Into the Belly of the Beast

Eventually, we made it out of Tehran and took a bus south, to the small town of Kashan (کاشان), This town was apparently so beautiful, that Shah Abbas I (Abbas the Great) wanted to be buried here.

Well. It wasn't that beautiful. Most of the city seems to rubble. When you walk onto the small streets, there are just ruins of old buildings with graffiti on them. We walked onto the grounds of a mosque, and some old man tried to chat to us. Unfortunately we were mutually unintelligible. So he decided to walk around up and down and have us follow him. We made our escape.

Later that night, I drew a crowd at a juice shop. I have no idea why, or what they the hell were talkling about, but one of them seemed to like touching me, and it was all very funny (to them).

After a particularly dirty bed, we went to the part of town where which is apparently beautiful. The old buildings were actually very nice (one was so pimped out it deserved to be on MTV Cribs), but they seemed brand new, and in fact, one was being built while we were there, much to the dismay of the builders. The houses all had large, roomy courtyards, with ponds in the middle, and were deceptively big. And as usual, there was a lot of elaborate tiling and shiny mirror pieces.

Anyway, after the houses, we took a bus to Esfahan (اصفهان) the capital of the old Persian Empire (that was actually this morning). That was after a taxi ride to the bus station, where the taxi driver tried to dance whilst driving, and gave us a cucumber each. I guess it was a reward for putting up with his driving. Or dancing. Either way I got a cucumber.

Esfahan seems very tourist friendly, and has a massively different atmosphere to Tehran. Much mre relaxed and friendly. In th 5 or so hour that we have been here, already two Iranians have come up just to chat. One worked in a carpet shop and showed us around the incredible Imam Mosque (it is amazing, a massive complex covered in really elaborate tiles), he did lead us to his shop and we were shown some incredible Qom silk carpets, but the guy really wasn't pressing any sales (he seemed depressed), and the carpets were way out of our price range. The other was just a student who wanted to practice his english (which was actually pretty good), and we talked about everything from football to politics to university.