Iran

Dec 14, 1977. Amir Kabir hotel, Tehran.  Nicole flew off to France this morning  - she was so happy and so sad at the same time.  Me, I didn’t sleep a wink all night, thinking about her, about carpets, about selling cars in Iran. I feel alive, free, ready to do anything, go anywhere. Who knows how this next month will pass? Right now I’m sitting on my ass in the hotel “lobby “, surrounded by scores of voyagers, heading east and west. It is snowing outside, and my right shoe Has a hole in it, so my foot is wet. I’m in no mood to go anywhere - I might just wait until the 19th, when some luxury bus will take me leisurely to Kabul in a week's time.

So good old Iran! Not nearly as bad as people had told us, nor (unfortunately) as cheap. We paid 5-7 dollars a night in a double room, $1.50 -$2.50 for double meals. Bus tickets are reasonable, but the distances are great, so we spent a lot: about $350 in two weeks, including gifts for Nicole‘s family and gold earrings for Nicole. The big step was carpets: we bought seven (!), one for ourselves in Isfahan, two for ourselves in Tehran, and four for Irv Brenner from the Tehran Bazar. Total cost: about $1500. Ouch. But if things work out, we should make it back in no time. We are hot for carpets; they are fun to look at and handle, and good investments, and the cost ($150-$400) seems pretty reasonable. This afternoon I’ll go back to take some color photos of some more carpets to send to Irv.

Our itinerary was: Tehran -> Kerman -> Bam -> Kerman -> Yazd -> Isfahan > Shiraz -> Persepolis -> Tehran, mostly by bus, a great way to go. Deluxe Mercedes, free cokes, TV, reclining seats, the works. We met an Iranian wrestler on the bus to Kerman, and he drove us around the city and to Bam for the hell of it. Kerman was lovely, all browns and sand colors, with wind towers, and mountains right next door. Bam, an abandoned city of ancient providence, was spooky and wild. Isfahan and Shiraz had the appropriate mosques, but I can’t get that excited about the decoration, and they are impossible to photograph. But Shiraz had some amazing mirrored mosques, providing rather trippy light shows; I could’ve spent a long time photographing those babies. Persepolis was the best thing we saw in Iran, and the most magnificent single ruin I’ve ever seen. And that, friends, is Iran in a nutshell.