Today we were finally reunited with Lando!
Although it was 1pm and pushing 40c by the time he & Eric rolled up to the hotel to collect Rem & I. All we wanted at this stage was a nice family photo to start the trip, but under the sweltering midday sun this was the best we could do!
And we were finally off! Let the Silk Road adventure begin!!
From out the window our first impressions of the IRI were not that dissimilar to our home back across the Strait…. low scrubby land with pockets of industry and gas flares from the local oil fields. Living on the Arabian peninsula you forget that Iran is also an oil producing state - in fact the 5th largest in the world - with their oil reserves concentrated here along the southern coast. But soon we turned inland and started a slow ascent northwards, with human settlements becoming increasingly sparse.
Aside from a million and one trucks, our only companions were a handful of donkeys and a multitude of goats. And, unlike the warning signs we passed - not. one. single. camel!!
One thing we did notice were lots of curious looking stone beehive like buildings dotting the landscape. We were racking our brains trying to figure out what they could be, for there was seemingly no obvious plan to where they were sited. The best we could figure was some kind of ancient temple… Zoroastrian maybe? What do you think they are?
Later that day, once we happened upon some connection, curiosity got the better of me and I had to google lens search from the best photo I’d managed to take… and what were they?
"A cistern, or “Ab Anbar” in Persian, is basically a covered reservoir located underground, specifically constructed in ancient times to collect and store water"
Water cisterns!! Haha what idiots we are..
But the highlight or perhaps not so high light of the day would have to be our first experience with Iranian petrol pumps… obviously our Farsi doesn’t quite extend this far yet…
But it turned out to be another long and involved process involving pumps which were closed (we think we understood because it was break time), driving further to find an open station, to find out they don’t accept cash or foreign credit cards, and to finally being kindly helped by a friendly local… who used his petrol card to fill our tank - 30 litres at a time - which is quite frustrating when you need to fill 120 litres 😆- in exchange for cash. Golly that was exhausting...
In the heat...
But therein lied the next problem. There are not one but 2 currencies which people work in here… Rials which run into the millions, and Tomans which is a Rial with a couple of zeros dropped off the number. And multiple different bank notes issued for the same value. And then as we were to find out later… there are also New Tomans and Old Tomans. So the currency written on the note is basically 10x more than what we think of what we call an Iranian Rial in international speak. But locally, they don't call that a Rial, they call it a Toman. However, they also quote in New Tolman, which is 1,000x less. So, a 1,000,000 Rials = 100,000 Tomans = 100,000 IRRs = 100 New Toman...🤯... get it?
But we finally got there, filled Lando and continued on our merry way climbing further uphill and, after 7 hours of driving, and with much excitement/exhaustion/relief, we finally rolled into our first destination - Shiraz.
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