By motor car to Oxiana

As many have pointed out to me, a visit to Iran seems like an odd way to amuse yourself. But then, it's always seemed that way.

Since my return home last month, I've finally got around to reading one of the great classics of travel writing, a memoir of travel through Persia (Iran) and Afghanistan in the 1930's: The Road to Oxiana, by the British writer, Robert Byron.

Byron was one of a once-familiar breed of English eccentrics: He had an urge to travel to places largely unvisited by Westerners, he was a self-educated expert in Eastern art and architecture in general, and he was fascinated by very specific types of Muslim art. He had strong views -- he despised those romantic forms of Muslim architecture most popular in the West: those of the Moguls, best represented by the Taj Mahal, and those of the Moors, such as the Alhambra.

He had a keen ear for language, and his book reproduces many unusual and hilarious conversations, ones supposedly recalled verbatim and written out phonetically. For example, using musical abbreviations to show changing voice dynamics, he records comments by the Afghani ambassador to Persia, in which the ambassador discusses his visit to the opera in Rome:

(m)Italian lady she sit beside me. She is (eyes blazing ff) big lady, yah! great? no, fat. (mf) She more fat than Madame Egypt [the Egyptian Ministress] and her breast is (cr) too big. (mf) It fall out of box, so. Much diamonds and gold on it. (pp) I am frightened. I see if it shall be in my face. (f) I suffocate.

The book, written in diary form, tells of the expedition he and a friend -- from their university days at Oxford -- undertook in 1933-34, at the age of 28, from Cyprus, through Palestine and Syria, to Persia and Afghanistan. By the time of his trip, Byron had already become a well-known writer and art critic, famous especially for championing the importance of Byzantine art.

Byron hoped ultimately to reach the Amu Darya river, which separated Afghanistan from the Soviet Union -- a river known as the Oxus during the time of Alexander the Great. Political conditions in Afghanistan barred him from ever catching sight of the river, but he did travel through the region through which it flowed, which he called Oxiana.

But the real objective of the trip was to view Persian architecture in both Persia itself and in Persia's former territory located then (as it is now) in Afghanistan. My own interest in Persian architecture totally pales to insignificance by comparison. My fascination with the book was rather in comparing Byron's observations of Persia in 1933 with what I was able to see for myself last month. Byron visited most of the same cities and major archeological sites that I did.

In 1933, as in 2011, Persia was a difficult land in which to travel. The only serious difficulty now, however, for an American at least, is in obtaining a visa. In 1933, on the other hand, Persia was a huge, thinly populated expanse of land with a rudimentary road system. It was surrounded by other nations equally remote. The few Westerners that Byron encountered were, for the most part, either diplomats or professional archeologists and art historians.

Access from Europe was not by arrival at Tehran Airport, but by dirt roads across the inhospitable expanses of Syria and Iraq. He found Iraq -- in the region of Baghdad -- to be as disagreeable as I'm sure our own military did during the recent war:

[Mesopotamia] is a mud plain .... From this plain rise villages of mud and cities of mud. The rivers flow with liquid mud. The air is composed of mud refined into a gas. The people are mud-coloured; they wear mud-coloured clothes and their national hat is nothing more than a formalized mud-pie.

Once into Iran, everything changed. They entered a land of beauty.

Up and down we sped through the fresh tonic air, to the foot of the mountains; then up and up, to a pass between jagged pine-tufted pinnacles that mixed with the pattern of the stars. ... [W]e dined to the music of streams and crickets, looking out on a garden of moon-washed poplars and munching baskets of sweet grapes.

Persia was not always to be so idyllic; the dirt roads, the lack of bridges that compelled fording of streams, the roads blocked by landslides -- all these obstacles took, at times, their toll on Byron's patience, although not on his sense of humor. But I envied him his opportunity of visiting what is now Iran at a time when it was all new to Western visitors, when simply moving from one town to another could be a challenge, often requiring days of delay, awaiting the right weather or the approval of some minor dignatary.

Iran is still largely unvisited, by Americans at least, but once you're there, you now travel over modern, well-engineered freeways.

Byron visited many of the same sites that I did. He visited the Shrine of the Imam Reza in Mashad, as I did. But while our group timorously followed our guide about the outer precincts of the shrine, our women enshrouded in chadors, Byron dressed himself in what he hoped would look like Persian garb and, walking all alone, penetrated the central portions of the shrine, forbidden to infidels. He looked all about while others prayed, gazing with wonder at the beauty of the building interiors. Eventually, sensing growing suspicion among the faithful, he made a fast departure before a riot could begin. Dangerous and imprudent, perhaps, but the stories he had to tell (and, of course, did)!

He visited Persepolis, as we did. As ruins go, we didn't find it to be overly crowded, but there were still quite a few tourists -- Iranian, Asian, and European -- wandering about reading signs and guide books, and listening to guides. Byron found the site empty and deserted, as it had been for centuries, except for the presence of an archeologist from the University of Chicago who was excavating the site. This American professor claimed all rights to the monumental ruin, and forbade Byron from taking any photographs of "his" Persepolis. (Byron outwitted him in the end, of course.)

Byron also visited Shiraz, and Yazd, and Kerman -- all towns that I also enjoyed visiting -- before eventually moving on to Afghanistan. His descriptions of these towns, again, show us how much has changed: sleepy villages are now towns and small cities that -- while still picturesque and exotic -- have definitely become part of the modern world.

My reaction to Byron's book is similar in some ways, of course, to what it would be to any well written tourist guide to any destination from the 1930's. Fascinating comparisons between places "then" and "now," closer to home, can be made by reading the Guides to the States prepared by writers for the WPA during the Depression. But Persia/Iran has changed so drastically in the same period -- both in appearance and in accessability -- that Byron's book presents an especially dramatic contrast, and arouses feelings of strong nostalgia for a time when the world seemed much larger and more diverse. A time when just getting to Persia required more time, effort, stamina, and logistics than were available to most people.

Now, "Persia" is less than 24 hours away -- once you have that precious visa!