Middle East, Report Card

Iran’s Report Card

We spent the longest time in Iran than any other country on this trip. Partly due to winter and the amazing hospitality of the people. We’ve learned so much about the country, so it has been a valuable learning experience over these four months.

Iran

A quick glimpse into the country:

Capital: Tehran

Population: 81 millions

Language: Farsi/Persian

Currency: Rial (80,000 = $1 NZ)

Region: Middle East

Provinces: 31 (16 visited)

Religion: Islam (Shia)

Random Fact: Farsi is the accent from the Fars province

Iran received a TCP/IP score of ★★★☆☆

Important Pointers

People & Culture (PC)

  • The Persian people are very hospitable. So much warmth in their culture that you can become friends instantly
  • The economic situation is not favourable at the moment, but still they offer help in any way they can, either through sharing food, finding a place to camp or withdrawing cash
  • The taarof culture took a bit of getting used to. It can be good and annoying at times. For example, when you go to pay for stuff, they don’t accept the money first and you have to insist to pay
  • People are generally happy to see tourists, shouting all the English they know: “hello mister/ I love you¹/ welcome to Iran”
  • Iran is full of history and heritage. Buildings date back thousands of years, some still in use and some left as is
  • Dogs, stray or not, are considered dirty and are very neglected in this part of the world. They are so badly treated that whenever they come around us looking for food, their head is held low and they are super quiet
  • There’s also a lot of room for improvement on women’s rights. For tourists the most noticeable restriction is wearing the hijab – even under the hot summer temperatures

Infrastructure, Safety and Politics (ISP)

  • Roads and tunnels are in great condition, our bikes suffered very little cycling here (except the usual punctures of course)
  • Generally everyone is honest and genuine, but we had several safety concerns after hearing many bad stories from fellow cyclists (thief, sexual harassment, money scams, etc), and experiencing some ourselves
  • Nothing negative about politic and religion can be said publicly. We prefer not to as well because we like to return to Iran
  • Internet is heavily blocked, so we’ve developed a habit of activating the VPN before doing anything. We ended up using 6+ different apps to work around the blocking
  • Driving is crazy. We probably saw an accident at least once every week! We’re thankful most of the road we rode on had a decent shoulder to use
  • Getting the visa was an expensive mission. The process took us more than a week and by far the most expensive for our New Zealand passport
  • Sad to admit this but the police were useless when we needed help the most. Given two instance of thief occurred during our time there (one was of our friend Alireza who lost his bike), they offered nothing to help get our belongings back

Landscape & Nature (LAN)

  • Mostly desert landscape, very dry and very little wildlife. In the wild we only saw eagles and boars
  • Pollution is very bad: in the air, waterway and on land
  • The greenest (and mountainous) regions were Ahwaz, Kurdistan and Mazandaran. They get a lot of rain so the land looked as green as New Zealand
  • It was hard to enjoy the natural scenery because everywhere that was accessible to people would be littered with rubbish

Value for Money (VM)

  • The devalued rial made everything in Iran “on sale”. We could have traveled like kings if our money hadn’t been stolen
  • Visa extension were an absolute bargain – under $5 for another 30 days. Max of 2 extensions though (except for our situation where we got a third extension)
  • The most basic food was bread which costs about 10-20¢, it was our staple for most meals. They also had a lot of different types of bread
  • Mushroom is very cheap, about $1-2 a kilo, whereas back home they’re about $7. If you cook for yourself it can save you a lot
  • We took the bus once, with our bikes and all, for a 6 hours ride for $8 each. The bus even had VIP seating!

Camping & Outdoor Living (COL)

  • It was easy to camp. Mosques, Red Crescent centers, picnic parks all welcomed anyone in need of a place to stay
  • Overall we paid for two nights in a hotel, the rest were camping and staying with the locals
  • The Iranians loves to picnic and eat outside. They would even make a fire for cooking kebabs
  • Several times we got approached by people saying it is unsafe to camp due to wild animals. They were insistent that we were silly to camp outside. We never saw anything – any wildlife left would be lucky to exist given the habitat destructions

Return for a Retour?

We will come back to Iran, but not on a bicycle. There are still many places to explore, souvenirs to buy and friends to revisit. There were many cool kitchenware we wanted to have at our own home so next visit can’t be on a bike. We have friends almost every corner of Iran after spending 4 months here!

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧
Did you enjoy reading our travel blog? Perhaps you learned a thing or two, or we inspired you to travel on bicycles. If you answered yes, then we would appreciate a donation in any of these cryptocurrencies:
Wallet Address
STEEM | pushpedal
BTC | 1PFGQbJekoUjYji1eLhkU2XYJDZpiFHCSH
ETH | 0x5b67d4597e200110af6ad5441383602c476abb82
XLM | qr6q2uuaqhpw6r7avhazvwtqxy8z6s6tuupravqdd0
❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧

Leave a comment