Trip to the southwest
Whenever you quit Tehran for a day or weekend trip, you wonder why you don't do it more often. Southwestern Iran - the cradle of ancient civilisation - was the venue for last week's jaunt, taking in Shushtar (very underrated as a tourist destination), Shush (overrated) and Choqa Zanbil (another extraordinary and unique Iranian building). An afternoon mountain drive through Luristan provided the scenic splendour; Kate brought the picnic.
Even if you've travelled a fair bit in Iran, it has great capacity to surprise. Shushtar has a bizarre network of ancient hydrolics, where a Sassanian canal of the Karun river cuts through the sandstone and once powered 30 flour mills. A charming mosque with a leaning minaret, a distinctly Khouzestani imamzadeh (above) and a couple of ancient bridges add to Shushtar's sense of a busy history. Arabs in dishdashas and Bakhtiari nomads in their stylish woollen coats and black bellbottom trousers lend it a colourful local identity sometimes missing in small Iranian towns.
Choqa Zanbil (above) is another of those one-off structures - like the palace at Firouzabad, Oljeitsu's dome at Soltaniyeh, the imamzadeh at Mahan, and, so I'm told, the tower at Gonbad-e Kavuus - that give Iran so much potential depth as a tourist destination. The 3,000-year-old ziggurat has a peculiarly modern feel. The brickwork is in excellent condition and could have been put up yesterday, with its stylish insets and elegant narrow stairways. My only problem was a complete inability to relate to the people who built it. What did Elamites look like? What did they do? It may as well have been plonked there by aliens.
Shush is pleasant but dull. The ancient palace of Apadana, once the seat of a great empire, is now a series of small walls overlooked by a tall castle, built out of ancient debris by French archaeologists to ward off rampaging bandits (such Gallic style!). A quick look (nobody could accuse us of being thorough) and we were off for the hills, and a picnic on the serrated edges of a tight gorge in what was once prime bandit country (above). It's smash-and-grab tourism - the southwest in a day.
Even if you've travelled a fair bit in Iran, it has great capacity to surprise. Shushtar has a bizarre network of ancient hydrolics, where a Sassanian canal of the Karun river cuts through the sandstone and once powered 30 flour mills. A charming mosque with a leaning minaret, a distinctly Khouzestani imamzadeh (above) and a couple of ancient bridges add to Shushtar's sense of a busy history. Arabs in dishdashas and Bakhtiari nomads in their stylish woollen coats and black bellbottom trousers lend it a colourful local identity sometimes missing in small Iranian towns.
Choqa Zanbil (above) is another of those one-off structures - like the palace at Firouzabad, Oljeitsu's dome at Soltaniyeh, the imamzadeh at Mahan, and, so I'm told, the tower at Gonbad-e Kavuus - that give Iran so much potential depth as a tourist destination. The 3,000-year-old ziggurat has a peculiarly modern feel. The brickwork is in excellent condition and could have been put up yesterday, with its stylish insets and elegant narrow stairways. My only problem was a complete inability to relate to the people who built it. What did Elamites look like? What did they do? It may as well have been plonked there by aliens.
Shush is pleasant but dull. The ancient palace of Apadana, once the seat of a great empire, is now a series of small walls overlooked by a tall castle, built out of ancient debris by French archaeologists to ward off rampaging bandits (such Gallic style!). A quick look (nobody could accuse us of being thorough) and we were off for the hills, and a picnic on the serrated edges of a tight gorge in what was once prime bandit country (above). It's smash-and-grab tourism - the southwest in a day.
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