Central Iran (August 2013) A 2 week trip taking in Yazd, Shiraz, the Zagros Mountains and Esfahan

This former capital city below the Zagros mountains in south central Iran, is where the Shiraz / Syrah grape began life, although no wine has been produced here in a long time for obvious reasons. It teems with bazaars that, like Istanbul, contain little in the way of interesting items to buy, but unlike Istanbul, are home to some great tea-rooms and largely unspoilt caravanserais (former inns for camel trains along the trade routes).

Barely 10 minutes go by without a young boy calling out "how are you today Mister?" or "I love you Mister!"  We stick out sharply as foreigners. Everyone welcomes you to "my Iran" and asks you why the "Inglise" do not come.

We met 2 other Brits last night (only seen a few Dutch and Italian otherwise) and lost out on the one-upmanship to their 2000k bike ride from Istanbul to Tehran. But we got our own back later on, by convincing them that their unprotected Yahoo e-mail accounts were inevitably being watched and so their messages back home which they told us about, ridiculing the hejab and chador, were very ill-advised.

Largely been sight-seeing and trying to persuade ourselves that Hafez (a Shirazi) really was the greatest ever poet as all Iranians keep insisting.

Eid is definitely over after 3 days of varying local opinions.

Off to Persepolis tomorrow.