Ate at a nice upstairs restaurant down the street last night. Great food, except that after sitting there in an empty restaurant for 10 minutes without being served, I realized I'd have to walk over to the kitchen to get service. And then I walked across the street to the famous Shah Abbas Hotel, found the bar, and had 2 whiskey sours. Live Persion music, and I sat next to an American couple from Tulsa, the male of which addressed the waiter as "Senór".
One of the guys at the desk at the hotel asked me that night when got back, if I'd meet him early the next morning to go over pronunciation from his English vocabulary book, and we agreed to meet at 7:30. I got up on time and was waiting, and he did not show, and also stayed out of sight so I couldn't ask why.
Very hot bus ride back to Tehran. Sat in the back with, notably, 3 children from 2 families, and met a nice Iranian student. Left Isfahan at 10:30, arrived at the terminal in Tehran around 6:00. Bought my ticket for Mashad, and got a taxi to the Hotel Shiraz, recommended by a man at the Tous. Not a hippy hang-out, but fuckers anyway. Told me there were no single rooms, charged me for a double, and gave me a single room.
Went scouting around after checking in, looking for a chicken and beer place I'd seen from the taxi, and found it, also a bookstore where I was able to get a new blank notebook. The chicken and beer place was a disappointment, but it was a good neighborhood. I met 2 Pakistanis and an Indian while I was eating, and bought a John O'Hara novel at a used book stand, which reminded me of Tom Davis and Jim Lovett and their bizarre English-prof reading habits, which prompted me to want to buy a postcard to send to Davis in Hudson, Ohio, which provoked an argument with the desk clerk over small change and big bills. Ech.
Checked out and got to the bus station early, Tehran pretty quiet since it was mosque day, Friday. By 9:30 we were on a very packed highway rolling east, "on the bus", and it seemed like a good part of the city was trying to get away for the weekend. We drove up over some very rugged and dry mountains, then hit rain, and drove down into the lowlands along the Caspian Sea, through Sari, which is actually right on the water according to my little map, although we never saw it from the road, and on through some very rich and moist agricultural land, which stretched almost all of the way to Mashad.
I was the only foreigner on the bus this time, first time I believe, although I thought that now I was back on "the hippy high road" to India, I'd be seeing lots of kids with backpacks. Nary a one. Two of the single guys on the bus did speak English, and the one who was old enough to be in college of course wanted to go to the U.S. All over Iran I see all sorts of little bits of Americana being worn or displayed by Iranians: peace sign decals on cars, Americana t-shirts, mostly of local manufacture. All of this contrasting pretty strongly with the increasing number of turbans and Mongolian-type faces I'm seeing, not to speak of the robed women, which have been pretty universal since Erzurum.
Arrived in Mashad at 3AM on the dot, which is an awful time to get into a strange town. Taxi took me to the hotel recommended by the Tous Hotel, and I got booted out by the night porter, and then tried two others, same result. Absolutely dead quiet city. Very warm, lots of men sleeping in the streets. I felt rather alarmed, being stuck on the street, but at 5 the night porter at the Amir Hotel got up and let me into the lobby, and then around 6 a rather surly desk clerk gave me a double room for 530 rials. Bath and john down the hall.
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I crashed until 8:30 to try and catch up a little, then went out on the street to try and locate a ticket to Herat. Found the Into office, and then went off on a long hike across Mashad to the proper bus terminal. Going through the bazaar part of town, I picked up a young Iranian fellow named, I think, Sapeq, and he took me all the way to the terminal, spoke to the clerk for me, took me back on the bus, and refused to let me buy him lunch. He ordered for me and disappeared to buy cigarettes.
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Mashad is a pilgrimage center, the town is really just a way-station built around a shrine, and it is crowded with pilgrims. People pack the streets, and I think a lot of them sleep on them.
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