Days seemed to have gotten confused here. Anyway, yesterday morning I met the bus across the street, dosed with lomotil, wearing my underpants and ready for anything. A group of those famous hippies slowly collected on the sidewalk in the cold of early morning, stretching and yawning and passing a comb around while Erzurum Turks walking to work stared. There was some uptightness at the end about who had spaces and where, but I didn't get bumped, and the other tourist who was angry also made it on, although we ended up carrying extra people.
It was a long ride, half gravel roads all of the way to the Iranian border, then things immediately changed, and it was smooth concrete all the way into Teheran. Most of the kids on the bus are following the traditional route - Istanbul, Erzurum, Teheran, Meshed, Herat, Kabul, and a lot are aiming for the houseboats in Kashmir, where I also want to stop. Marco Polos all of us.
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Arrived in Teheran about 9AM this morning, making it a 25 1/2 hour ride from Erzurum. The first taxi driver, who I got at the bus depot, dumped me at a wretched hippy hotel, and refused to understand that I was not interested in that hotel. A second one took me to the Marmar Hotel, 2,000 rials ($25?) a night, but nice.
I immediately showered, changed, and rushed off to change money and get my Afghani visa. Taxi drivers are very tough to communicate with, they don't understand either the name of the hotel, or the city map.
At lunch I met an Iranian chemistry teacher who took me with him to drink beer, except that everyone was closed for siesta, and laid a good solid "I don't like the Shah" line on me.
The Marmar has a real oilman's bar downstairs, where I had a few beers this afternoon, and dinner at tonight. American oilmen during the day, Germans at night.
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Monday morning I hit the road fairly early, had breakfast downstairs and got a taxi to the Afghani Embassy, where I picked up my visa, and then down to the Pasteur Institute to see about getting my anti-malaria injection. My visa was there waiting for me, but there were no anti-malaria injections to be had at the Pasteur Institute, so I ended up buying some pills from a drugstore, along with extra lomotil.
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Sat in the bar at the Marmara for a couple of hours, had lunch there, then caught the bus to Isfahan. Quite a luxurious bus. Rich Johnson had given me extravagant warnings about the discomforts of Iranian busses, but this one only had 3 seats abreast, and served free cokes and icewater periodically. Left Tehran at around 2:15, arrived at Isfahan around 9. A Korean couple tried to steer me to a youth hostel, but I had the driver take me to a hotel recommended by the clerk at the Marmara, the Darius Hotel, another oilman's palace, but it had a bar and was a little cheaper than the Marmara at 1,400 rials, so I felt content for the moment.
Breakfast at the hotel snack bar this morning, then off to the tourist office to get the lay of the land. Took the morning tour around Isfahan, on which I got to see the famous Shah Meydan, which I've seen so often in photographs, and wanted to see for real for over a year now. Really nearly as good as visualized. Spacious, fountains and grass, with 2 beautiful mosques at the edges.
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Really very hot here, although dry, so it's not as uncomfortable. Find myself sometimes drinking a pop every half hour, well chilled. The Iranians seem to know all about ice, which the Turks don't. Many of the roadside stands have huge blocks of it to cool their drinks.
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Both Tehran and Isfahan seem to have running water aplenty. Little canals line all the streets, and each day a different section of the city gets watered, so that every three or four days all the grass and trees, which grow right out of the gutters, get watered.
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This morning I took a long walk to go buy my bus ticket, visited Ali Qapu palace on the Shah Meydan, and posted some post cards and film. In the afternoon I tried to walk down along the Zayandeh Rud, but it was very hot, hotter than yesterday, and there wasn't much to see, so I turned back. Had a nap, and then in the early evening visited the Madrese Chaharbagh, or Madraseh-ye-Madar-i-Shah. Beautiful place, and the porter snuck me up one of the minarets, amid cautions to stay crouched and not tell anyone, because I was the only one. I'd seen other tourists climbing out of the minaret as I crossed the street 10 minutes before, and the upper platform was littered with old Kodak film boxes. He wheedled 150 rials out of me.
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