black shirts, heroin, and ancient civilizations

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We manage to get ourselves a driver to take us to the desert town of Abarqu. We strategically load all our gear into the car, and get the hell out of Yazd. The drive to Aberqu is much longer than anticipated, and quite boring apart from the imaginatively named Eagle mountain. We arrive at Aberqu around lunchtime, and what can I say about this town? Well if Mansour thought Yazd was a shithole, its just as well we didn't bring him to Aberqu. I immediately feel out of place for not wearing a black shirt and tight black slacks, which despite the stinking hot weather seems to be the standard dress for men in this town. Odd, yet remarkably stylish

The mosque is spectacularly unspectacular, and once again as we depart an old man has sprung up from nowhere to sell us tickets to enter what we have just exited. We hand over the cash, and even though it equates to a few cents I am particularly disappointed at the principle of having to pay to visit a place of worship. I contemplate starting my own religion just so I can charge my friends to come to my house, but quickly dismiss the idea. After the mosque we head to the Gonbad Ali dome, which is perched high upon a hill on the outskirts of town, and gives sweeping views of the desert. We then head back into town to see a 4000 year old cyprus tree, which is amazingly still going strong.

Aberqu has only one overpriced hotel, so being rugged travellers we decide to sleep under the stars. We ask our driver if he knows anywhere, and he takes us to the park in the centre of town. We ask him "Will we be safe camping here?". He replies with a big smile, "No problem, this park very safe, all good people here". He leaves, so we sit down to contemplate our next move. Within two minutes, I am summoned over to a nearby group of young guys. The give me pomegranate and grapes and the standard line of questioning. They also ask if I have any beer or whisky, and seem disappointed when I say no. Moments later, a convulsing, blubbering mess of a man comes to join them, his eyes are almost completely rolled back in his head and he is totally incoherent. I give the guys a wtf look and ask if they know him. "Our friend", one replies, "its heroin". I quickly wrap up the conversation and head back to the others. The guy passes out on the ground and his mates continue to smoke opium in the park, then get up and leave him there. Yep, all good people here. We head back to the overpriced hotel to make use of their underpriced restaurant, then sleep in the desert surrounding the hotel. Thankfully there's no junkies in the desert.


The following morning we visit the Khan-e Aghazadeh, an old mansion which is being restored. Its nice, very similar to the buildings in Yazd, and its huge. The caretaker starts to crack it coz we are taking so long so we leave and try and figure out how to get to Shiraz. We meet a guy on the street named Hossein who says he knows someone who will drive us there via all the historical sites on the way. We bargain him down, and get out of Abarqu, quick smart.

Our first stop is Pasargade, to see the Tomb of Cyrus which is magnificantly draped in scaffolding and therefore not particularly exciting, or photogenic for that matter. Its stinking hot and our driver doesnt seem too impressed by the fact that we've used this opportunity to have a picnic lunch. We continue on to Naqsh-e Rostam to see the tombs of Darius I & II, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes I, which are all carved high into the side of a cliff face. Its very spectacular and dramatic and probably the most impressive thing I've seen so far (except Persepolis but I'm getting to that). Our driver doesn't share our enthusiasm, and keeps beeping the horn to hurry us up. Moany bastard. So we head down to Persepolis, and this time the driver tells us he's not waiting for us, and another driver, Darius, will take us the rest of the way.

Persepolis, even in ruin, is unbelievable. The sheer scale of the complex is overwhelming, and walking through the grounds one can only imagine what it was like in its day. Xerxes definately had fine taste in buildings. After a spectacular sunset we head to Shiraz, with Darius the driver/linguistics student humbling all of us with his command of the english language. I say goodbye to the others and jump on an overnight bus to Bandar Abbas, nearly getting killed by the insane Shiraz peakhour traffic as I cross the road to the bus terminal. I will never understand the logic of Iranian road users.

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