After five happy days in Sanandaj, the last of which I spent taking several minibuses and finally a taxi for the last stretch to Suleiman-e-takht, a Zoroastrian temple that shows the elements of water and fire, I finally got on the bus to Esfahan. Edris and his friend took me to the bus stop by taxi and waved goodbye.
I was in for a very long haul. Something like...11 hours? I do not remember clearly. I had by now somehow learned to sleep sitting up, on the big soft reclining seats of these night buses which were meant to save me mainly time, since arriving at some ungodly hour in a new city did not necessarily prevent you from having to pay for the major part of the night behind you that you did not spend in that hotel...For saving time it worked, though.
All flights in Iran depart from Teheran, so to get from one city to another inside this vast country you always have to fly back to Tehran first and take a flight from there. I did not want to do that, a: because it was expensive (though not much, we are talking of 50 Euros here) and b: because I was determined to avoid Tehran. I wanted to travel cross country to the smaller beautiful cities of Iran.
Next to me on the bus was a young woman. Not dressed in black this time, just a headscarf, blouse and jeans. I looked at her bronze-coloured skin, the narrow delicately curved nose, the long eyes, the slender body with the slightly angled lines- a Kurdish girl. When the bus stopped at a highway restaurant, I asked her to help me talk to the cashier for buying a meal ticket. She insisted on paying for my dinner. She looked like she was only 27, and she was a sports teacher, I asked her.
After that late dinner, we both curled up on our seats and went to sleep.
In the morning we arrived in Esfahan. It was not as early as in Sanandaj, more like 7.30 or 8.00am.
I had chosen to stay at the Dibai house. There are several traditonal Persian houses transformed into hotels in Esfahan, and this seemed the friendliest and the most reasonable. Still, incomparably more expensive than all the other places I stayed in in Iran, but also the most comfortable.
It was the first and the last time I had EVERYTHING, slippers, towels, soap, crisp clean sheets, a shelf for my clothes, beside lamps, a tissue box on my bedstead, a table , a chair, rugs on the floor, and even my own courtyard with a bench to sit on! And wifi. But more about this later.
I told the taxi driver to take me to the Dibai, and luckily, he knew the place. Because the Dibai is not that easy to find. It is far away from all the other hotels, in the other end of town, behind the bazaar , in one of those narrow alleyways with clay walls on both sides. The taxi driver dropped me off at a minaret. The hotel was nowhere to be seen. He pointed me in the right direction and unloaded my suitcase. Here I was. I think, I actually called the hotel from my mobile to ask where they were. She told me to make my way around a couple corners and through an archway and there would be a door....
Yes, there was a shiny wooden door inside the clay wall. I was let in and the doorway led into a different totally unexpected world , insivible from the outside:
there were courtyards and more courtyards, almost horizontal stairs winding up and down over the different levels of the floors, dfrom one courtyard into another, with large flower pots on the eway and little doors going off on the side leading into some cooler shady rooms half underground...
The mananger turned out to be a young Spanish woman and she spoke perfect English, yahoo!!
My room was beautiful. A haven of peace, with an old stone floor, coordinated shades of red and orange, some rattan furniture, a low, comfortable double bed. And a state of the art bathroom, spotlessly clean and new. I loved it.
I put my lemon yellow suitcase down under the lightly curtained window on the cool stone floor, took some orange juice and sat myself down on one of the two wooden benches on the small courtyard, found an ashtray at the end of the bench, lit a cigarette and relaxed. Ahhh.....wonderul, the feeling of tranquility and absolute safety inside these thick ancient walls that surrounded our lodging like bastion, making us completely invisible to the outside world.
After I recovered somewhat, I ventured outside.
I took a photo of the street sign so I would be able to remember it in case I got lost.
I needed to buy something (was it more cigarettes?) but I soon discovered that also in Esfahqn they seemed to have the same system like in Tabriz: all the shops in the dusty little street that the maze inside which my hotel was exited towards specialised in the same thing: shampoo. And diapers. Soap maybe. But cigarettes? Moreover, once again, nobody spoke any English. They did though somehow understand the word "cigarette", maybe I said "sigara", trying to apply my modestly workable Turkish, and I finally did find a shop who sold me some.
Then I looked at the map inside my Lonely planet guide and went on my way towards the bazaar. I ended up on Hafez Street. Every Iranian city seems to have three street names: Hafez, Ferdosi, and Imam Khomeini. The two great poets and the Ayatollah, the father of the Islamic revolution. the last ones had their names changed from something else that was in place before. Even the square and the biggest mosque in Esfahan have been given the name of the Imam though people still tenjd to acll them by their old, original names.
Hafez Street was only slightly wrong, and I managed to trace my way back to where I wanted to go: the bazaar and Imam square, the most important place in town.
Esfahan is a city where they have several things called by superlatives. "The biggest square of the world", "the most beautiful mosque in the world"...How big their world is and whether this is true,. nobody knows....Imam Square surely is a huge sprawling affair where you almost need a telescope to properly see from one end to the other.
It is surrounded by the bazaar, which is located inside the arcades one walks through to circle the bazaar.
At one end was the waqy to my hotel, at the other end the Imam mosque, on one side a palace, and on the other side, a colourful sparkling world of shops that sold blue enameled vases and ceramics, blown glass in all colours, bronze and silver vessels, miniature paintings, waterpipes, and , of course, Persian carpets.
There were two fabulous dreamily tradional restaurants that served all the famous tradional Iranian dishes from quince stew to kebab.
And then there was the "most beautiful mosque in the world".. a smallish mosque covered in blue mozaique, with a curved entrance that led into the shady interior that had sunrays playing on the walls that shone through windows covered in geometric patterns, invisible from the outside. This mosque was what a great Sultan had built for his women, so that his wives could go and pray, undisturbed, vanish through the curved arcway into the peaceful quiet inside, unseen.
I was in for a very long haul. Something like...11 hours? I do not remember clearly. I had by now somehow learned to sleep sitting up, on the big soft reclining seats of these night buses which were meant to save me mainly time, since arriving at some ungodly hour in a new city did not necessarily prevent you from having to pay for the major part of the night behind you that you did not spend in that hotel...For saving time it worked, though.
All flights in Iran depart from Teheran, so to get from one city to another inside this vast country you always have to fly back to Tehran first and take a flight from there. I did not want to do that, a: because it was expensive (though not much, we are talking of 50 Euros here) and b: because I was determined to avoid Tehran. I wanted to travel cross country to the smaller beautiful cities of Iran.
Next to me on the bus was a young woman. Not dressed in black this time, just a headscarf, blouse and jeans. I looked at her bronze-coloured skin, the narrow delicately curved nose, the long eyes, the slender body with the slightly angled lines- a Kurdish girl. When the bus stopped at a highway restaurant, I asked her to help me talk to the cashier for buying a meal ticket. She insisted on paying for my dinner. She looked like she was only 27, and she was a sports teacher, I asked her.
After that late dinner, we both curled up on our seats and went to sleep.
In the morning we arrived in Esfahan. It was not as early as in Sanandaj, more like 7.30 or 8.00am.
I had chosen to stay at the Dibai house. There are several traditonal Persian houses transformed into hotels in Esfahan, and this seemed the friendliest and the most reasonable. Still, incomparably more expensive than all the other places I stayed in in Iran, but also the most comfortable.
It was the first and the last time I had EVERYTHING, slippers, towels, soap, crisp clean sheets, a shelf for my clothes, beside lamps, a tissue box on my bedstead, a table , a chair, rugs on the floor, and even my own courtyard with a bench to sit on! And wifi. But more about this later.
I told the taxi driver to take me to the Dibai, and luckily, he knew the place. Because the Dibai is not that easy to find. It is far away from all the other hotels, in the other end of town, behind the bazaar , in one of those narrow alleyways with clay walls on both sides. The taxi driver dropped me off at a minaret. The hotel was nowhere to be seen. He pointed me in the right direction and unloaded my suitcase. Here I was. I think, I actually called the hotel from my mobile to ask where they were. She told me to make my way around a couple corners and through an archway and there would be a door....
Yes, there was a shiny wooden door inside the clay wall. I was let in and the doorway led into a different totally unexpected world , insivible from the outside:
there were courtyards and more courtyards, almost horizontal stairs winding up and down over the different levels of the floors, dfrom one courtyard into another, with large flower pots on the eway and little doors going off on the side leading into some cooler shady rooms half underground...
My room was beautiful. A haven of peace, with an old stone floor, coordinated shades of red and orange, some rattan furniture, a low, comfortable double bed. And a state of the art bathroom, spotlessly clean and new. I loved it.
I put my lemon yellow suitcase down under the lightly curtained window on the cool stone floor, took some orange juice and sat myself down on one of the two wooden benches on the small courtyard, found an ashtray at the end of the bench, lit a cigarette and relaxed. Ahhh.....wonderul, the feeling of tranquility and absolute safety inside these thick ancient walls that surrounded our lodging like bastion, making us completely invisible to the outside world.
After I recovered somewhat, I ventured outside.
I took a photo of the street sign so I would be able to remember it in case I got lost.
I needed to buy something (was it more cigarettes?) but I soon discovered that also in Esfahqn they seemed to have the same system like in Tabriz: all the shops in the dusty little street that the maze inside which my hotel was exited towards specialised in the same thing: shampoo. And diapers. Soap maybe. But cigarettes? Moreover, once again, nobody spoke any English. They did though somehow understand the word "cigarette", maybe I said "sigara", trying to apply my modestly workable Turkish, and I finally did find a shop who sold me some.
Then I looked at the map inside my Lonely planet guide and went on my way towards the bazaar. I ended up on Hafez Street. Every Iranian city seems to have three street names: Hafez, Ferdosi, and Imam Khomeini. The two great poets and the Ayatollah, the father of the Islamic revolution. the last ones had their names changed from something else that was in place before. Even the square and the biggest mosque in Esfahan have been given the name of the Imam though people still tenjd to acll them by their old, original names.
Hafez Street was only slightly wrong, and I managed to trace my way back to where I wanted to go: the bazaar and Imam square, the most important place in town.
Esfahan is a city where they have several things called by superlatives. "The biggest square of the world", "the most beautiful mosque in the world"...How big their world is and whether this is true,. nobody knows....Imam Square surely is a huge sprawling affair where you almost need a telescope to properly see from one end to the other.
It is surrounded by the bazaar, which is located inside the arcades one walks through to circle the bazaar.
At one end was the waqy to my hotel, at the other end the Imam mosque, on one side a palace, and on the other side, a colourful sparkling world of shops that sold blue enameled vases and ceramics, blown glass in all colours, bronze and silver vessels, miniature paintings, waterpipes, and , of course, Persian carpets.
There were two fabulous dreamily tradional restaurants that served all the famous tradional Iranian dishes from quince stew to kebab.
And then there was the "most beautiful mosque in the world".. a smallish mosque covered in blue mozaique, with a curved entrance that led into the shady interior that had sunrays playing on the walls that shone through windows covered in geometric patterns, invisible from the outside. This mosque was what a great Sultan had built for his women, so that his wives could go and pray, undisturbed, vanish through the curved arcway into the peaceful quiet inside, unseen.
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