge 'towers' standing alongside one another, with ruins of brick huts around them.
ZOROASTRIAN WIND BURIALS - it is
Tower of Silence
At the top, and almost dying hahaha a common mistake for guidebooks to make by confusing them with SCAVENGER AVIAN BURIALS, that is where corpses are offered to vultures. But no, wind burial happens to be more of a ritual created to keep all worldly elements (earth, wind, fire, water - wow, sounds like captain Planet or the people who sang 'September') clean.
Up on the hill, there would be a flat surface with a pit in the middle, surrounded by a thick brick wall. On top of this pit, the corpse would be placed after the rites were performed. In a foetal position, vultures would come and devour it for a few hours until nothing remains but bones. Afterwards, the bones would be placed into the pit and covered with pebbles nearby. Through time, rain and wind would turn these bones to dust.
Such burial practices have been made illegal since the 1930s, so now it seems Zoroastrians bury their dead like Muslims but in graves made of concrete slabs so that the bodies do not pollute the sacred soil. Interesting! I also happened to see a Zoroastrian cemetery where they still had a fire-temple beside it.
Climbing up one of the towers
Tower of Silence
midst of the climb - whaaaat, there's more???? was jolly enough - some of the women backed out in fear of being exposed to strong sunlight (obviously, they didnt want to melt away like vampires). And being the youngest of the group I felt a bit of pressure to be the first to get up regardless of my asthma or tar-tainted lungs! I didnt care what I heard in my ear, as long as it motivated me to climb at a steady pace. Listening to Seyed in one ear, and bouncing about to U2's 'I still havent found what I'm looking for' in the other - not bad for my evil mp3 player - I dashed up.
Now we all knew why the tower got its name. Huffing and Puffing, no one had a breath to spare. Except for the occasional old woman scream, 'Waaaaaaaaaaaait I'm dyiiiiiiiing', we ignored everyone else and trudged up to the top...to lose our voices as soon as we saw the magnificent view below.
After playing StarWars with cigarette-lightsabres with kaori (no honey, I will NOT be YODA) and beating her capri with my dunhill, we climbed about every possible surface.
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