Day 92: Get Me Outta Tehran!!!

This city is REALLY doing my head in!  It's either the noise or the pollution from the traffic but I get a cracking headache every time I go outside.  On top of that I haven't had a decent meal in a couple of days as I've been really crook the last couple of days, holed up in my crummy hotel room popping questionable local pills, guzzling litres of water and making quick dashes for the bathroom.  Urgh.

The only thing stopping me getting out of here is my Chinese visa.  It's pretty critical to the rest of my trip here.  I've now booked my flight from Iran (Mashhad) to Kygyzstan (Bishkek) and I leave here on the 19th September – a bit earlier than I planned but there's only one flight a week.  Oh well.  After 10 days or so trekking in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan I want to delve into Western China for the last couple of weeks (I fly out of Honkers on 18th October).  Anyhoo so I went up to the Chinese Embassy waaaay up the hill in North Tehran.  The north of the city is MUCH more likeable: less traffic congestion, more leafy and green, and closer to the Alborz Mountains.  Turned out my trip up there was for nought though: all I got was a curt "come back tomorrow" from an intercom.  Ah well…

On the way back down to my hotel, I got off the brand spanking new Metro system (side note: it's mixed but there are separate women only carriages) at Taleqani station and went upstairs to the "US Den of Espionage".  It's a massive walled complex of buildings, looking pretty run-down these days.  Since the US left it's been the home of the Sepah militia, who vow to "defend the revolution".  They're a bit touchy at people taking photos of the walls apparently, as I'd only just started snapping off a couple when I was harassed and sternly warned by a group of six boy soldiers to not take any more.  Still I did get a couple of good photos of some of the murals.  There was one with had the Statue of Liberty with a skull for a face, and I especially liked this quote: "The Day United States of America Praises Us We Should Mourn".

    
Bombs and flowers.                                 What remains of the US seal.

My personal favourite.  🙂

    
Some ubiquitous trash talk…                  More rhetoric (and that's all it is).

This evening I was desperate to eat something substantial and definitely NOT a kebab (this region of the world is not a gourmand's delight), so I tracked down a – or the – Chinese restaurant in town.  To get there I decided to take a motorcycle "taxi" there – i.e. a guy with a bike that wants to make a few extra rials.  Well it turned out to be the most amount of urban fun out there!!!  Hanging on for dear life, we wove our way through six lanes of traffic, around buses, between cars (my knees grazed a few), used both sides of the road and even the pavement!  $2 well spent!!  The Chinese food was half decent as well.

So here are a few more fun facts and observations about Iran:

• On almost every street corner you find these hexagonal, blue mail boxes.  On closer inspection they turned out to be donation boxes for giving alms, which is one of the four pillars of Islam.  You see people drop their spare change into them all the time.
• I've seen several guys wearing black "Cal" baseball caps of all things!  What a laugh!!  I assume they fell off the back of a truck from China…
• There are heaps and heaps of teenagers and young adults around, and I was able to find out that it's a by-product of the Islamic Revolution.  After the revolution the government made the smart move of banning contraception and telling everyone to make lots of babies.  And make lots they did!  The average number of children per mother was a disbelievable SIX!!  The government then realized the economic consequences of their decision and repealed it.  Still, today a staggering 70% of the population is under 30!  Of course this has outpaced the economy and unemployment is a real problem.
• Next time you eat a pistachio, spare a thought for Iran.  The country produces a whopping 57% of the world's supply of the nut!  And the ones I've had here are delicious.
• No posters of Osama here!  Thought I might spy a couple (I saw a few Anti-Zionist posters in Eastern Turkey) but I guess that Sunni-Shiite rift is pretty cavernous.  I've seen a few of Nasrallah though.
• To really confuse you, Iran uses not two but THREE calendars!  Our Gregorian one (anything international), the Persian solar calendar (official), and the Muslim lunar calendar (religious).  It can get tricky booking tickets…  Oh and Thursday and Friday of their week is the weekend, which has meant I've had to re-adjust some of travel plans.

     
(L) One of the many Iran-Iraq war murals adorning the sides of buildings.
(R) A proud shopkeeper and my lifeline to surviving the kebab-laden meals.

Fingers crossed I can sort out my visa bright and early tomorrow morning because I really want to get out of here and down to the town of Kashan, a couple of hours south of here.