Food for Thought - Wednesday, February 24th

The coach pulled into Bander Abbas at 5:30am and it was a short taxi to the ferry terminal. Soon I was on the first boat of the day to Qeshm, the main city of Qeshm island.

Bander Abbas, incidentally, is one of the few places where a guidebook has ever explicitly said ‘just don’t bother’.

Our crossing was gifted with an extraordinary sunrise. The sun stained the misty morning clouds a deep crimson. The mill pond state of the Arabian Gulf mirrored the bleeding sky and for 10 minutes the Western horizon was ablaze. It looked like Armageddon.

I was meant to be meeting my new Couch Surfing (CS) friend Omid.
In a town called Dargahan, 30 minutes west of Qeshm.

Shiva had informed me that Couch Surfing was now banned in Iran. I had assumed it was the government trying to exert greater control but it turns out that hoteliers had lobbied for proclamations against it. The website itself is working fine so I shall use it until I’m told not to more directly.

Incidently, Tumblr and Facebook are banned in Iran. As a result, they are not being heavily monitored by the government and given the microscopic readership of this blog, I doubt it’s generating any attention. Although I’ve changed some names, just in case.

Omid was not quite what I was expecting. His CS profile had a beaming smile and was full of jokey wisecracks about his hobbies. When he turned up, he was the moodiest person I’d met in the country so far.

As I got to know him he revealed himself to be one of the most complex and intelligent people I’d met so far. His attitude was born from the frustration of being stuck at home, in a one horse town with his family. Even though he had a degree in architecture, he was limited to working within commuting distance from them home until he marries.

This frustration coarses through his entire being. The company of free roaming westeners coming through his home probably compounded it.

He confessed that he didn’t have many friends as the islanders were narrow minded. CS was the best way of meeting new people and practising his English.

Shiva had given me a contact in the west of the island called Asaad. He ran a homestay and also organised tours of the geological park that protects half of the island from development. Omid’s father happened to be a taxi driver (most people here seem to be) and gave me a ride to Doulab, an hour west from my homestay.

Assad was last personality I was expecting to meet on the edge of such a barren and coarse island. His English was nearly flawless and he had a disarming, gentle aura about him. He had grand ambtions to be the number one guesthouse in Qeshm. By default he seemed to be there already.

He and his wife fed me lunch, and sent me off into the Wild West on the back of a motorbike. By all accounts Qeshm island is a bit of a geologist’s wet dream. My interest in the field is cursory at best. But after 10 minutes on the motorbike, it was easy to see why they get so frothy for it.

Like the Kalut desert, it had an other worldly feel. We motored between soaring layers of ancient rock formations. Some looked like a giant slice of layer cake, others like mushrooms.

The motorbike ride made yesterday’s safety free karting seem like a game of hopscotch. There were no roads to speak of and my guide had taken it upun himself to reduce me to tears.

We hurtled around the landscape like a pair of escaped convicts. Some of the bumps were so hard hitting that my spleen feels like it’s been permanently relocated to my ear canal.

The first stop was a salt cave. And not just any old salt cave. It was the biggest and oldest salt cave in the world. And by default, the known universe.

Gingerly, we made our way through in monastic silence. It took me less than a minute to accidentally knock off a 15,000 year old salt stalactite from the ceiling.

My guide, not knowing a word of English, simply gave me a disappointed look and shook his head. Strangely enough, he didn’t seem that keen to go on much further.

I decided that a cave made entirely of salt is pretty much the best place in the world to wound yourself. If you did fall badly then your friends couldn’t make fun of you. The salty cave has that one covered.

Next stop was a swim in the Persian Gulf. It was almost the main reason for the island detour and it didn’t disappoint. The beach was free of any signs of human existence. It lay in the shadow of a mountain covered in salt, giving it an alpine quality. The air was thick with a hot, murky mist. It all combined to give the scene a very etherial feel.

This was somewhat spoilt when I caught my guide popping a squat in the sea about 100 metres away.

Next we bouldered through an enormous canyon. Its white stone polished smooth by millenia of wind, rain and tourist’s fingers. We frolicked about and eventually climbed out to see the view.

I picked up a stone and threw it into the gap in the canyon knowing full well that it’s impossible for a man to watch and other man throw a stone and not do it himself. Soon we were both chucking whatever we could get our hands on in order to produce the most satisfying crashing echos from the depths below.

Back at Asaad’s, his wife cooked up a delicious veggie supper. He had a group of French middle aged cavers to stay. They weren’t Parisian so it didn’t completely ruin the meal.

As a parting gift they gave me a hand made purse filled with shells. It was a particularly kind gesture given that I wasn’t their guest. When I offered to pay for dinner and lunch they refused. So I said I would give them a mention in the blog. With all its millions of readers.

I hitched a ride back to Dargahan on another truck. This time, it was a postcard of Tower Bridge that served as my means of payment. He was so delighted that he bought me a second dinner of two cheese filled crepes, a salty yoghourt drink called Douk and a bottle of water for good measure.

Back at my homestay I had a quick turn around before an evening on the town in Qeshm with Omid and friends. Before I could explain that I was as stuffed as a foi gras goose, Omid’s father had liaid out dinner number three.

Barely able to stand, I got a lift to the bright lights of Qeshm town where I met Omid and his two friends. Off we went to the shops to collect what turned out to be dinner number four.

Refusing Iranian hospitality is a futile act and you are much better off being a glutton than saying no. We sat on a hilltop overlooking the sparkling lights of the city and talked about TV shows. And, unexpectedly, philosophy.

They were very much in agreement that Jeremy Clarkson should not have been fired and shared the frustration of many Iranians over the choice of Chris Evans. We also all agreed that Tru Detective season 1 was a masterpiece and 2 was pants. One of them was a big fan of the IT Crowd.

We then moved on to the topic of philosophy. This was pretty surprising as we were in a region that most Iranians considered to be backwater. A bit like someone asking you for your views on Voltaire in an Isle of Man Post Office queue.

The all agreed that Bertrand Russel and his British counterparts had a more pragmatic and practical philosophy compared to their haughty neighbours across the channel.

I was a little aghast. My friends at home were, theoretically at least, meant to be pretty well educated. But not once had philosophy made it to the table. “Did you all study philosophy at university?” I queried.
“No, engineering…and architecture.”

So far this trip had taught me that Iran prizes intellectual brawn and access to knowledge above almost all else. On more than one occasion, I’ve been asked on my views on Hafiz’s potry. Hafiz is considered by many to be the poet laureate for Iran and most homes here are deemed incomplete without a copy of his Divan.

I sat there wishing that some of my friends has the same intellectual hunger and desire to debate more esoteric issues. Then again, who am I to talk. Omid asked me if I wanted ice cream. How could I possibly refuse.