Kashan to Esfahan

Caroline Sandes continues her trip around Iran travelling from Kashan to Eshafan stopping off at a nuclear facility along the way….

Thanks to the persuasions of a guide, Hossein, who had been at the one of the lovely houses of Kashan I’d visited the previous day, I had decided on the option of him driving me from Kashan to Esfahan so as to take in a few sites I wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise. Thanks to the exchange rate of the rial, this particular luxury was not just affordable but positively cheap. I also knew it would involve going right past one of the most supposedly notorious places of Iran – the nuclear facility at Natanz.

He collected me from my hotel at 8am – a friend of his, an artist, was doing the driving so I was able to sit in the back and admire the scenery without worrying about coming up with intelligent conversation. The first stop was an archaeological site that was a last minute addition to the trip because a teacher I’d met the day before said I must visit it. Tepe Sialk is, archaeologists are almost sure, a ziggurat that was built around 3000 BC, which would make it one of the oldest ziggurats in the Middle East. It looks mostly like a large hillock but the shape, blurred as it is by weathering and caked mud, is suspiciously unnatural. Excavations that have happened sporadically over many decades, have uncovered all sorts of things, some of which are displayed in a small museum on the site. Hossein had in fact worked there on a couple of the excavation seasons, and was keen for me to talk to the aged museum supervisor, who spoke French, thanks to working for many years with French excavation teams. Regrettably my spoken French is hopeless; Hossein was clearly disappointed that I couldn’t talk with the supervisor, as was I.

From there it was on to the famous Bagh-e Fin gardens. Built for Shah Abbas I, in the late sixteenth century and the oldest surviving gardens in Iran, they are now part of Iran’s World Heritage gardens. The entrance to them is door in a high wall, but inside is a paradise of tinkling water, trees, greenery and the same graceful architecture with its beautiful wall paintings as seen in the houses in Kashan. It was late February so still somewhat wintery but the gardens must be lovely when the roses and other flowers are in bloom. The gardens were also the scene of the assassination of the popular Mirza Taqi Khan, a moderniser and prime minister between 1848 and 1851. Rather bizarrely, the murder is carefully depicted using Madam Tussaud-type wax models in one of the bathhouses…

From Bagh-e Fin was a drive up into the mountains to visit a small ochre-coloured village, Abyaneh, but this road went right past Natanz nuclear facility. My guide said nothing about it and indeed as we passed by on the main road, there was not much to see except some rather bored looking security guards at an open gate in a large earthen perimeter bank, and dotted about on the nearby hills some manned anti-aircraft guns. After all the entire plant is underground and the threat to it is not domestic. I was careful only to make sure my camera was buried in my bag, but we weren’t stopped.

We continued on up through the mountains, winding round the narrow roads through grey-brown rocky landscape. Most of Abyaneh, which means water, I think, is a rich burnt red – the colour of the local clay – and the streets hardly wide enough for a car. We got out to wander round – it was cold, and there was snow on nearby hills, but the sun was shining. The locals were all, it seemed, over the age of 80, but for good reason. With no employment, most of the young people have to go elsewhere to find work and education. The old women, like old women in any mountainous village, had wonderfully smile-creased and weathered faces, and were dressed in their own particular style. The villagers here are of a separate ethnic group to the Persians that make up the majority of Iran’s population and were dressed much more colourfully – no chadors for one thing. A ruined fortress, hardly evident as it was the same reddy colour of the surrounding rock, looked over the village. We stopped at a dusty unlit shop with jewellery in it as the guide wanted to show me some of the traditional silver work. A German tourist who was interested in buying soon distracted the owner from me, leaving me to look at what was on display, both antique and not so antique.

We were soon on our way again as my guide wanted to show me an old mosque at Natanz town, and also it was coming up to the time for his prayers – it was a Friday after all. So, while I wandered round what bits of the mosque I could – with its lovely green and blue-tiled minaret – he went to pray. His artist friend, meanwhile, sat on a wall and smoked a cigarette.

Then it was on to Esfahan – a long, virtually traffic-free road through the semi-desert and mountainous landscape. Dotted along the way, not very far from the modern road, were small ruined stones structures, not unlike little fortresses. Iran had the world’s first postal service so the length of the country was dotted with relay stations where horses could be changed and meals could be had by a rider with a letter to deliver. It was set up by Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC.

As is my wont, I hadn’t actually booked anywhere to stay in Esfahan. Hossein was a little concerned, it being Friday, and he didn’t think much of the place I thought I might stay at. Instead he found another place in my guide book and kindly rang and made sure they had space for me. It was a traditional house turned into a hotel right on the edge of the Great Bazaar, only some minutes walk from the famous square and, thanks to the exchange rate of the rial, not as expensive as I feared. I was excited about arriving in Esfahan, having long wanted to visit but I was a tad apprehensive – while I could be sure it would be refreshingly free of tour groups, would I find it underwhelming as sometimes happens when you’ve really wanted to see a place for ages and then finally get there? And of course there was still the problem of attaining a Tabriz-Ankara train ticket to get me home that I had failed to get in Tehran. Esfahan was, however, to throw up an altogether different challenge…

Browse our guides and books for Iran here>

Take a look at Caroline’s previous articles on Iran:

Avoid All Travel to Whole Country: Preparing to Visit Iran

Welcome to Iran: first stop Tehran  

Kashan, Central Iran 

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