May 6th: Teheran – what a City. Last evening we had a very nice dinner in the Hotel with some non alcoholic beer. Seems we are getting used to it 😂. The food was excellent and so we had a nice round up of a long driving day. Today we spent the entire day in the City of Teheran.
Some facts upfront:
15 Million Population
5 Mio cars on the streets
1 Mio Motorbikes on the streets
Crossing Teheran from east to west is 70km
… based on the road conditions a place in heaven for a tire guy. 😂😂😂
We organized ourselves via WhatsApp a Tour guide. Yes that is how it works here. The guys name was Ali. Short before he was supposed to pick us up we got a message that he can not make it and that he would send his father…. name Ali😂. Before ultimately going on the tour we had strapped a meeting with our travel agency that organized everything for us. As we had made changes to the trip she wanted to reconfirm everything and also gave us some money back. Her name was Maryam and she speaks fluent German. So if you plan a trip to Iran from Germany she might be a good „Go to person“.
Then Ali arrived (The father you remember 😉?) He introduced himself in good English and explained us that he was an ex fighter pilot in the army….. can you imagine how he was driving on Teheran’s streets? To say it upfront: we can only recommend him. We will put his email in our website. We paid 70€ for the two of us for the entire day. He even paid some fees for us during the day. After we had a short discussion on where we would like to go we jumped into his French make car and disappeared with the pilot in the traffic of Teheran.
First stop was the biggest Basar in Iran. It has 220,000 shops inside. Unbelievable! It is a huge complex and you can easily get lost in there. As it is a must to go there we advise to take a guide. We parked our car in an underground parking close by. That is an interesting experience as everyone parks as they want . The keys stay in the car and some guys staying the day down there are moving the car. Not the best way to work but with an unemployement rate of more than 24% there are limited options I assume.
Embedded in the Basar is a very old and big Mosque. Inside the mosque you will find the shrine of the son of one the twelve Imans. Do not forget we are in a Shiite country. They pray 3 times a day compared to the Sunnits which pray 5 times a day. We were allowed to enter and we even got a prayer stone as a present.
Leaving the Basar we went directly to the Golestan palace. It is the old residence of the kings of Iran. Today it is a museum. You have to go there. It is the place that documents which rich culture and historical background this country carries. I think the many photos we took can much better talk than any sentence in my limited English. You can spend half a day there and have not seen all of it. Go early elsewise the tourists groups will take over😉.
As Teheran is build alongside the mountains there is a huge difference in altitude from the northern part to southern one and you always know where North and South is ….. North is where the Mountains are. By the way as in any other city of the world the richer people are living up the hills. Did you ever know that Teheran has a Ski Arena? Yes it is true. It is not like St. Anton our Lech in Austria as you can not get any Jager Tee up there😊 but apart from this it is simply great. Lot‘s of slopes even Hoteld up to a height of 3900m … amazing. You can ski there until end of May. So if you can Ski, grasp this opportunity. Get at least up to the ground station of the cable car and have the most scenic view over Teheran. You will love it.
It sounds easy to get from A to B in the city but make sure you have enough time and an ex-pilot to drive as the traffic is simply unpredictable. The last spot for today was the Azadi Tower. A monument documenting the freedom of the people. An impressive building.
We went back into the hotel to have our usual late late afternoon tea. We will pack our staff already today to escape very early from Teheran to avoid the traffic. We will go all the way North reaching the Caspian Sea …. 800+km
