Castles Made of Sand

We were in a taxi hurtling into unfeasible blackness, the driver barking unintelligible pidgin over the blare of the radio, when it struck me that we were miles from anywhere, there  was not a single light on the horizon, not a sound but the roaring engine, the wailing radio.

It was a relief when we finally pulled into a mud-built settlement, lights glowing from behind ancient doors. A man waved from behind a mud wall, with his other hand he appeared to be feeding a baby camel. We had arrived in the oasis village Garmeh. Before long we were stretched out on carpets before a fire, drinking chay and listening to a shaggy-haired Sufi make miraculous rhythms on a pair of clay pots. This was Maziar, a kind of Iranian hippy (if such a thing is possible) who had renovated his rambling family home and opened it as a guesthouse. Everything was made from the desert, mud brick and adobe moulded into a kind of intricate sandcastle. That night we stood on the roof and watched the stars, the only things that disturbed the silence were the yowling of jackals and a tiny stream gurgling a hundred metres away.

When morning came we realised how remote we were. The village was a cluster of mud houses and archways amongst a ring of green date palms. For miles around there was nothing but dusty plains and jagged brown mountains. Next door, a thousand-year-old fortress crumbled back from whence it came, rejoining the dust clouds that allowed one to look directly at the sun, a perfect silver disc in red-brown haze.

We climbed the mountain behind the village and, after surveying the absolute nothingness, realised what an unearthly paradise Britain would seem to these people. While stood on a high rocky crag I let out wolf-like howl (what else would one do on a high rocky crag?) and, a hundred metres away, Nic responded. Except, when I mentioned it to her, she said she hadn't made a sound, she had simply heard two separate howls. There was only one possible conclusion, the jackals had accepted me as one if their own. 

Resisting the urge to join my furry brethren, we travelled through sand and dust storms (at times it felt like a strange night was falling) to the village of Toudeshk. Our experience here was quite wonderful and I intend to write about it before long (somehow, despite doing essentially bugger all, I can never find the time).

As per usual I have got overexcited here and run too far ahead and must retrace our dusty footsteps south to the ancient city of Persepolis. It was from these parts that Persian armies blazed west to sack Athens and here, years later, that Alexander the Great retaliated by burning  the city to the ground. We have been following in his bloody footsteps since Greece, for it was he who blazed the path that made the Silk Roads possible (we try to avoid the raping and pillaging though- it doesn't seem to go down too well). In Iran, Alexander was depicted as a horned devil, children were warned (and sometimes still are) that Iskender would get them if they didn't eat their greens.

I digress. Persepolis was wonderful and it is far beyond my literary powers to describe it adequately. Bizarrely, the thing that sent most shivers down my spine was the grafitti. Into a archway guarded by griffins, great explorers had carved their names (among them Henry Morton Stanley) and, ignoring the crowds and clicking camera phones, you could almost imagine yourself among them.

 We next went to Yazd, a whole city of mud architecture. Lane after beautiful lane of courtyards, caravanserais, tunnels and arches swarmed around us, as if it had grown organically from the desert floor. The roofscape was riven with badgirs, intricate chimneys that are designed to suck cool desert breezes down into the houses. Beneath the city ancient qanats still bring water from mountain streams. These are underground channels that were (and occasionally still are) dug by hand, carrying fresh water for miles and miles. 

In an old qanat cistern, now an empty dome of mud brick, we found the utterly bizarre Yazd Zurkhaneh Club. Zurkaneh is the ancient Iranian practice of mystic body building. In a circular space a group of sweaty men and boys perform ritualistic feats of strength to a throbbing drum. As the men heft huge weights, swing chains and whirl like dervishes, Sufi prayers and poems are sung. As the rhythms quickened and the exercises grew more intense, I found myself with the peculiar sensation of being rather moved by the sight of a fat hairy man in absurd trousers making himself dizzy. 

Though there's much more to say, I cannot ask of you any more of your time (and perhaps some things are best said when outside these borders). We're now amongst the wayward traffic of Tehran waiting for Uzbek visas, planning the next stretch of the journey east.

Thanks for reading and I hope you're all well out there.