Tehran & The Top of Iran


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Middle East » Iran » North » Tehran
July 21st 2006
Published: July 21st 2006
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Damavand!!Damavand!!Damavand!!

Our first view of the monster.
We decided to take a bus to Tehran to see our friend Majid, who we had met in Hamedan, and to try to climb Damavand, Iran’s highest mountain. Buying a bus ticket in Yazd was a bit of an effort as everyone assumed we wanted the luxury coach. No, I want to go on the retro-chic Mercedes bus and when we came to board it I was not disappointed. On the side of the 1960’s style coach emblazoned in big letters it said “Beautiful Bus”, I could not agree more. The big ugly and air-conditioned modern coaches pulled away from the terminal and we clambered aboard the beautiful bus and happily opened the windows for a night of wind swept motoring. The Mercedes bus was about 1/3 less expensive than an air conditioned coach and since we were traveling at night we thought we would save the money. All buses in Iran have amusing captions across their windows and backs; we passed “speed devil”, and “Turbo Elvis”, along with more cryptic, mis-spelt slogans such as “You are Mingel” (I guess ‘You are my angel’ gone wrong) and another which announced in fancy calligraphy “Fupt Bor You”. I still have no idea
Statue of ImperialismStatue of ImperialismStatue of Imperialism

Mural on the "Den of Espionage" (Former US Embassy to Iran).
what the intended message was here ….As the bus started moving a prayer was enthusiastically chanted by most of the bus, blessing our journey I think. We were a bit unnerved by this but put it down to the Iranian way and hoped it was not a necessary part of our vehicle getting to its destination in one piece….

We settled in for a sleep to Tehran, the journey was expected to take 9 hours. During the night I woke up a few times to see beautiful desert sliding by. At around dawn we stopped at a motorway service place complete with mosque and everyone got out to pray and use the loo’s. Great, I thought, I can top up our water but the taps in the loos contained salty water. We were on the edge of a vast and tranquil looking salt lake in the desert south of Tehran.

We had been warned that Tehran is busy, dirty and noisy. Someone had said it is like Cairo but without the fun bits. When we arrived at the bus station we were convinced we had been taken to the wrong place. It was quiet and peaceful and there
Room with a viewRoom with a viewRoom with a view

Our shelter on top of Tochal.
was a big green park close by. Also we had great views to massive mountains really close by. We were assured that this was indeed Tehran and we ignored all the taxi drivers keen for our business, as we had been prompted that we did not need them and could use the metro. We phoned Majid and instantly realized that we did not know where we were. We had to get one of the ticket sellers to speak to Majid on the phone. It was only then that we realized we were in the Eastern Bus station and not the southern one that we had expected to use. There was no metro here. Majid said we should take a taxi and so did everyone else there, but we did not agree. We would use the public transport! Ignoring all advice and armed with our lonely planet we took a trolley bus to a nearby square then asked around for the metro, thinking we were being really clever and hoping to arrive at the complete opposite side of town before we needed to phone Majid again. We were pointed onwards to the metro. The metro did not appear and after asking
IranIranIran

There's always chayi, even at 4200m up a volcano!
many people we realized that the building sites we had been passing were the metro stations and that the line was not completed this far east. After walking about 2-3 km we found a metro that was open and crossed over to West Tehran. Eventually 2 hours later and in a taxi (we finally relented) we arrived exhausted at Majid’s flat for breakfast. Transport and travel in Tehran is harder than it first appears, we had learnt the hard way!

Our first impressions of Tehran were not at all what we expected; although a big place it seemed very quiet and peaceful, however it was a Friday and early morning and the roads were quieter than usual. Still Tehran is not really the monster that everyone makes it out to be. Yes it is polluted and very, very spread out so that it does take 1.5 -2 hours to get anywhere. There are nice gardens however and big open LA style expressways crossing the city. All this is set against the best backdrop for any capital city; 4000metre mountains, still with snowy patches high up in June, draw the eyes constantly upwards to the north.

It was great
Garden Gate, TehranGarden Gate, TehranGarden Gate, Tehran

Revolutionary tilework!
to see Majid again and he and his house mate Mohammed made us very welcome. The first night we met up with a group of his friends and went to Darband. Darband is on the very edge of northern Tehran at about 1700m altitude; it is an area of tea houses and restaurants that line the stream and pathways that climb up into the Alborz Mountains. The place has a party atmosphere and people come here to walk and chill out in the restaurants and tea shops in the slightly cooler and cleaner air higher up the hills and away from the centre of Tehran. We enjoyed tea and a water pipe and then set off to try to negotiate share taxis and the crazy traffic back across town. Majid lived in a nice quiet residential street and yet again we were struck by the quality of housing. Majid’s flat was his student digs, yet it still had a really nice big living room with nice plasterwork and an open kitchen.

The next few days were spent trying and failing to find bike parts for our hubs, taking many buses across Tehran and watching lots of football. (Iran was
Old BowlOld BowlOld Bowl

Amazingly this stone carved bowl is 7,000 years old.
still in the world cup at this point). Buses in Iranian Cities are ridiculously cheap, I think each ticket cost 1.2pence. The buses are however segregated with women having to go to the separate seating at the back of the bus. This makes it a bit unnerving when you do not really know where you are getting off or if only one of you has the tickets. But we soon got used to our bus routes and people were always really helpful making sure we got onto the right buses, since we could not read the destinations written in Farsi on them. Once one guy got on our bus with us and then insisted on paying for us and then even walked us all the way to Majid’s door, even though the journey had taken him in completely the wrong direction to get home himself. This is typical of Iranian hospitality and care for guests in their country; some only ask that if we ever come across their fellow countrymen in our country that we do the same and try to help them too.

We met a lot of very interesting people in Tehran and I spoke to women
Salt ManSalt ManSalt Man

No its not Robin after too long in the sun! This guy was found preserved in a salt mine.
in the rear of the buses. The buses are the one oddity about Tehran because nowhere else is there segregation; on the metro everyone piles in together although there is usually one coach at the front reserved only for women. Looking around at the women in the bus I get lots of smiles and I am struck again by how beautiful Iranian girls are. Despite the fact that it is sweltering they all seem to have perfect make up and they are all really skilled in doing their make up really well.

We did not really see many of the sights of Tehran as we are not that interested in museums but we took a tour around the outside of the US Den of Espionage (old USA Embassy) and were suitably amused by the murals now emblazoned on the walls. We also went to the National Museum of Antiquities. Although most of the really good pieces seemed to be on loan to the British Museum we were still very impressed. There is a collection of seriously ancient pots and vessels, some from the 5th millennium BC, and the quality of the stone work from that time is so intricate and delicate. I really had an impression that civilization in Persia was one of the earliest to advance in all history. We also enjoyed looking at the outside of Golestan Palace and the quiet calm of the city gardens and parks. On the way to the museum we found ourselves walking through the government office area, Iran’s equivalent to Downing Street. It was beautiful, with palace like buildings with replica bas-relief of ancient Persian art from Persepolis and Zoroastrian bird-man symbols. I found this quite odd, that the Islamic Government would have its offices and seat-of-power emblazoned with non-Islamic religious symbolism, but that’s just another example of the complexity of Iran for you. We later noticed the central branch of the national bank was similarly decorated. Elsewhere tower blocks and buildings are covered in enormous revolutionary murals depicting heroic acts of martyrdom from the Iraq war.

It was time to make our attempt on the Alborz Mountains. Majid unfortunately could not join us because of a knee injury so we set off by ourselves to climb Tochal. Tochal is accessible from Darband on the northern edge of the city and it climbs straight up almost immediately. It was noon
Steep ClimbSteep ClimbSteep Climb

Robin on the way up Tochal
before we set off as we had slept in a bit and it always takes longer than you expect to cross Tehran. We planned to sleep on top of Tochal to acclimatize ourselves in preparation for Damavand. Tochal’s summit is at 3962metres, this would be our highest ever mountain. We had no proper map as the shop in Tehran did not have small scale maps, only large ones suitable for use with GPS which we do not have. The path however was clear and we asked other walkers every now and again if we were going the right way. We had lunch by some lovely waterfalls and slogged up afterwards to realise that we still had a very long way to go. The last part of the climb, after a very impressive mountain hut, was extremely steep and we made fast progress. It was hot and tiring as we were carrying all our food and water for that night on top. We were doing fine until I hit about 3,600 metres when I noticed that my peripheral vision was very strange and I felt a bit weird. I measured my pulse to find that it was racing. This was the
Refreshment!Refreshment!Refreshment!

On the way up Tochal
effect of altitude and lack of oxygen and there was no option but to go slower. Still we made it to the top without feeling too bad. I had a bit of a headache but we settled into the shelter up there. Our room for the night had the best ever view of Tehran. The lights of the city below were breathtaking and it felt as if the city was so close you could almost take one step off the mountain and land there, since the slopes in front of us were so steep. We had a good sleep on top of the mountain and Robin woke for sunrise photos of Damavand before the haze set in. We felt OK in the morning, only very slight headaches and we took the path down amongst the ski developments back to the city. We arrived very tired at Majid’s and prepared to go to Damavand the next day.

We took a bus towards Amol from the Eastern Bus station and got off the coach at the turning for the village of Reyneh. On the way there the bus had a rest stop and we had an amazing view of Damavand the
Sea of LightsSea of LightsSea of Lights

Tehran from our bedroom window on top of Tochal.
driver had called out to “Mr. Robin” to look, since the whole bus knew from our backpacks and clothes we were going to try to climb it. I was amazed looking at the mountain. It was a classic volcano and the steep slopes seemed to stretch forever, it was massive! I could not really imagine myself on those slopes they seemed so high above us. By the time we got a taxi from the main road up to Reyneh it was already 4pm. The journey across Tehran and through the mountains had been a lot slower than we had anticipated. We were surrounded by men offering to guide us to base camp but ignoring all of them we set off up the tarmaced road. After one hour of trudging we still had not come to a dirt track that we were expecting but just afterwards we found a turning and luckily there were some men parked close to it to ask if it was indeed the way to Gusfand Sara- Base camp for Damavand. It was and it was a great relief to us, since walking along tarmac is never much fun and our enjoyment now soared as we made
Sunrise at 4000mSunrise at 4000mSunrise at 4000m

The view from Tochal's summit. The black cone to the right of the sun is Damavand.
our way steeply up on zigzags through rough grazing land dotted all around with giant poppies and other big flowers. We past many bee-hived areas with their tents for the keepers but it was still too early for a honey crop. Although we were now really enjoying the walk we knew that it was really unlikely that we would reach base camp before sunset. Just then a large Nissan 4 wheel drive came up the track behind us, it stopped and welcomed us in to have a lift. We accepted and chatted to Mastaba the driver who we were soon to realize was actually superman. He informed us he had been up Damavand 61 times and Tochal 400 times. He intended to climb Damavand the next day in one go and then probably run up again a second time!

The small golden domed mosque of Gusfand Sara came into view at about 7 pm and a sign welcomed us to base camp. There was a shepherd family living there and one tent, which we later learnt was from the Mountain Federation of Iran. Also there was a simple concrete shelter building and toilets. Straight away men came up offering us mules for the climb, we refused these. Then a man came up and gave us a bit of paper. The paper said that all foreigners had to pay $50 each to climb Damavand, the only exceptions were diplomats. Our hearts fell, this was the first time we had heard of a fee and if we had known then we would have climbed other mountains in the Alborz. We refused to pay it as we were not really sure if it was a real fee or not as there was no official sign up and the guy had no identification on him. Then we asked were the water was; only to be told there was no water. It was turning into a disaster; we had been told there was water here, not any more they told us. If we had been warned we would have carried water up from Reyneh, we were kicking ourselves. We did not have enough water to cook that night. Mastaba came to the rescue and gave us two bottles of water from his car.

We set about trying to cook but Robin went to follow some blue pipes up the mountain only to see
Shadows in the SkyShadows in the SkyShadows in the Sky

Sunrise on the morning of our summit attempt. Damavand is so big it casts a shadow over part of the sky behind it!
one of the shepherds playing around with them and water gushing everywhere. We knew they had bee lying about the water since there was a cow and calf there, animal watering troughs and about 5 people living there. A bit later on they came over and said the water was now working and we could fill our bottles. That night a group of students turned up, they had a French guy with them who was prepared to pay the $50 having read about it on a French climbers website. We now did not know what to do, we had told them we did not have the money on us in dollars or rials. We pleaded that we were not tourists who came specially to climb mountains that we were cycling and on a very long tour. We said that they should put signs up about the fee up in Reyneh at least. We also explained that we had got no answer on the phone when we had tried to call and ask advice about Damavand from the Federation Headquarters in Tehran, this was true. They were not very nice and told us bluntly that if we didn’t pay we should
Snowfield.Snowfield.Snowfield.

Prababaly level with the summit of Mt. Blanc, with a long way still to go.....
go back to Tehran.

The next day we started to walk anyway thinking that we would at least make it up to the shelter at 4100 metres and we would see what they said about the fee up there. We tried not to think about the reception that was waiting for us up at the hut and enjoyed a very slow walk up. We had joined the students and the French guy. That morning one of the girl students had decided not to go up as she was so worried about not making it to the top because of the altitude or of something going wrong. So our group was the French guy Fabian, Shifte, an Iranian girl who had been up Damavand 6 times, and her boyfriend Amir who was also experienced in the mountains. Fabian had come to Iran especially to climb Damavand and he had been up Mount Blanc before too, so we had the least altitude experience of anyone there, however we were easily the fittest amongst the group. The others had not done any acclimatisation walks before that day and were feeling a bit headachy before the hut. We were fine, however, our Tochal
Summit ViewSummit ViewSummit View

The view north from 5671m - somewhere under all that cloud is the Caspian Sea. the pale colour of the rocks is not snow, but sulphur.
experience and the very slow pace helping us. The path led slowly up amongst the grazing slopes dotted with poppies and large yellow trumpet flowers. Very soon after the base camp we came across a stream and wondered what all the fuss about no water had been about.

After about 4 hours we made the hut. The shelter was basic; just a one room cabin lined with bunks. It was already quite full so we bagged some beds had some lunch and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Apparently when I was asleep the warden had come in and had a long argument about our fee with our friends. In the end the warden called us over and said we could pay half the fee at $25 each. We told him we did not have the money on us. Iranians can climb Damavand for free and the reason given for the foreigner’s fee is that they are building a massive modern shelter near the hut. This was true there were 6 or so guys living up there building a new hut, but we found it odd that only foreigners should fund this, and not the thousands of Iranians
Summit SnoozeSummit SnoozeSummit Snooze

Erika celebrates reaching 5671m by taking a nap.
who climb the mountain every year.

After our rest we decided to go up the path a bit until we felt the effects of altitude. We set off with a light bag up the zig zags that wound around the scree slopes below the first snow field. Eventually after about one hour I felt the effects, a bit of weird vision and we stopped for a cup of tea. It was lovely sitting up high by ourselves and looking across the wonderful valley to the amazing ridge opposite and down to the beautiful dammed lake below. We met Mustaba again, running down from his second visit to the summit that day! He planned to sleep at the hut and climb again in the morning! We later learned there is indeed a race up Damavand - from base camp to the summit, a climb of 2671m. The record is 2 and half hours….! Puts British fell racing into perspective. We also learned that recently an Iranian man aged over 100 years old had reached the summit.

The next morning after being woken by the people in the top bunk dropping water and tents on us we set off at
Portrait of High altitude MountaineerPortrait of High altitude MountaineerPortrait of High altitude Mountaineer

On top of Damavand, on top of Iran, on top of the World.
about 6.30 am. Robin carried one backpack with our extra clothing and food and I had no load. We took a steady pace and were soon at the Ice fall, a beautiful iced waterfall that is at about 5000metres. We met lots of other Iranians climbing who all wanted to give us help because it was our first time. However they all soon realized that we were quite fit and capable. We had left behind our friends from the day before quite a long time ago. Slowly we kept on going enjoying the views and the wonderfully clear weather- we were really lucky there were no clouds. We crossed a small snow field and stopped for lunch just below the start of the sulphur gas area. The path was easy to follow and mostly was a walk with occasional scrambles but nothing technical, however some parts were really loose and a bit slippery. We made the top in 5 hours from the hut. The last bit in the sulfur gas was where I started to get a bit of a headache and when we got to the top all I wanted to do was lie down. The sulphuric vents had coloured the rocks and scree yellow and made breathing even harder than the already thin air and low oxygen levels.

It was a strange experience being so high but I was not at all that bad and not really breathless, just a bit of a weird vision and lethargy. On top we could just about make out the Caspian Sea and we took photos of the freeze dried remains of a dog and some sheep that have been up there for maybe thousands of years. At a height of 5671m Damavand is higher than Mt. Ararat - the giant we had passed on our way into Iran from Turkey and which looked so high we could not imagine climbing it. Yet here we were even higher. Damavand is only about 200m lower than Kilimanjaro and is easily higher than anything to its west in Eurasia. We sat looking across the series of 4000m peaks far below us and contemplated the fact that the next time we encounter anything this high will be in the Karakorum or Himalaya.

The way down was easy once we found our way onto the scree and skied down very fast. It was weird but we both got headaches worse on the way down than going up. We drank water and were careful. At one point we had to cross a big snow field to get back onto the ridge path as the scree had turned into a very steep snow field and with no axe we were not going to try that way down. We had been following two Iranian guys for most of the way up and down and when we got back to the hut they offered us a lift back to Tehran. We could not really refuse. We walked back to base camp with them but it was late before we got back to the road and it was a Friday night so the traffic was terrible. With alarm we watched cars overtaking with seemingly no thought of the oncoming traffic on the winding, narrow road and blind hairpins. Then our friends told us that on Fridays they make the road one way towards Tehran from about 4pm until midnight!. Even with the one way system it was about 11 pm when we eventually got back to Majid’s who had wonderfully made us some dinner.

After a few days recovery in Tehran we said goodbye to Majid and took a night bus back to Yazd, bizarrely on the same “Fupt Bor You” bus we had seen on our way here from Yazd.


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22nd July 2006

wow wow wow
iran the country that i would like to travel through. how about woman travelling alone in iran?
7th August 2006

Gooooooooooooood luck I will cycling the world! You open my eye's to the life!
20th August 2006

good idea
dear majid,if you want to start cycling the world i also like to join you! hehehehe.just inform me ...
13th December 2008

I would like to join
I would like to travel the world as well. Let us form a team.

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