Journey to the East Chapter 6
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Wednesday 20 August, Amman/Aleppo.
Set off early to Jebel Amman to look for a good spot to start
hitching. I got strange looks from the drivers as stood with my sign on
the side of the road--they weren't sure what
I was up to. A truck driver took me as far as Jerash, where I got a
glimpse of the Roman ruins. This town, like Palmyra to the North
and Petra to the south, marks an ancient caravan route.
The next
lift was as far as the Syrian border at Ramtha. Here I met a young customs
worker called Omar who could speak some English. He insisted on buying
me a beer and listening to an account of some of my travels. Then he
tried to get a truck travelling towards Turkey, asking all the drivers
who were waiting there. He wasn't successful, but then slipped 13
Syrian Lira into my hand "for the taxi".
Under the circumstances, I didn't--couldn't--get a taxi, but
continued hitching on the other side.
After a long wait, just
when I was considering walking to the Syrian customs, I got a lift from a
Jordanian of Russian parents who was working in Kuwait. He was the first driver
that day who could speak English, which made a nice change. He dropped
me just North of Damascus, and almost immediately I got a lift to
Aleppo. I later found out that 126 people were killed today when an II-62 jet crashed south of Damascus.
Thursday 21
August, Aleppo/Antep.
I awoke quite early--probably with the Muezzin's
first call but quite refreshed after my open-air sleep.
I received some curious stares from passers-by returning after first prayers as my central city sleeping spot was quite visible in daylight. I pretended to be asleep until they went away.
After rising I decided to take another look around Aleppo. At this early hour the streets were quiet. The city wasn't quite as neat and
well-laid out as I had thought the evening before. The older parts of the city
resembled that of Damascus, but were more exotic and less organized.
I waited just long enough for the souqs to come to life, then saw what I could of the citadel. Then I had to be on my way.
After some initial confusion about the road to take I
eventually got a taxi to the Turkish border. The border formalities
were not too bad, although there was the usual queuing and hustle and bustle with the
locals, who looked quite like the Bedouin down in Jordan.
As I was now under a certain amount
of time pressure due to my Irani visa (due to expire in six days time!),
I needed to plan my route carefully, to ensure that the visa did not expire before I got through that country. In contrast to most other
countries in Western Europe, Irish citizens were required to pay for
the Irani visa, and it could not be obtained at the border, but
only at an embassy or consulate (I had obtained mine in London).
The most direct way to get from Syria to Iran would have been
via Baghdad, but I had found it impossible to get a visa for Iraq.
The next best way might have been through south-eastern Turkey, about which I knew nothing, except that eastern
Turkey was supposed to be quite dangerous, with local tribes attacking and robbing trucks that got stranded, usually killing all inside--even I thought hitch-hiking would be out of the
question there!
I thought it best to re-join the main road running from Istanbul to Iran, which meant heading in the general direction of northern Turkey.
I stopped a passing taxi and got the driver to take me to Killis (or Kells), the nearest town on the Turkish side of the border. We drove past groves of olive and pistachio trees, vineyards and shepherds watching over sheep and goats.
Killis was a smugglers' market-place, crammed with contraband Japanese and Western goods. Parts of the border are mined, to prevent the locals driving sheep into Syria, where they get twice the price for them, which they then spend on consumables to smuggle back into Turkey. I read that on average 3 out of 10 smugglers get killed while carrying out their "business".
Hitch-hiking from here would be difficult, I thought--there was practically no
traffic on the road, other than the occasional truck, and from accounts
that I heard I felt that anyone who stopped would be looking for payment.
At worst, I thought I might have to travel as far as Ankara in order to get back on the road to Iran. I decided to try the buses, and started flagging down what appeared to be
local privately-run buses. A minibus took me first
of all to Antep (Gaziantep), the nearest large town. At the bus-station, I found there was a bus directly
to Erzerum, which was only about 100 miles from the border crossing at Dogubayazit, in north-eastern Turkey, up near Armenia. This was great news and
cheered me up tremendously, as I
had been wondering how I was going to get to the border crossing.
I had to wait a few hours,
though--the bus wasn't due to leave until 4:30. I changed some money and
took
a stroll around the city.
Gaziantep is situated in a hilly landscape.
The town is modern, lively, and the people were very helpful.
I was once again an object of attention--I guess they didn't get many Irishmen visiting here.
Hardly anyone spoke English. Occasionally someone tried a few words of
German, most of which of course I didn't understand. About 700,000 Turks work in Western European countries, mainly Germany, so I reckoned some of these German speakers had been there. The chap at the bank prepared
me a cup of tea while my money was being changed--that
doesn't happen very often!
The hero of the town was 12 year old Mehemet Kamii who was murdered while trying to protect his mother from the unwelcome attentions of French Soldiers during the War of Independence, sometime after Turkey was on the losing side in World War 1. As a result the town rose against the French occupying force, thousands of people died and the French lost their taste for conflict with the Turks. In 1921 the prefix 'Gazi' (warrior) was added to the name of the town, which previously had been known as Antep.
On a low hill there's a fortress, called the Kale, that was built by the Byzantines and rebuilt by the Seljuks in the 13th century, but I didn't get a chance to explore it as I had to keep an eye on the time.
All in all an unexpectedly pleasant day. Upon boarding the bus I learned that it was going to be a long trip--15
hours through central Turkey.
Friday 22
August, Erzerum/Dogubayazit.
The city is 6,000 feet up. It is entirely
surrounded by mountain peaks, broken by the Georgian Gates through which
Pompey drove Mithridates and through which Timurlane advanced on Erzerum,
and many other conquerors including the Russians. During WW1 in 1916 a Russian army braved the bitter January cold and despite thousands freezing to death, attacked the city from the mountains, a feat the Turks considered couldn't be done, and hadn't anticipated, so the city fell. It lay on the old caravan
route from Persia to the Black Sea. Marco Polo and his father were here, having come from Acre, and travelled to Tabriz. But its prosperity had been affected by
a series of earthquakes. I read somewhere that hungry wolves sometimes steal into this city when cold lies on the land, which is half the year.
The bus, amazingly enough, left on time. From the bus I could make out the snow-capped
peak of Mount Ararat, where Noah's Ark is said to have come to rest (despite many expeditions, they still haven't found it!).
Only trucks, many from the UK and bound for Iran, used the roads. Most of the land was lifeless. I expected to arrive at the border, but
the bus went only as far as Dogubayazit, which is one of those totally
uninteresting places that every traveller seems to wind up in at some
stage. I had made the acquaintance of two Swedes, Bjorn and Hakan, who
had boarded
at Agri, and we decided to stay overnight at Dogubayazit, and took a room
in a hotel for three. We met some other travellers in the "Otel", including a couple
of French travelling in the opposite direction, who were able to provide us
with some up-to-date information about Iran.
We sat for a while talking before drifting off to sleep. I told them of
how Dervla Murphy, cycling to India, spent a night here (perhaps even
in this very "Otel") and had awoken in the middle of the night to find a
six-foot tall local bending over her, upon which she fired her revolver
into the ceiling, "which concluded the matter".
Iran's most famous poet, Forugh Farrokhzad, was killed in 1967 when her car was struck by an American military vehicle in Tehran, killing her instantly. She was 32 years old.
Saturday 23
August, Dogubayazit/Maran.
We took what proved to be a very bumpy bus on a very bad road to the
border. The scenery, though, was beautiful, as we headed towards a range
of snow-capped hills in the distance. We ate our last Turkish meal at
the border--I had no idea what the food would be like further on. The
picture on the left is a postcard I sent back home from Iran.
We then discussed the best way of getting to Teheran, our next
principal destination, about 400 miles to the southeast. The French we had met in the "Otel" had said
that hitch-hiking was easy, so we tried it--without much success! Part
of the problem being that there's wasn't much traffic. We finally got
an offer of a lift from a young German guy in a car. A student, he had
a Summer job driving a car to a city in Iran from Germany. There
was a convoy of trucks following on behind, but the paperwork for them
had taken some time, so he was going to wait for them further down the
road.
This part of Iran is inhabited by Azerbaijanis, or Azeri,
who have
their own language, Azer, distantly related to Turkish, I believe.
It's only a few miles from the Soviet border. We
found everyone very friendly, if a bit suspicious at first. Among the
few Westerners there that day were a very friendly
brother and sister from
Switzerland, he was about 21 and she was a year younger, who
had been travelling together for about 9 months. They were on their way
home and were looking forward to some Swiss food and to celebrating her
21st birthday there--she said that in their village they bake a cake
when a baby is born and don't eat it until its 21st birthday.
While walking around the village I spotted a woollen hat
in a little store, that looked as though it had been
through about 10 generations of sheep-herders. It cost next to nothing,
so I bought it and after a very thorough washing (which gave me the impression
that it had never been washed before) it was fine.
The convoy of trucks arrived that evening. They were going south,
and could take us only as far as Maran, where we spent the night. Maran
(which means "the mother is there") was supposedly Noah's first resting-place
after he left the ark.
It would have been interesting to cross the nearby
border into Soviet Russia, but due to modern politics this was out of the
question. The nearest town on the Soviet side is the Armenian town of Julfa, and there's also
a Julfa down south, near Isfahan, called Nor Jugha. Over 300 years ago during a war with the Ottomans the Shah transported
5,000 (according to one account--this number varies) Armenian families from the Armenian Julfa, then part of Turkey, down to south of Isfahan. A colony was set up for them,
which they called Julfa after their original townland, and they were allowed to
elect their own mayor and run their own affairs. Thousands of their descendents are
still there, with their own Armenian culture, religion and language.
Sunday 24
August, Maran/Tabriz.
We took the bus from Maran to Tabriz, through some very scenic areas. A
guy from Maran whom we met on our way proved to be extremely helpful.
When we arrived in Tabriz he took us to the bus office and got us tickets for Teheran. This saved us some hassle--it can be difficult getting even things as simple as bus tickets, as no-one speaks English and the forms, signs and tickets are all in Farsi, with Arabic script. The next
bus wasn't due to leave until that evening. We then
met some friendly local guys and strolled around with them until it was
time to leave. I wanted to eat with them, but it was Ramadan, and they
were observing the fast.
The city looks very modern, at least the part
that we were taken around. But there are so many contrasts--in
some places you felt you could be in Europe, but a few hundred
yards away people were living as they had done for the past
thousand-odd years. Owing to its proximity to the Russian border it has
had a chequered history, including wars, invasions and conquest, not to
mention a number of bad earthquakes.
The Blue Mosque, built by Jehan Shah, was in ruins, as was the citadel--in olden days it was dressed in marble and gold.
There are a number of different tribes living in and
around the city, some with their own language.
For diversion I splashed out on an English book
(Watership Down, which someone had said I must read, but I
couldn't get past page 3--rabbits are not my thing) and some ice cream,
and had some really nice vegetable soup with lemon.
A characteristic of this part of the world, from the Mediterranean to
the Indian Ocean, is the jube, a kind of open sewer that runs
through the centre of the street in towns and villages. Sometimes the
water is fresh and clean, sometimes foul and smelly. Dervla Murphy was
always worried, particularly in Afghanistan, that the food provided had
been washed in the jube. The picture from Eastern Iran shows
wool for carpet-making being washed in the jube by a nomad girl.
Tabriz is famous for its carpets. I was told that the difference between
a good Turkish carpet and a good Persian carpet is that the former will last
a lifetime, while the latter will last for ever.
Monday 25
August, Teheran/Meshed.
Arrived tired and stiff at the Teheran bus-station just after 6:00 AM.
I did not have the luxury to take in the sights of the big city--I had two days to
get to the Afghan border, or face jail or deportation or whatever they
did to visitors who didn't have a valid Iranian visa. After the stories I had
heard and read, I didn't fancy ending up as a guest of the Shah! As I found out when I came through on the return journey, contrasts abounded in Tehran. Beneath a colorless expanse of flat-roofed
houses and office buildings fashioned of concrete or sun-dried brick, Tehran crowds 3,500,000 residents--more than one out of every ten Iranians--into 85 square miles and adds another 200,000 residents a year.
My guide-book had a warning that the squeaky-clean regime of the Shah was not very tolerant of the Westerners on the hippy trail. While not actually going so far as to bar us from entering the country, which might have povoked a diplomatic incident, the authorities did not encourage them. For example, backpackers were herded where possible into only one hotel in Teheran. The guide-book, and travellers I had met along the way, warned against the anti-Western feelings that ran high in this country. This hassle at the bus station was my first experience of this and it wasn't very nice.
Upon waking I got some information from
the chap sitting opposite, a young teacher of English. He was tall,
thin, unshaven and had a heavy moustache, and his clothes were treadbare.
He was obviously glad of the opportunity of practising his English and proud
of his ability to translate for the other occupants of the carriage, which
included, along with a couple of men his own age,
a stout elderly woman and a young boy, probably her grandson.
He told me that
Omar Khayyam, of Rubaiyat fame, was buried nearby, and pointing to a
monument that I could barely see from the train, said that was his
burial-place. This was Nishapur, birth-place of Omar in the 11th century.
The knowledge of Omar Khayyam's work in English is almost entirely due
to the poet Edward FitzGerald (a relative of the United Irishmen rebel, Lord Edward),
whose translation of his verses was
a work of genius. I had read it years earlier after a friend had left a copy
in our house, from which the wood-cut on the right comes.
Our conversation then drifted to the place of women in Islam.
He told me about Muslim traditions, said he had no respect
for Western women who would sleep with a man before being married. As
advised by my guide-book, I refrained from discussing religion or politics
with the locals as much as possible (although it was difficult!).
"Tá cluasa ag na bhfallaí" (the walls have ears), as
we used to say back in Dublin. I was forming the impression, from this brief
trip through Iran, that the Iranis were less tolerant and more short-tempered
(towards Westerners, at least) than the folk in the other Eastern countries
I had passed through. I was aware that the political and religious tensions in
the country probably contributed to this, and the fact that there is a large
number of different races, tribes and languages here, so you shouldn't
generalize, but
I missed the courtesy that I had always received from
the Arabs and Turks. Conversations with other travellers through these countries
supported this impression.
But I wanted to try to get things in this country in perspective for myself. Iran in the Seventies was a nation on the move, using its oil wealth to grow economically and militarily.
It had a number of problems: illiteracy, disease, pollution, lack of water, inflation, and worrisome neighbors--militant Iraq and the Soviet Union.
According to a magazine article I read, the previous year the national income had soared from 17 billion dollars to 26 billion, and per capita income rose from $566 to more than $800.
Against the day when her underground wealth would run dry, Iran was branching out into such diverse fields as petrochemicals, mining, machine tools, irrigation systems, ocean farming, synthetic fibers, and nuclear energy.
Iran's assets lie beneath the seared and barren earth. With everybody thinking that the world was facing an energy crisis, Iran's estimated reserves of some 80 billion barrels of oil and a supply of natural gas second only to the U.S.S.R.'s offered the prospect of enormous wealth and economic influence to 32 million Iranians.
But the contrasts abound--for example,
the irony of a new multimillion-dollar municipal hospital for a
city where raw sewage still flows with distinct aroma through the open
jubes along the streets.
The magazine showed a picture of the head of the country's most modern hospital (see left), showing off his new Lamborghini(!), which contrasts with the poverty just around the corner and the primitive rural conditions--unchanged for thousands of years.
Tuesday 26
August, Meshed.
Upon arrival in Meshed I bade farewell to my talkative companion.
I had one day left, but I still had to obtain my visa for Afghanistan!
I had the address of the Afghan consulate in my guide-book, so I went
there directly from the station, but arrived too late
for the visa to be processed that day. They did, however, assure me
that it would be done immediately the following day, if I arrived in
time. This was cutting it really close!
The city contains the shrine of Imam Reza, eighth
of the twelve Imams or prophets.
Buried alongside the Imam is Caliph
Harun ar Rashid, of "Arabian Nights" fame. This Caliph of Baghdad was
on his way to fight the Turcomans when he felt his death coming on
and arranged to be buried here. There is great rivalry between the Sunnis and the Shias. In the olden days it was expected that Shias
visiting the shrine of Imam Reza would kick the burial place of the Caliph
(he being of the rival Moslem persuasion)--I don't know whether this still takes place!
The large mosque was built by the famous queen Gawhar Shad in the fifteenty century.
There were many Jews in Persia since Biblical times (there are still about 85,000), and in the early 18th century they were allowed to settle in Meshed. In 1839, at a time of great tension in the area (wars against sites in Afghanistan, etc.) under Mohammad Shah, many Jews were massacred in this city and the survivors were forcibly converted--this was later reversed.
As I was walking along the dusty streets, thinking about looking
for a hotel,
I was approached by a hustler who asked me whether I
would be interested in buying tourqoise. The city was full of these
characters, after one of the popular guide-books reported that stones
bought here could be sold for two or three times their cost further on
in India. I was very sceptical of these claims, and said I wasn't
interested, but since he said he
had a car, and asked whether I needed any help, I explained that I had
to get a bus ticket for the Afghan border, to leave the following day as
soon as I had my visa. He took me to the bus station where we obtained
the ticket, then on a brief tour of the city and to his shop. I ended
up buying $20 dollars worth of tourqoise and agate, which I immediately
regretted, but well, you win some, you lose some...
The hustler (for want of a better word--I don't remember his name)
then found me a cheap hotel, in fact a bed in the courtyard, usually
reserved for the many pilgrims who come to Meshed. I could leave my
gear with the proprietor, though, which allowed me more freedom to
explore the city. Then the hustler took me to a hospital where I
enquired about selling blood, and was told to return the following
morning.
You only live once, and I didn't plan on being around here again, so
I decided to take a leaf from
Richard Burton's The courtyard was crowded
with thousands of pilgrims. Lots of beggars, hustlers,
tribesmen and nomads of all kinds.
There were several circular fountains and pilgrims were performing their ablutions in the water channels.
An amazing site. I wandered through the crowds trying to get closer to the entrance to the
shrine (that's the entrance in the picture on the left). I knew from my reading that inside the shrine building there was a door of silver, then a door of gold, then a carpet sewn with pearls.
Unfortunately a
chap approached me and said something in Farsi, and when I turned away
continued to shout after me. This attracted the attention of others,
who turned to look, and behind me I could hear more voices being raised.
Glancing behind, I could see several figures following me
through the crowd. I walked faster, dodging in and out of the crowd,
getting closer to the courtyard entrance. There were some stewards
standing
here, but I managed to get by them before my pursuers arrived, and was
outside the courtyard and heading for the main entrance by the time the
stewards were alerted to my presence and had a chance to come after me.
I didn't take any chances,
though, and, my heart thumping, stuck to lanes and backstreets after
emerging, constantly checking that I wasn't being followed.
The Mosque of Gawhar Shad (wife of Shah Rukh of Herat) and the golden dome surmounting the tomb of the Imam Reza
Still, I thought I should stay out of sight for a bit, so I went into
a tourqoise shop and told the owner I was interested in buying $200
worth of stones, but I would like to view his manufacturing process
first. He eyes lit up, of course, and he took me on an extended tour of
his premises, showing how the stone was cut, polished, set, and so on,
after which we had tea while I pretended to show interest in the stones
he was showing me, mounted on cardboard. After what I thought was a
safe length of time had elapsed, I told him I would return in
the morning to buy the stones, and headed back to the hotel.
The streets were filled with pilgrims from all parts of Iran and further afield. Very few wore Western dress, though one often saw a Western-style jacket worn incongruously with flowing robes. Headgear and turbans of many kinds. The women were in purdah, almost entirely concealed beneath the long, all-enveloping chador.
Richard was, I think, a student. He was heading for India, but was
really only interested in smoking hash, anywhere, at any time.
Wednesday 27
August, Meshed/Herat.
The road was through a flat plain, with blue snow-capped mountains on the horizon. At the Irani border post the
official closely examined my visa and commented with a wry laugh
that there were only 6 hours left before it expired--I had just made it!
There was quite a distance to the Afghan border post, and we had to take a bus, a rickety affair,
but when we finally rattled up to the border post it was closed for the day.
There wasn't much here, just the concrete office and a few mud huts. We had to spend the night in a rip-off hotel--55 Afghans each for a
shared room (I think at the time 100 Afghans was about one pound
sterling). We heard stories there of drug runners being summarily
executed and travellers whose documents were not in order being stuck
between the two border posts for months. I met a couple of French people
in this situation--can't remember exactly which border it was at. There
was one girl and two boys, 19 or 20 years old, who had no passports, only their
carte identité, but they had managed to get past Turkey before some
country refused them, and the one they had just come out of wouldn't let
them back in, so they were stuck in no man's land and had been there for
3 weeks when I spoke to them. I felt sorry for them, but on the other hand
wondered how anyone could be so thick as to try to get to India overland without
a passport!
Thursday 28
August, Meshed/Herat.
The customs formalities at the Afghan border post took about 2 hours.
We were all set to leave in a minibus when an official asked us about
the health check. We had to go to a doctor, and since Paul and Heather
hadn't got cholera vaccinations had to let the bus go. When we returned to the road we found there was no
other transport leaving that day. We tried asking for lifts. An American woman taking a bus through to
Nepal was looking for 125 Afghan for a seat, which we thought
exorbitant (the seats were empty anyway). We started bargaining with a
taxi driver and eventually took him down from 1200 to 350 Afghans for
five
of us to Herat, so it wasn't too bad. We had a lovely drive into Herat
and checked in at the Mohmand Hotel.
Risk is the salt and sugar of life.
Freya Stark
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What was the situation in Iran? It was a police-state, a U.S. colony, was the general impression. The Shah had spies everywhere and if you were unlucky enough to be caught you might end up a victim of SAVAK, the secret police, renowned for torturing their prisoners to death. A few years previously, when preparations for the commemoration of 2,500 years of the Persian Empire were in full swing, a group of armed men attacked a gendarmerie post in the village of Siahkal on the shores of the Caspian, initiating an "armed struggle" that had been simmering since the 60's. Some of these insurgents had been trained by Al Fatah in Jordan. SAVAK in turn was being trained by the CIA, while thousands of U.S. personnel were stationed in the country.
;)
On the Irani side of the border
there were signs everywhere warning of
the consquences of drug smuggling, as well as descriptions and photos of
previous drug busts. The police and customs officials
were strict to surly, but I had become accustomed to
this behaviour from border officials. There appeared to be more armed
guards than usual on this border. As we crossed the
border on foot, rather than by car, the formalities did not take too long. I was anxious that I could be stopped or held up here, but my visa was checked and found to be OK, I received the stamp on my passport without any questions, and we passed through the customs into Iran--I was in Persia! The country of 636,000 square miles is three times the size of France.
;)
;)
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;)
After much walking around and arguing with the bus people, becoming
increasingly frustrated with each passing minute (we weren't in the best
of humours ourselves, after our night-long trip) we decided to try plan B,
and took a bus to the train station. I was expecting similar problems here, but surprisingly enough the two Swedes immediately got
tickets to where they were going. Mine took a little longer, but I
eventually got a third-class ticket for Meshed. Thankfully, the train left at 7:00 PM
and I actually had a seat in a very European-looking carriage containing six seats.
I slept fitfully most of the way.
;)
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