Iran Day 5

Day 5- 14 November 2018



The Day of the desert


On some trips the time just flew past like lightning. But on other trips, time drew out longer on the Y-axis, not for a lack of interesting sights, in contrary, but because there were too many things to see and places to go.


The VIDEO

Today was ONLY day 5.


On this day, the plan was to travel about 110km eastward to the desert land of Varzaneh to see, to me the highlight would be, the abandoned Caravanserai. Old cavernous architectures that used to once hold caravans for merchants resting on the journeys along the Silk Road.




Early in the morning 7:30am, Chris, Adalyn and Ah Woo were already enjoying their breakfast.

“See, we are eating our cup noodles!” said Chris.

“Yah, like we always do, we will get the hot water from the restaurant and make instant cup noodles (in addition to having the breakfast),” gestured Adalyn.

I was impressed to see Ah Woo and Adalyn each holding a warm cup of instant noodle and tucking heartily into them.



First stop- the Vank cathedral built in 1606.


Due to pressure from the Ottoman Empire during the Ottoman war 1603-1618, many Armenians refugees migrated to Iran. Genicidal ethnic cleansing of Armenians by the Ottoman displaced hundreds of thousands of Armenians to Iran, Syria and Iraq, in addition to 1.5 million Armenians killed. There about 14 Cathedrals in Esfahan. This cathedral is important because of the mural painting that depicts the life of Jesus Christ.



Arriving at Varzaneh

According to Adrian, Varzaneh is one of the more ulu little towns in our southward venture into Iran. Our main purpose of coming here is to visit one of the most intact caravan serais along the ancient Silk Road- Rabbit Caravan-serai.



We were hosted to a delightful authentic Iranian lunch in this water reservoir-converted-building called Haj Mirza traditional restaurant. We were all seated on raised platform on carpets and served lamb broth and served koshkeh to be brown into small pieces, soaked in the broth and eaten when soft, mixed with the lamb and bean, all while seated cross-legged. The broth is a combination of lamb, onion, tomato, cereal and sometimes different vegetables. It was a good break from our almost obligatory chicken, lamb or beef kebab meals thus far.

“This is how we will sometimes eat at home during weekends,” said Mohammad.

One unique aspect of this town Varzaneh was, as Mohammad put it: “You will see ladies in full white hijab instead of the full black hijab.” And true enough we saw quite a number of all white hijab-donned ladies on the streets.

The Rabbit Caravanserai at Kharghouri



This was one of the highlights that I was eagerly looking forward to. During the days of the ancient Silk Road, the journey from East to the West was lined with these fortresses - accommodations for the weary travellers to rest their animals and themselves for the night, have themselves fed and rested and perhaps even conduct some trading in the central courtyard. The rectangular fortress’s huge central courtyard held a big, covered perpetual well in the middle, that still has water in it, and was surrounded by cavernous chambers arranged around the centre, a series of continuously-linked chambers covered with a dome shaped ceiling with a chimney-like opening, which I suspected was where the smokes from the fireplaces escaped. The Rabbit was one of the most intact caravanserais left from those days but from its ruins I could already feel myself being transformed to those days of old when one would sit back in one of many cubicles against the walls on both sides of the central, while busy service boys would run from chamber to chamber serving meals and drinks.



It was around 3:30pm and the sky was already darkening and when the wind blew it was cold. I had to put on my gloves, and add on an additional layer. Outside the caravanserai the temperature has started to dip.

“I wondered how the merchants of those days find their ways to this caravanserai, without GPS and such,” I wondered to Kong Wan.

“Yah, if you don’t make it here in time then you are stranded out there in the cold desert and you will have to set up tent on your own,” added Kong Wan. “In fact, the difference between outside the caravanserai and inside is so much. Outside it is so cold but inside it is quite comfortable.” The insulation of the thick brick walls really kept us well protected against the elements.

Here in this part of Iran, rainfall is only 80mm annually and it’s very very dry. But as we travelled, Mohammad pointed to one side far away and told us that there was a swamp there which supplied the water to these parts.



Back in the Caravanserai...

“This is our room 601,” I pointed to one of those open cubicles on one wall and joked to Serene.

“If you look carefully, you can even see bullet holes in some of the wall,” said Adrian.

“How come?” I asked.

“Because those days there were already guns and bullets.”

And that was why the owner of the fortress had four huge tall minarets constructed each at one corner of the castle and was manned by guards to protect the dwellers inside.



Though what remained was but a ruin and a shadow of its past, the Rabbit Caravanserai left a powerful imprint in my mind. We didn’t spend too much time here but enough to mark a thick tick in my heart.



Dinner and star trail shoot at Varzaneh, anyone?



Varzaneh hadn’t a hotel proper. What it had were guesthouses. Adrian tempered our expectations earlier and was impressive in actually managing to get us separate guesthouses with attached bathrooms, after the first attempt was deemed unfavourable by him, and after he exercised some pressure on the local operators. The second guesthouse was really much better.



Our original plan to embarked on a 4-5 hour star trail shoot out in the desert snowballed into a whole cacophony of discussion in the coach on the settings, sharing of previous star trail photos, and started some of us desperately searching their digital cameras to see if theirs had a built-in intervelometer. Fann was so thrilled to find, with Simon’s help, that her Fujifilm indeed had a built-in interval time machine. Kong Wan’s Nikon 850 already had a built-in one. So had David Low’s rice cooker camera. My rangefinder was the only one that had to have me do everything manually every four minutes.


Every one and even myself was laughing at the thought of me having to run out of the bus every four minutes to release the cable release bulb mode and re-depress the shuttle for another few minutes of bulb mode exposure, in and out, in and out in the cold night. I was actually quite prepared to do that already.



So for the first time, the excitement rose and even David Low who initially intended to sleep, decided to go for the shoot, after realizing that he could just set up the camera and go back into the bus and kiao-kar and sleep for four hours. Until suddenly someone found that the sky was cloudy. Further examination of the sky found tonight to be very cloudy.

Chris Chia said: “Aiyah. If you cannot even are the moon clearly then for sure you cannot see the stars liao.”

And true enough, Adrian had to disappoint everybody by declaring the night event exercise cut.

Dinner was back at the Haj Mirza water reservoir building traditional Iranian restaurant, and we all got comfortable sitting cross-legged, diagonal-legged, some straight-legged on the carpeted platform and had yogurt coup and egg soup and Koshkeh until Ah Woo started saying “Sorry sorry orh.. sorry sorry.. today dinner drink soup and eat vegetarian and chew loti. Sorry sorry, the kebab the past few meals were very nice. Dare not complain again liao...”

And every table broke out into fits of roaring laughter. Because it was so funny how Ah Woo said it.

Serene called out: “我们身在福中不知福 (didn’t know how to count our blessings)!” because we had been having beef, lamb, chicken kebab with buttered long-grained rice and lavash for every meal, some might have felt it time for some variation. Alas, in Iran, there wasn’t much else.

David Wu reasoned: “Well, if they could cook their chicken, lamb or beef in different ways each meal it would make it easier for us (to palate).” which was fair.

David Low asked amongst ourselves: “How come don’t have seafood ah? They got Caspian Sea at the north ah.”

Kong Wan: “Even if they have I also don’t dare to eat their fish ah.”

To which I laughed: “Yah lor.. by the time the fish arrived at Varzaneh it will become salted fish liao.”

The dinner ended up with everyone having a great laugh over our Singaporean’s palate. But still, it was a good authentic Varzaneh organic local meal and aside from having to contort our bodies in various positions throughout dinner, fighting joint stiffness in the hips and knees among the older members of the team, we generally enjoyed each other’s company.

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