The Desert Town
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2011
1
4
17
Trip End
Mar 18, 2011
Yazd, Iran
Friday, March 4, 2011
We headed for the Zoroastrian temple, where it housed the holy fire that was burning for more then 700 years. As we arrived, there was a group of school girls here for field trip. We walked pasted them and they were giggling at us. Out of the sudden, someone from that group shouted "Hello", then came the "Welcomes" at us. As the girls are finishing the tour they left the temple grounds, and tranquility was restored once the girls cleared the temple. We entered into the temple and saw only one glass panel and a small corner selling Zoroastrian items and that's it to the temple. A rather modest temple with such a significant purpose. Back to the fire, it is burning on a goblet behind this glass panel. Too bad the reflections of the glass makes taking pictures frustrating. We did not spend alot of time in the temple, as it is really small and the purpose is to see the 700 year old fire and we did that.
We headed for the next stop - The tower of Silence, which is located in the outskirts of Yazd. The tower of silence is an ancient burial method for the Zoroastrians, as they once believed that cremating the dead will pollute the air and earth burial will pollute the earth. Thus they built these towers on a couple of hills, brought the dead up to these towers and allow the vultures to clean the corpse. After the vultures had reduced the bodies to bones, these are swept into the big pit in the middle of the tower. Once a tower is filled up, another tower on the nearby hill is built and the burial will be done there. We pulled up to the base of the Towers of Silence, there are a few mud clay houses at the base and a reservoir. We were told that in the olden days, the families will accompany the dead in those houses for 3 days to help them cross over to the other world. As the houses are of different sizes, the bigger houses will be used by the richer ones. Before us was 2 hills both with the towers of silence. As the shorter one is full of local students coming for their field trip, we opted to climb the taller ones. As we were walking towards the hill, our guide said something. It was rather inaudible to me so I just followed them. The climb was more direct, but tiring as it was steep. We did not take long to climb up the tower, as it is not that crowded and we took a faster route. The entrance to the tower was about 3m from the ground, so we had to climb up that last ledge to reach into the towers. Inside the tower was a huge pit, where they used to push the skeletons of the dead in. The walls of the tower was damaged at one side, however this gave a us a very good view of the mountains afar as well as the tower on the shorter hills. We also caught a glimpse of Yazd city from up here. The view is just stunting and picturesque. We took some pictures here, caught some rest and headed down towards the car. As we were descending, I saw this route that is easier to climb, the slope is gentler and it felt more like a walk then a climb, but the only thing is it is round the back of the hill. Our guide told us the hill we just been up was about 300m, nearly twice the height of the tallest hill in Singapore!
After leaving the Tower of Silence, we headed for the Dowlatabad Garden, which housed the tallest wind tower in Yazd. For the first time I got to see what is inside the wind tower and felt the effect of the tower catching wind. Standing beneath the tower is really cooling as the wind just gashes down towards you. The garden has 2 parts, at the end where we were, is opened to the public; while the other end is a private property. The garden looked rather unexciting to me, probably due to it being winter the plants are sleeping I guess. Our guide took us to this watch tower within the gardens. From here we can see the garden compounds and the area outside. Nothing else fascinates me here other then the wind tower. We left Yazd for Na'in shortly.
The drive to Na'in was scenic. This is the first time since my stay in Iran I have seen snow on the ground. As we approached Na'in, I was excited to see snow scattering all over the place. The purpose of driving to Na'in is for the Jame Mosque there. This Mosque, though not as big as the one in Shiraz, is decent in size. This is believed to be one of the oldest mosque in Iran, dating back to 8th century A.D. This mosque has only 1 minaret, which is rather tall and doubled up as a guidance for travelers back then. Our guide pointed to some marble pieces on the ground and told us the significance of these marble is to illuminate the basement of this mosque, which was used during summer when it is hot to do prayers in the courtyard. We were lead to the basement, and it looked like a series of cave tunnels. We did not spend too much time around this mosque as it is rather small, plus we were more excited in playing with the snow outside the mosque then the mosque itself. Our guide led us to a nearby ruins (about 2 mins walk from the mosque) and told us that this ruins was formerly a castle. I can still see the outline of the structure of the castle with some towers at the side, that is probably the watch towers. As we were walking back to the car, I was purposely walking on the snow and playing with it. We drove towards Isfahan, and on the way, the scenic snow mountain views never failed to captivate me. I was wondering to myself, if I take this picture and not reveal the location to people, would they have thought this is Europe or Russia? As the snowy scenes zoomed past us, I would not have thought that I would see snow during this trip.
The drive from Na'in to Isfahan is not too long (about 2 hours), we checked into the hotel and got settled down. As the sun has not set yet, we decided to head for the Imam Square to take some pictures and to walk around. The Imam Square was known as "Half of the World" the time it was built due the diversity of people and religion that was found here. Today it became a favourite hang out for Iranians and tourists alike. As we were walking in the square, we get curious looks and the usual "Hellos" thrown at us. We met this girl (about 12, 13 years old) coming up to us with her dad and her brother and started to strike a conversation with us. I can see that she is trying to practice her English and we allowed her to do so. As her vocabulary is not very strong (I can tell by the repetitive words she used), we engaged her in simple English. She looked very nervous about engaging us. I applauded her willingness to learn and her wanting to seize any opportunity she can get to brush up on her English. Reminded me when I was learning Thai, till now I still don't dare to approach a Thai and talk to them in Thai. After we bided the girl and her father farewell, we went around taking pictures of the square during sunset. We ran into this group of 5 guys, who wanted to take pictures with us infront of the fountain. We chatted a little and they told us that they were from Persepolis. From our trip to Persepolis earlier on, I did not recall seeing a town nearby. I thought they are taking us for a ride (which later I checked with my guide, and there is indeed a town nearby Persepolis. These guys are not lying afterall). After chatting, the guys wished us luck and walked in the other direction.
We felt a little tired and walked back to our hotel. As we were walking back, we met 2 French travelers. We found out that we were staying in the same hotel, and we chatted along the way. We spoke about the places we have been to and the places that we are going, our countries and what we felt about Iran and the Iranians. The 4 of us agreed that Iran is a nice country to visit and the people are simply fantastic! What a nice way to end the day.
