Finally in Iran!

Leaving Meghri in Armenia we cycled along Aras river for some kilometres until we reached the bridge that connects both countries, after almost 10000km on the road I was eager to get in and find out more about this controversial country.

Our Passport was checked twice at the border control, customs police also ordered me to open a pannier, once the official was satisfied he said “welcome to Iran” and we were in! First thing we did  was to Exchange currency, due to international sanctions no foreign card works in Iranian ATM´s so travellers have no choice but to bring all the cash for the entire stay in their pockets.

We slowly started Cycling up into the mountains, despite Iran ranking as one of the most dangerous countries when it comes to road safety, we found drivers to be very respectful towards cyclists slowing down and giving ample space when overtaking. Some drivers would even stop ahead of us to greet us with probably the two most common phrases to foreigners in Iran; where are you from and welcome to Iran. Not only villagers showed their interest in us, the police also wanted to know about our whereabouts and we were stopped and questioned three time on our first three days!

On the first two weeks we travelled through the northwest of Iran in Azerbaijan province until we reached the capital Tabriz, people from the region are not Persian and instead of Farsi they speak Azeri Turkish.

Iranian people have reputation to be one of the friendliest bunch in earth so when we reached Tabriz it didn’t take long before we made many new Friends. Erfan, Reza, Hadi and many others showed us around the city and gave us a good insight into Iranian culture.

Iranian hospitality is really incredible, I learned that they have a hospitality etiquette called “taroof” that is deeply rooted in Iranian culture, for example a host has to offer anything a guest might want and equally the guest has to refuse anything the host might offer, and this goes on until both parts find out the real intentions. But this is not always the case, sometimes they would say “no taroof” meaning that the offer is genuine.

Before visiting Iran I often Heard about women’s right being violated (and population in general too) while this might be true I have to say that I expected this to be much worse than actually is. Women have the right to vote since 1963 (before tan some European countries), 60% of the university students are female they seem to be well integrated in the workforce, also it’s common to see them driving cars. They head scarf is still mandatory but I found that that quickly goes off a soon as you enter their homes.

People also have openly showed their disagreement with the government policies. After the revolution many have hoped for a better and fairer system but based on the accounts we have heard this is not the case…

All going to plan we should be able to extend the visa for at least for another month so I will publish another entry when get to know more about this fascinating country, in the meantime I uploaded some pictures and also a video that Fernando and Veronika made about our first few days in Iran. 

Meghri - Tabriz from Fernan_ci on Vimeo.