shreyascashyap BHPian



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Life in Iran



A little geography recap for all of us who spent the better part of school half asleep in the last bench, dreaming of the two rupee samosas from the shop across the road to getting home before the cartoons started on DD Metro!

Iran is the second biggest middle-eastern country and has Afghanistan, Turkey, Russia, Armenia, Iraq among others as its major neighbours. The northern and western parts are predominantly mountainous areas, with high plateaus between the ranges and heavy forests. The central and southern parts are mostly flat, with arid salt deserts and plains. Temperatures get to well below freezing up north during the winters, coupled with heavy snowfall and the summers down south are blistering hot, with the temperatures easily crossing 50 degrees C.



The first thing you notice when you walk out of the airport is how clean everything is! The roads are well maintained and there is no litter anywhere. Any building under construction is properly walled off so it's not an eyesore. Right from huge metro cities like Tehran to remote, little towns like Kangan with barely a few thousand people living in it, the same level of cleanliness is maintained. The inherent desire to maintain cleanliness is deeply ingrained into everyone.





A random street in Tehran



The next thing that strikes you is the greenery around. There is a garden or a park every few streets and it's quite common to see children playing around, couples sitting on benches hand in hand, fitness conscious people taking a brisk walk around. Every decent sized park also has facilities like foosball tables, basketball courts, mechanical gym equipment and other such items scattered everywhere. You never have to buy a gym membership here!







The park adjacent to my hotel



There are innumerable museums and art galleries scattered all over the city. Regular exhibitions and events are held at these places. You'll need a month just go around the city of Tehran alone!





Art and handicrafts are visible in every item you come across. They do some amazing works with cotton, wool and ceramic. Tea sets, decorative pieces and jewellery boxes are the quick moving items.





The famous Persian carpets are staggeringly expensive! I walked in to one of the shops like a boss and asked around for the prices. An average carpet for an average Indian living room would be upwards of $6000!!!! I said "Thank you, have a nice day" and quietly walked out of there haha.



The effects of international sanctions can be seen when it comes to their transportation facilities. In-spite of having an amazing road network where you can easily maintain 120kmph average speeds all day long, without having to worry about a single pothole or blind corner, the cars they have paint a grim picture. The aeroplanes even more so. In fact, Iran has one of the oldest average age for their aeroplane fleet, with the age being well over 25 years. The first time I walked into one of those notoriously dangerous planes, the layout inside was to atypical compared to modern planes of today that I was like "Woah! Where did I just walk into?!" The central aisle dropping down to the tarmac to form stairs at the rear to exit the plane just like a military aircraft, lockers and alcoves as soon as you enter before the seating area starts and my personal favourite of them all - seat covers you rip apart to use as life jackets! lol



You will be hard pressed to find any modern European or American car due to the insane 200-300% tax on imported cars. There are just a handful of cars you get to see around. Ancient Peageuts, Hyundai and Toyotas (most Asian countries didn't impose sanctions, so it's possible to find latest products from Asian countries like Samsung or Asus or LG or Kia etc. However, any american/european item has to be carried in by someone or got off the black market) are the "foreign" brands you can see. The market is dominated by 2 homegrown manufacturers - Saipa and Icko, who basically manufacture stuff that looks like a straight rip off from the 90s. One curious fact - over 90% of the vehicles you can see on the road are either white or grey/silver for reasons I cannot explain! It surely makes for dull viewing on the roads.

Before you ask, yes, they follow traffic rules strictly and no, they don't honk unnecessarily. Two wheelers seem to move around with more impunity than the bigger vehicles, but general thumb rule - over 95% of the vehicles strictly adhere to all rules.



Iranians can give Indians a run for their money when it comes to consuming sweets. The sheer variety of sweets and savouries you can get are mind boggling to say the least! Their food is very bland. The blandest Indian dish is enough to get them crying their eyes out! They seem to be absolutely terrified of spicy food haha. They mainly eat plain white rice or saffron rice with a whole variety of kebabs.



KFC, Burger King, Mcdonalds, Dominos, Pizza Hut and every other chain is conspicuously absent but they seem to have made their own versions to compensate for it! The most favourite snack would be falafel stuffed into buns with a bit of veggies thrown in to make their version of a burger!





The questions I get asked the most are basically comparisons of Iran to the rest of the middle eastern countries. It honestly is much better off than places like Saudi Arabia. Women are allowed to work, drive, vote etc and have equal rights as men. The burqa is not compulsory and women are obligated to wear a headscarf when outdoors. Alcohol and drugs are illegal, however both are fairly easy to get hold of. Smoking is highly prevalent and hookahs are very common. Infrastructure is easily 2 decades ahead of India when it comes to roads and metro and ports. One area where they are lagging A LOT is internet and communication systems. I'm guessing the government didn't want to waste money on expensive monitoring systems to block porn and other content, so they decided to take the easy way out and decided not to provide internet facilities at all lol. 512kpbs is blistering fast and even that is available only in the big cities. Most places are yet to get 3G and you'll have to manage with GPRS only.



People are extremely friendly, soft-spoken and well mannered. In over 14 months, I was unable to find a single person yelling or shouting - at work or on the streets or anywhere for that matter!

For all the hype we do here in India about treating guests well and "Athithi Devo Bhava" the guest is god-like, we don't really follow it as diligently as Iranians do!! The number of experiences I've had over the months where the sheer generosity of spirit and helpful nature of common folk have humbled and enriched me beyond belief.

Lemme give an example - I was at work in the city of Asaloyeh and I had to go back to Tehran and then catch a flight back to India to get my visa renewed. Since the flight schedule was not too tight, I had a day to spend and sight-see in and around Tehran. I asked around to see if anyone was from Tehran so they could tell me about the places which I could cover in a day. I was directed to a girl who was from there (I didn't even know her name at that point) and I asked her about tourist-y places to check out. She whips out her phone, calls up her someone and tells him that an Indian guy she's working with will be in Tehran for a day and he should show me around. She gives me a huge smile and says "Everything is taken care of. My friend will help you". I went to Tehran and checked in to my hotel. Shortly afterwards, a car pulls up outside my hotel. The person who she had called was actually her classmate from like 5 years ago in college. And he had dutifully turned up, (without knowing anything at all about me) to show me around. To top that off, since he was not too fluent in English, he had brought his friend along to act as translator!



With Omid and Reza. They took me around everywhere in their car, haggled with the shopkeepers in Parsi to ensure I got the best rates, took me out for dinner, sight-seeing and absolutely refused to let me pay a single Rial at any point.



However, there are unspoken rules of conduct when it comes to interacting with the locals. One day, I was at work and a girl comes up to me with a box of sweets in hand. She was distributing it to everyone and said it was her birthday. So I took a piece of the sweet and held out my hand to wish her a happy birthday and the entire office was staring at us!! Poor girl!She was so mortified, as if I had just asked her to meet me behind the parking lot for a quickie lol. Inspite of working together with men, the women are generally shy, reserved and avoid all forms of contact - physical or otherwise unless absolutely necessary. The upshot of this is that even though they are formal and maintain appropriate distance, at the end of the day, hormones are hormones lol and you have this entire demography of single,horny men who are unable to do anything about it! They seem to find all stories about physical intimacy between couples something awesome and I've lost count of the number of times I've had people I just met 2 minutes ago come up to me and ask if it was possible to have sex in India before marriage!! lol



Two places of note that I loved visiting were the Milad Tower - 6th tallest communication tower/17th tallest free standing building in the world and the Tajrish Bazaar -a sprawling open air bazaar which is very Arabian Nights-esque.







The winds were to strong that it was buffeting me around like a rag doll. It's a 435m tall tower and the view from up top is a sight to behold!





Irani chai. Enough said.





This market is so huge you can easily get lost here. It makes Chandni Chowk look like the neighbourhood kirana store! If you are unable to find an item here, chances are you won't get it anywhere else in the country either. From clothes to fresh fruits and vegetables to meat to jewellery to kitchen utensils,everything under the sun can be purchased here.



Some more photos from my time there:











The culture of the Persian civilization is best represented by these photos above. Artwork and murals are extremely common, adorning walls inside buildings, compound walls along the road, entire side faces of buildings. While not quite as colourful as what you would expect in India, it is more classy with 3-4 major colours used, if not outright monochrome. Paintings adorn the walls of every office/house/hotel I've been to.









Driving through central Tehran gives you the feeling of going through Cubbon park in Bangalore! The sheer amount of greenery I've seen is truly very difficult to put in words.

Every major road is lined with trees. Every big roundabout has a well maintained lawn with sculptures, fountains, statues and artwork installed.





While the dream of almost every average Irani citizen I've met has been to settle in lands of opportunity (as per them) like USA and Canada ; the government thinks otherwise. Anti-west sentiments run high due to continued sanctions from over 3 decades and basic essentials like medicines are out of reach of common folk. Iran has a thriving industrial scene because everything from paper and pens to engines to cars to medicines - they had to manufacture themselves because it was impossible to import because of total embargo. It may be a cheap copy of a popular oversees product (the quality is definitely much better than the Chinese maal that flood markets worldwide) but it gets the job done and that's how they've been surviving for so long most people don't know a different way of life.

Now that the sanctions have been lifted and the economy is opening up to international brands, it would be interesting to see how life changes there.



PS: I got to experience a little slice of history because my hotel where I stayed in Tehran was part of the complex that housed the old US Embassy - the scene for the bloody revolution that's been shown in the movie Argo! This photo above was taken at the gate of the US Embassy.



Note to mods - Please remove this if it an improper photo for the discussion. It is not my intent to promote any communal feelings or start political debates. I am just reporting things as I saw them.





Just when you start feeling awkward about all the cars and buses following lane discipline and all traffic rules, you come across sights like these that redeem your faith in humanity! Two wheelers are a menace on the streets but they are thankfully very few in number.



Interesting fact - The two wheeler market is dominated by Bajaj and TVS. Pulsars and Apaches are the most common vehicles you'll see there. Honda and Suzuki are present, but they still sell age old products like the CD100 and other relics from the late 80s to 90s. A pulsar 220 is equivalent to a superbike there to people starved of automotive technology and it's actually illegal to own a bike that displaces more than 250cc!! Similar rule doesn't apply to cars though, so the filthy rich flaunt their Ferraris and Bentleys with abandon lol.







The first picture is a traditional Irani breakfast. It's their take on the arabic khaboos ( it's a type of roti, made either of wheat or maida but insanely dry and tough) and they have it with either cream cheese or more commonly feta cheese (goat's milk cheese) and some milk and honey. Salad of fresh cucumber and tomato with some walnuts are always a part of the meal.

Bread for them is either the flat roti pictured above or buns or at the rare places a baguette. The concept of rectangular sliced loaf of bread you get everywhere else in the world is mostly absent there.

The next is one of their style of making beef biryani.







Just as chess originated in India, Iran is home to the game backgammon. It's their national pastime and you find people playing it everywhere. I managed to get my hands on this exquisite hand crafted wooden beauty due to the generosity of this Irani gentleman I worked with(no surprises there anymore) who went out of his way to go personally to the small town where these are handmade and got one from a factory directly. Had I brought this off the shelf in a store in Tehran I would have paid 300% more. It's loosely similar to the game of pagade (which Shakuni beat Yudhistara in the book of Mahabharatha)





They have a very good planetarium right in the middle of this huge park called 'fire and water park'. It truly is one of the most spectacular parks I've ever seen in my life. Just google for images and be spellbound. I visited it at almost 1.30am so was not able to take good pictures. There is no entry/exit timings fixed and it's quite common to see people strolling along well past midnight, soaking in the fresh air and serenity.



Multi level car parks are scattered all over so you have a good chunk of cars removed off the streets. A little geography recap for all of us who spent the better part of school half asleep in the last bench, dreaming of the two rupee samosas from the shop across the road to getting home before the cartoons started on DD Metro!Iran is the second biggest middle-eastern country and has Afghanistan, Turkey, Russia, Armenia, Iraq among others as its major neighbours. The northern and western parts are predominantly mountainous areas, with high plateaus between the ranges and heavy forests. The central and southern parts are mostly flat, with arid salt deserts and plains. Temperatures get to well below freezing up north during the winters, coupled with heavy snowfall and the summers down south are blistering hot, with the temperatures easily crossing 50 degrees C.The first thing you notice when you walk out of the airport is how clean everything is! The roads are well maintained and there is no litter anywhere. Any building under construction is properly walled off so it's not an eyesore. Right from huge metro cities like Tehran to remote, little towns like Kangan with barely a few thousand people living in it, the same level of cleanliness is maintained. The inherent desire to maintain cleanliness is deeply ingrained into everyone.A random street in TehranThe next thing that strikes you is the greenery around. There is a garden or a park every few streets and it's quite common to see children playing around, couples sitting on benches hand in hand, fitness conscious people taking a brisk walk around. Every decent sized park also has facilities like foosball tables, basketball courts, mechanical gym equipment and other such items scattered everywhere. You never have to buy a gym membership here!The park adjacent to my hotelThere are innumerable museums and art galleries scattered all over the city. Regular exhibitions and events are held at these places. You'll need a month just go around the city of Tehran alone!Art and handicrafts are visible in every item you come across. They do some amazing works with cotton, wool and ceramic. Tea sets, decorative pieces and jewellery boxes are the quick moving items.The famous Persian carpets are staggeringly expensive! I walked in to one of the shops like a boss and asked around for the prices. An average carpet for an average Indian living room would be upwards of $6000!!!! I said "Thank you, have a nice day" and quietly walked out of there haha.The effects of international sanctions can be seen when it comes to their transportation facilities. In-spite of having an amazing road network where you can easily maintain 120kmph average speeds all day long, without having to worry about a single pothole or blind corner, the cars they have paint a grim picture. The aeroplanes even more so. In fact, Iran has one of the oldest average age for their aeroplane fleet, with the age being well over 25 years. The first time I walked into one of those notoriously dangerous planes, the layout inside was to atypical compared to modern planes of today that I was like "Woah! Where did I just walk into?!" The central aisle dropping down to the tarmac to form stairs at the rear to exit the plane just like a military aircraft, lockers and alcoves as soon as you enter before the seating area starts and my personal favourite of them all - seat covers you rip apart to use as life jackets! lolYou will be hard pressed to find any modern European or American car due to the insane 200-300% tax on imported cars. There are just a handful of cars you get to see around. Ancient Peageuts, Hyundai and Toyotas (most Asian countries didn't impose sanctions, so it's possible to find latest products from Asian countries like Samsung or Asus or LG or Kia etc. However, any american/european item has to be carried in by someone or got off the black market) are the "foreign" brands you can see. The market is dominated by 2 homegrown manufacturers - Saipa and Icko, who basically manufacture stuff that looks like a straight rip off from the 90s. One curious fact - over 90% of the vehicles you can see on the road are either white or grey/silver for reasons I cannot explain! It surely makes for dull viewing on the roads.Before you ask, yes, they follow traffic rules strictly and no, they don't honk unnecessarily. Two wheelers seem to move around with more impunity than the bigger vehicles, but general thumb rule - over 95% of the vehicles strictly adhere to all rules.Iranians can give Indians a run for their money when it comes to consuming sweets. The sheer variety of sweets and savouries you can get are mind boggling to say the least! Their food is very bland. The blandest Indian dish is enough to get them crying their eyes out! They seem to be absolutely terrified of spicy food haha. They mainly eat plain white rice or saffron rice with a whole variety of kebabs.KFC, Burger King, Mcdonalds, Dominos, Pizza Hut and every other chain is conspicuously absent but they seem to have made their own versions to compensate for it! The most favourite snack would be falafel stuffed into buns with a bit of veggies thrown in to make their version of a burger!The questions I get asked the most are basically comparisons of Iran to the rest of the middle eastern countries. It honestly is much better off than places like Saudi Arabia. Women are allowed to work, drive, vote etc and have equal rights as men. The burqa is not compulsory and women are obligated to wear a headscarf when outdoors. Alcohol and drugs are illegal, however both are fairly easy to get hold of. Smoking is highly prevalent and hookahs are very common. Infrastructure is easily 2 decades ahead of India when it comes to roads and metro and ports. One area where they are lagging A LOT is internet and communication systems. I'm guessing the government didn't want to waste money on expensive monitoring systems to block porn and other content, so they decided to take the easy way out and decided not to provide internet facilities at all lol. 512kpbs is blistering fast and even that is available only in the big cities. Most places are yet to get 3G and you'll have to manage with GPRS only.People are extremely friendly, soft-spoken and well mannered. In over 14 months, I was unable to find a single person yelling or shouting - at work or on the streets or anywhere for that matter!For all the hype we do here in India about treating guests well and "Athithi Devo Bhava" the guest is god-like, we don't really follow it as diligently as Iranians do!! The number of experiences I've had over the months where the sheer generosity of spirit and helpful nature of common folk have humbled and enriched me beyond belief.Lemme give an example - I was at work in the city of Asaloyeh and I had to go back to Tehran and then catch a flight back to India to get my visa renewed. Since the flight schedule was not too tight, I had a day to spend and sight-see in and around Tehran. I asked around to see if anyone was from Tehran so they could tell me about the places which I could cover in a day. I was directed to a girl who was from there (I didn't even know her name at that point) and I asked her about tourist-y places to check out. She whips out her phone, calls up her someone and tells him that an Indian guy she's working with will be in Tehran for a day and he should show me around. She gives me a huge smile and says "Everything is taken care of. My friend will help you". I went to Tehran and checked in to my hotel. Shortly afterwards, a car pulls up outside my hotel. The person who she had called was actually her classmate from like 5 years ago in college. And he had dutifully turned up, (without knowing anything at all about me) to show me around. To top that off, since he was not too fluent in English, he had brought his friend along to act as translator!With Omid and Reza. They took me around everywhere in their car, haggled with the shopkeepers in Parsi to ensure I got the best rates, took me out for dinner, sight-seeing and absolutely refused to let me pay a single Rial at any point.However, there are unspoken rules of conduct when it comes to interacting with the locals. One day, I was at work and a girl comes up to me with a box of sweets in hand. She was distributing it to everyone and said it was her birthday. So I took a piece of the sweet and held out my hand to wish her a happy birthday and the entire office was staring at us!! Poor girl!She was so mortified, as if I had just asked her to meet me behind the parking lot for a quickie lol. Inspite of working together with men, the women are generally shy, reserved and avoid all forms of contact - physical or otherwise unless absolutely necessary. The upshot of this is that even though they are formal and maintain appropriate distance, at the end of the day, hormones are hormones lol and you have this entire demography of single,horny men who are unable to do anything about it! They seem to find all stories about physical intimacy between couples something awesome and I've lost count of the number of times I've had people I just met 2 minutes ago come up to me and ask if it was possible to have sex in India before marriage!! lolTwo places of note that I loved visiting were the Milad Tower - 6th tallest communication tower/17th tallest free standing building in the world and the Tajrish Bazaar -a sprawling open air bazaar which is very Arabian Nights-esque.The winds were to strong that it was buffeting me around like a rag doll. It's a 435m tall tower and the view from up top is a sight to behold!Irani chai. Enough said.This market is so huge you can easily get lost here. It makes Chandni Chowk look like the neighbourhood kirana store! If you are unable to find an item here, chances are you won't get it anywhere else in the country either. From clothes to fresh fruits and vegetables to meat to jewellery to kitchen utensils,everything under the sun can be purchased here.Some more photos from my time there:The culture of the Persian civilization is best represented by these photos above. Artwork and murals are extremely common, adorning walls inside buildings, compound walls along the road, entire side faces of buildings. While not quite as colourful as what you would expect in India, it is more classy with 3-4 major colours used, if not outright monochrome. Paintings adorn the walls of every office/house/hotel I've been to.Driving through central Tehran gives you the feeling of going through Cubbon park in Bangalore! The sheer amount of greenery I've seen is truly very difficult to put in words.Every major road is lined with trees. Every big roundabout has a well maintained lawn with sculptures, fountains, statues and artwork installed.While the dream of almost every average Irani citizen I've met has been to settle in lands of opportunity (as per them) like USA and Canada ; the government thinks otherwise. Anti-west sentiments run high due to continued sanctions from over 3 decades and basic essentials like medicines are out of reach of common folk. Iran has a thriving industrial scene because everything from paper and pens to engines to cars to medicines - they had to manufacture themselves because it was impossible to import because of total embargo. It may be a cheap copy of a popular oversees product (the quality is definitely much better than the Chinese maal that flood markets worldwide) but it gets the job done and that's how they've been surviving for so long most people don't know a different way of life.Now that the sanctions have been lifted and the economy is opening up to international brands, it would be interesting to see how life changes there.PS: I got to experience a little slice of history because my hotel where I stayed in Tehran was part of the complex that housed the old US Embassy - the scene for the bloody revolution that's been shown in the movie Argo! This photo above was taken at the gate of the US Embassy.Note to mods - Please remove this if it an improper photo for the discussion. It is not my intent to promote any communal feelings or start political debates. I am just reporting things as I saw them.Just when you start feeling awkward about all the cars and buses following lane discipline and all traffic rules, you come across sights like these that redeem your faith in humanity! Two wheelers are a menace on the streets but they are thankfully very few in number.Interesting fact - The two wheeler market is dominated by Bajaj and TVS. Pulsars and Apaches are the most common vehicles you'll see there. Honda and Suzuki are present, but they still sell age old products like the CD100 and other relics from the late 80s to 90s. A pulsar 220 is equivalent to a superbike there to people starved of automotive technology and it's actuallyto own a bike that displaces!! Similar rule doesn't apply to cars though, so the filthy rich flaunt their Ferraris and Bentleys with abandon lol.The first picture is a traditional Irani breakfast. It's their take on the arabic khaboos ( it's a type of roti, made either of wheat or maida but insanely dry and tough) and they have it with either cream cheese or more commonly feta cheese (goat's milk cheese) and some milk and honey. Salad of fresh cucumber and tomato with some walnuts are always a part of the meal.Bread for them is either the flat roti pictured above or buns or at the rare places a baguette. The concept of rectangular sliced loaf of bread you get everywhere else in the world is mostly absent there.The next is one of their style of making beef biryani.Just as chess originated in India, Iran is home to the game backgammon. It's their national pastime and you find people playing it everywhere. I managed to get my hands on this exquisite hand crafted wooden beauty due to the generosity of this Irani gentleman I worked with(no surprises there anymore) who went out of his way to go personally to the small town where these are handmade and got one from a factory directly. Had I brought this off the shelf in a store in Tehran I would have paid 300% more. It's loosely similar to the game of pagade (which Shakuni beat Yudhistara in the book of Mahabharatha)They have a very good planetarium right in the middle of this huge park called 'fire and water park'. It truly is one of the most spectacular parks I've ever seen in my life. Just google for images and be spellbound. I visited it at almost 1.30am so was not able to take good pictures. There is no entry/exit timings fixed and it's quite common to see people strolling along well past midnight, soaking in the fresh air and serenity.Multi level car parks are scattered all over so you have a good chunk of cars removed off the streets. Last edited by GTO : 28th January 2016 at 08:55 . Reason: As requested, adding the latest updates to the opening post. Thanks!