Kitten Titties 2012

It was rather complicated to leave Yazd as by mistake Miha took one of David's sandals (they look exactly the same) so we couldn't leave in time as by the time we realized the mistake Miha was already out somewhere, sightseeing :)

So we waited for him, we laughed at each other and we said goodbye to all the backpackers and hoped to reach Kerman by evening. Kerman lies close to the Pakistani border already, so this was our last planned stop in Iran. We started hurrying up a little because the heat started getting really unbearable under the scarf, having long sleeves etc. (being dressed from head-to-toe). But in the end we turned out to stay for longer than we expected..

huh...Kerman. Or host(ess), Atefe is an English teacher and also a tourist guide as her second job. She has a wonderful little daughter who spiced up our two days we spent there with car-top dancing and some hide-and-seek!

Atefe completely rearranged her day for us, she organized a car and arranged a substitute teacher for her evening English class, just to be able to take us to the nearby desert, the Kaluts. It lies 150 kms from Kerman, but still considered to be "near Kerman". Big country, compared to Hungary.

OK, de gave money for the petrol, turned on some music of Celine Dion and hit the road. Which means getting out of the heat of Kerman up to the moderate-tempered mountains and from there down to the burning heat of the desert. We tried to go at a reasonable time not to get cooked, have a picnic in the sunset but this still proved unbearable for me. David enjoyed it as he just gave me his stuff and told me "be back in a minute" and started running in the endless desert! :)

As soon as you arrive to this place a nice billboard welcomes you to the hottest desert of Earth. According to measurements the temperature can reach 65 degrees Celsius (which is right), if you go out around noon in the summer. No, I wouldn't advise that even to my family. It's a fact that when we went there again the next day early afternoon, we measured 51 degrees in the shade (!). Oh, yes, why we went back there. It happened so that we were just walking around among the sand dunes on our first night in Kerman, and we glanced a 4WD in a distance and some random people in the middle of nowhere. They were making a movie. The producer came to us and started asking questions. They just finished their dusk-time shot at that time. The title of the movie is Tourist (coming to the Iranian theatres in November!), and it's about the friendship of an Iranian and a German boy, how they start quarreling and make peace again in the end. It's not as bad a storyline as I supposed in the beginning. Iran is a closed country with few tourists, so they needed some foreigner-looking people really hard. We could completely fulfill that criteria. So the producer and the director asked us to come back to the shooting the next day to take part in some scene with a bunch of other tourists. As it turned out they also got other 3-4 tourists besides us, so we pitied them and we agreed. And of course this whole thing was pretty cool :)

BUT. It turned out that the following scene will also be filmed in the desert in the daytime. Ouch.

We talked through everything with Atefe, as being her guests it's rude to just get away when getting a better offer. But she understood and she helped us by translating between us and the crew. So we went back home as we came (but first we danced some in the night), packed our stuff and waited for the VIP car which took us to the village back in the mountains, where the crew stayed. They gave us a late night dinner and we sang and showed us some local Iranian dances. They insisted on us singing some Hungarian song so we sang "Boci boci tarka", a very basic children's song :) They liked it a lot! We had an excellent time and maybe this was the first time in Iran when we felt that the hand of all the strict rules and laws of politics cannot reach us. We spent our second-to-last day in Iran in the company of loose, proud Iranian men.

In return for our cooperation we got a free bus ticket to the Pakistani border, along with some water and food. The next morning everyone was wide awake, eating some original Iranian breakfast on a long "table" (plastic sheet) stretched on the floor. Then we hopped on the bus and started working!

We drank the cold water all day, I never had so much water like that day. It was more than 5 liters for sure. We had to act in crowds in two scenes, one of them in an abandoned caravanserai, and the other out in the deep desert at the place where we met them in the previous night. Both times they made us wear disgusting clothes, I don't understand why they have this images of foreigners (I hope it was just the normal exaggregation used in movies). And then came the truck packed with camels, needed for the second scene. I was very happy at first, but only until seeing that people kicking down those unfortunate tied-up animals from the truck. For instance, David's camel got wild, tearing off the rope attached to his nose, started weeping and fluttering with his bloody nose when they started recording. And my camel's mouth was a bit dirty because it had eaten his own excrement and he even smudged it to David's t-shirt. many times!... :) I've never seen David so pissed like that :) Okay, I understand that. But it was funny :)

Menwhile the sun came up, went down, made us degrees and comfortably hot air... an experience. Try it for yourself!

Go ------->Pakistan-->---->

Leaving Shiraz behind us we came to Yazd by an 8-hour trip on a night bus. Yazd is one of the few cities of Iran which is a must-see, so our Slovenian friends Miha and Mirt also came along. At around 3AM we woke up for Iranian soldiers poking us softly and asking everyone to leave the bus. We were quite confused for a moment but then a local guy translated for us: they were searching for drugs. We got off the bus, removed all our bags too, standing at attention and hoping they won't start f*cking around with us. A trained dog figured out that we were all clean, but then they found a bag not belonging to any of us, so they took it away really quick and professionally standing around it they threw its contents to the ground piece by piece. This procedure took them about a half hour... then back to the bus. In the morning we headed to the place of our CouchSurfing friend Balal (26). How just put us to bed and left to work. We slept till late. We arranged with our Slovenian friends to meet up later and get lost in the narrow alleys of the old city together. The color of Yazd is sand. There is sand everywhere, the air, the buildings, the streets. Positive impression: it was not full of garbage everywhere, only a few used tires here and there, and a fridge :)

If the end our Slovenian friends were also invited to Balal's place as they stayed in the same hotel where Balal works. It happened in this hotel that David ate camel, as you could see the gallery before. In the background of the pictures in the gallery, you can see some foreigner backpackers in the garden. We made friends with almost every one of them in the previous cities, which also shows that everyone "wanders" the same way, some faster, some slower. Back to the story: we had dinner and shared our music, and stuff... :) For Balal's request I painted stuff on his walls, muhahahaa :) What do you think this is?

The next day we headed to Kerman in the awful heat, not staying long is Yazd, as we felt we saw everything interesting.

Everyone told us Shiraz is such an awesome place because some very famous Iranian poet was born here... ??? I never get that. I mean why does it make a city most interesting that a dead poet was born there. Eh, whatever.

Shiraz is an interesting city, a bit dirty though, 1.5 million people and as everywhere in Iran, very few tourists. But lots of heat, a nice main square where people hang out in the evenings (we even saw some festival-like thing), friendly people (as everywhere in Iran) and tasty shakes:

The old town is very interesting, lots of small alleys, although for me it's a but annoying that when I just start walking in some direction in an Iranian old town towards some square or something I want to reach, it sometimes proves impossible to do because at the end of a long-long system of alleys going to the right way without any forks, there is suddenly just a dead-end. Of course this can be considered as a beauty of these old towns but it still annoys me. It reminded me of Cologne (Köln), Germany, for it's the complete opposite. About 10 years ago, at the first time I wandered around in Germany by myself I spent a week or two in Köln, and when walking around in the city, the term "user-friendly" kept coming to my mind constantly when considering the city plan. Because let it be the smallest alley starting from someplace heading towards a river or something, you can bet that in the end it will be designed in such a way that it's not a dead-end but you have some stairs leading to a bridge or a passage to some logical direction. Because it was designed and built so. Our country, Hungary is somewhere between these two but still much closer to Germany in this aspect. Well, Shiraz is different. But it turn they have a nice fort:

The big attraction of Shiraz is the nearby (~50 km) Persepolis, which is basically some old ruins. Well, we took a bus and taxi one morning to get out there, and I would say it was exciting, but honestly, for me, an ignorant bastard, these were just some big stones. I couldn't even make good pictures, nothing. Just the heat and the stones. I hope Judit will write an article about it [UPDATE: She didn't.], because she is much more educated than myself so she enjoyed it a lot. Look at her, she even put on her favorite sweater at noon:

I decided we are not trolling enough on the blog so I'll put my picture which we also made in Persepolis:

Other thing we loved in Shiraz was our hotel. It was so awesome it could even be photographed. Or at least we couldn't make a single worthy picture of it. Neither do I remember its name at the moment but anyone going to Iran drop me an email (veszelovszki@gmail.com) so I'll find it for you some way for sure, because this place is a must. Clean, nicely designed rooms, optimal temperature all day, good company, what else do you need?

Once again about the Iranian copyright law, or actually the lack absence of it. You can buy one of this beds for your kid in Iran, look:

And for anyone wanting to see some camel licking:

Basically, the story was that our friend Jimmi donated us some money and in turn he wanted us to lick a camel :) So we took some camels, made a stew out of them to sterilize them and licked the pieces emotionally.

As a matter of fact we already put some pictures of Isfahan, but we still want to add a couple of words about the city.

Isfahan is a city with a population of 1.5 million, laying at the middle of Iran at 1500 meters above sea level which makes its climate bearable despite its being so south. All Iranians told us (even the ones we met in Turkey) that we have to come to Isfahan because it's a very cool place. If we consider it we were not disappointed at all): Isfahan was our favorite city in Iran.

If you zoom on the map of the city, it seems as it had a decent sized river just like the Seine in London for example. Well, the reality is far from it:

The sight reminded me of Valencia, Spain, with the slight difference that in Valencia they dried their river intentionally, to prevent floods and to make a big park in its place. Well here it's just dried out, some grass grows here and there but it's mostly just sand with a few people wandering around in the river bed and that's about it.

Another picture:

The bridges are very beautiful though, and the city has a simple city plan, easy to find your way (in the 3 days we spent there we could easily get around in the central area), quite clean and people are cool. And we met the most foreigners here, we even saw more than 10 simultaneously! :)

Street food, as everywhere in Iran, was awful, but we still found some interesting things, such as the triangular stuff filled with spicy mashed potato or something called "samosa":

Then we met this guy in the Internet café who was sitting by me and started asking where we were from and the usual, inviting us over after a short talk. He said he was supposed to work but he can get the afternoon free and go to his place for lunch. We agreed quite quickly as he seemed a nice guy so we spent the afternoon together. He lives in a very nice flat with a surprisingly big living room with his mother, his younger sister and some other people of which it wasn't clear for me who lives there and who doesn't, and he also brought over his bride and a few other relatives, so we ended up pretty many pretty fast:

They prepared lots of delicious food, including that "very traditional Iranian" strange green stuff that killed our stomachs the other time, so we skipped that one, apologizing heavily.

After leaving the family we met the bunch of people we already mentioned in the gallery of our friend Miha, hung out together the whole evening, and then we left with the guys to Shiraz.

We went to Tehran with the poshest bus possible, of which I didn't make any good photos because I suck, but in turn I can tell you about it: it was a beautiful bus with leather-covered seats, with 2+1 seats each row (so about 25% more space for each seat than a normal 2+2 seater), unlimited cold bottled water (by the way this comes on every Iranian buses for free), a nice long Persian carpet in the quite wide aisle, an attendant and all that.

When we got to Tehran and got rid of all the taxi drivers who attacked us (as always), we soon realized that those nice Iranian traffic-planners somehow managed to place the stations of the new subway they just built in such a clever way that the closest station to the big bus station is a 30 minutes' walk away from there. Wtf? I'm not an agriculture expert and stuff so I'm not saying it was they mistake, for sure they got a reason for not being able to place the metro line closer, but still it's rather inconvenient.

The other bad thing was that the time we got to Tehran it was 5AM, and the metro started commuting at 6. But no worries, we waited a half hour and took the metro to the area with many cheap hostels, according to Lonely Planet. We didn't find the hostel we wanted, but we found one with a guy and a suitcase standing in front of it. I asked him in English what's up, but I instantly heard from his accent that he's Hungarian. He's called András, studies Persian at a university in Budapest, and it was pretty random meeting him :)

We hung out together with him for a day and a half, he showed us a couple of cool places because he'd been in Tehran formerly. We drank a lot of fresh juice, we checked out the bazaars and the such.

Judit in the bazaar:

Judit started feeling bad at the stomach once again, and I wasn't completely fine either, but by the end of the first day we kind of recuperated.

We went to a museum which was nothing special so I didn't put a picture of it even. We met a couple French, Czech and German people, it seems to us that only these nations travel, as everyone was just staring at us when we told them we were from Hungary ("Macaristan"), "Wherz that, Africa?".

Anyway, what else we saw in Tehran. Women in scarves staring at the modern clothes in the slops and slobbering:

And canals. Lots of canals. There are canals everywhere in Tehran, they are on the surface, and there is a lot of water flowing in them, a lot of it. On one hand, this is a good thing, as they function as dumpsters. There are hardly and trash bins in Iran, so people just throw away their garbage. But in Tehran there are these canals where the water flows so people throw their garbage in these, and the water carries it somewhere, where I think it gets cleaned, or not. Oh, and the water also cools the city and waters the plants/trees. We saw a huge pipe at a hillside at a quite high point, and from that came all the water, flowing through all the city (because the city itself has a slight slope all under it). It's very strange but if half of the reasons I made up are true then it may even be a good idea.

I made a short video about it if anyone is really interested.

The annoying thing is that although it's true that we're always in search for cheap hostels because we're on a tight budget, and of course these cheap places are never at the most elite places of the town but it was the second time for us to live in a place where they were selling only tractor tires all around. More precisely, in Tabriz we managed to settle down right in the middle of a hardware store: in our street all you could find were shops selling extension cables, phone exchange systems, light bulbs, car alarm systems, public light fixtures (!), water pumps, welding kits and stuff like that. And our hostel. While in Tehran our street was rather a car shop, selling mostly car parts and tires. Lonely Planet even wrote:" In Tehran it's very easy to find food as in any street there are at least 2-3 kebabis. Except the area of Amir Kabir because there are none." Well, Amir Kabir was our street. The first morning we walked around for more than 30 minutes to finally find some breakfast not made of rubber.

The biggest tire in our street:

We took the bus from Maku together with Pepe and Laos. This is the view from the back of a cheap Iranian bus:

Tabriz is a city with a population of 1.4 million, with a weather cooler than other parts of Iran. No subway, only buses and taxis. We stayed 4 days and we loved it a lot.

First day we chilled with the Czech guys, discovered the downtown part, the bazaar, had tea with the locals in a café where Judit was the only girl among ~100 guys :) And we had a shisha (waterpipe). Fun fact: 2 days after Judit smoked the shisha with us here, the government forbade smoking shisha for women in whole Iran. Coincidence? :)

Second day we went to Kandovan, which is something like Cappadocia in Turkey, an underground village carved in rocks. The difference is that here the rock-houses are still inhabited. Most people live of tourism, selling traditional stuff etc. Very interesting place but too hot.

A surprising thing happened in Kandovan: the four of us (with the Czech guys) were sitting at a "table" (not really a table as Iranians eat on the floor) of an open restaurant, when a group of Iranian girls appeared who were quite open compared to the norm in Iran (women must not communicate with men etc.), asking stuff, smiling at us, taking photos with us... All the people sitting around us were staring (anyway, everyone stares at us by default, because there are hardly any tourists in Iran), it was hard to figure what to think of the situation. Of course it was a plasure for us guys to have nice girls making moves on us but at the same time we were the main characters of some very immoral right in the middle of the restaurant. Anyway, photo:

The third day the Czech guys left and we lived a hedonist life, we slept and ate a lot. In the evening we went to park El-goli which is a main gathering point for the locals at the outskirts of the city. The main thing about it is being a nice dark romantic place away from attention so people can hide from the strict Iranian laws, men can meet women, families can gather etc. Also there is a fun park with an entrance fee of about $0.50. We rode a rollercoaster and the big wheel. It was the first time for both of us on a big wheel, it was fun :)

Then it was late night, we walked around in the park. Lots of families having picnic in the park waved to us, we even sat down with a family:

Unfortunately they didn't speak a word in English so we only stayed like 10 minutes because we ran out of subjects, but their hospitality made as feel very good.

After some more walking in the park we sat down in a dark place to have some sunflower seeds and a little break from all the people coming to us. After a while all the staring and hello-hellos are a bit annoying.

We failed. Aida found us in the dark, a 22 year old, very nice, married girl, who was just taking a walk with her family (parents+sister) in the park. She spoke quite a good English, had lots of questions about stuff, we liked her a lot. We asked them if they knew how to get back downtown at this late our if not by a cab, which is too expensive. They told us not to be afraid, put us in their car and took us home to the hotel :) We arranged to meet Aida and her sister Ailar (20) the next day to show us around and stuff.

And so it happened. The girls were über-cool, they drove us around the whole day, we visited El-goli park again in sunlight, had breakfast there, rode bicycles, played volleyball etc :)

In the afternoon they took us home for lunch, we had some great meal which made us sick and had diarrhea and vomited and I got fever and we couldn't go to Tehran even though we had the tickets already which was really tasty, even though it contained something new for our stomachs so we had to lean on the hospitality of Aida and her family for the night and till the next evening when my fever went down and we could leave to Tehran. Apart from this inconvenient episode we had a very happy time in Tabriz, for which we are very thankful to Aida and her family for inviting us over and also for telling us so much about politics, situation of women etc., which we'll write about in a different article. If they wouldn't have found us we couldn't see half of Tabriz :) So thanks Aida, Ailar, mama and papa :)

This is how sugar cubes are in Iran:

Although we're a bit behind schedule and still writing about Iran these days, let us report a little good news from India! We just got a reply:

Which means that we can attend the "concentrational" camp we wanted to. Yippieh! :)

This is a very interesting (and hard!) stuff, see a short description here: www.dhamma.org/en/application.shtml

In short, this thing is about being 10 days in a place at the feet of the Himalayas, meditating 10 hours a day, not communicating with anyone besides our teacher (not even with one another with Judit, as we'll be separated), and not eating any solid food after noon. We get up at 4 and go to bed at 9:30. :)

Oh, and we figured out our route in India and updated our map accordingly. It's worth a glance.

So, as we mentioned, Judit put on her muslim-compatible clothes (scarf and stuff, not to catch a cold) and goto Iran.

The crossing didn't take long, it was an hour, maximum. Meanwhile, we changed a bunch of money, because Iran is a financially closed country. This means that it's not possible to pay or with a foreign credit card or get money from an ATM. It's possible and allowed to change, but if you run out of your money it's not possible to get more. No Western Union either. When PayPal (an online quasi-bank) noticed I reside in Iran they blocked my account and they sent me an email that they'd only re-activate it when I left the country and I can prove it too. And all this in their terms®ulations stuff or what.

Anyway, back to the flow of events: At the border we had some trouble with the taxis. At the first time they wanted to cheat us (asking for $15 (USD) to the close town Maku), but after realizing we're not absolutely stupid they gave us the normal ($2) price. But as I was still unfamiliar with the Iranian currency so I could calculate quite slowly, I decided this was still too much and we rather walked down from the border to the closest village to catch a bus from there or something. Well, this turned out to be a 2km walk and in the last few hundred meters it started raining too, so in the end we paid the same money ($2) for a cab to take us to Maku, where there are hotels and restaurants so we could stay there for the night. It turned out that that $2 was nothing for the 15km ride.

We spent the night in Maku, we made friends with two guys from Czech Republic - Laos and Pepe - and we discovered Iranian ice cream which is really tasty and cause no diarrhea. And the juices which are all over Iran, made of fresh fruits and they are awesome :) We happily drank the first one:

Not daring to take responsibility for our own pictures we hide behind the back of our friends and so publish the stuff we've seen in central Iran. Meet Miha and Mirt, two great Slovenian guys, both around 22, travelling similar to us. We met in central Iran, which was pretty obvious as in the whole city of 1.5 million people there were like 20 foreign tourists.

Miha has made lots of bad, boring and irrelevant pictures, but we managed to go through them and found 53 pictures which at least make some sense. Well, we'd like to share these with you right here. This gallery tries to show the 4-5 days we spent together, and of course the highlights of Iran :) Enjoy :)

Happyness and joy: The gallery is commented in English and Hungarian.