Our last week in Iran was spent in the fabulous mud built city of Yazd, the tranquil desert oasis of Garmeh, and the holy city of Mashhad. Yazd was voted by many of our group to be their favorite city in Iran, and a few more of our fellow travelers succumbed and finally bought their…Continue reading Iran – Yazd & Garmeh & Mashhad
Category: Caucasus
Iran – Persepolis & Shiraz & Yazd
From Esfahan, we drove south towards Naqsh-e Rustam (a necropolis housing 4 tombs of Achaemenid kings). Since Iran decided in 2013 to jack up tourist entrance fees to a whopping 30x what the locals pay, most of us opted to skip out on visiting Naqsh-e Rustam since the carved rock face tombs were visible from…Continue reading Iran – Persepolis & Shiraz & Yazd
Iran – Esfahan
Esfahan is a magical city. We were thrilled to discover that our overland trip brought us back to this lovely section of Iran. Lucky for us, we had a whopping 3 nights here! Seeing the ancient bridges of Esfahan at night was wonderful – full of Iranians having a picnic or shisha. We spent hours…Continue reading Iran – Esfahan
Iran – Tabriz & Qazvin & Tehran & Abyaneh
Country # 2 of our overland journey! Exiting Turkey and entering Iran via the Bazargan border crossing was a breeze. We quickly exchanged money at the border and instantly became multi-millionaires, ha. The Iranian currency is still a bit confusing, as there as so many zeros on each note (100,000 Rials = $3) and the…Continue reading Iran – Tabriz & Qazvin & Tehran & Abyaneh
Turkey – Unye & Tirebolu & Sumela & Yusufeli & Dogubayazit
Our last week in Turkey came to a rapid end. From Cappadocia, we were supposed to visit Mount Nemrut and the massive statues from its Royal Tomb, but we had to give it a wide berth after reports of an ISIS camp nearby. This meant we were also giving Lake Van’s swimming cats a miss…Continue reading Turkey – Unye & Tirebolu & Sumela & Yusufeli & Dogubayazit