بازگشت به ایران

It's amazing what a couple of stiff shots of Pfizer vaccine can do for you.  I find myself suddenly jolted awake, looking eagerly to a brighter future, finally able to make plans.

As a perusal of my blog reflects, exactly ten years ago from the 31st of this month, my sister and I flew off to Iran.  The two-week visit was organized by my university alumni association.  We had 35 participants, and were alleged to be the largest American group to visit Iran in 2011.

It was an excellent trip, as we traveled from Tehran to Mashad near the Afghan border, south to Kerman, and then to Yazd, Shiraz, Isfahan, and back to Tehran.  Our American guide was a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.  He gave four lectures between cities on our bus, but the real fount of knowledge was our local guide -- funny, highly fluent in English, well educated, and well-traveled in Europe and America.

I had always been interested in Iran, but since that alumni trip I've been more so.  In just the past year, I've read -- and commented on my blog about -- two books illustrating the Iranian immigrant experience: Darius the Great Is Not Okay (a YA novel), and Everything Sad is Untrue (a memoir written like a novel, or maybe vice versa).  At present, I'm reading an excellent history of relations between Iran and the United States, dating back to American colonial days, America and Iran, by John H. Ghazvinian.

Darius the Great, especially, describes the sights and people of Yazd -- one of the world's oldest cities, if not the oldest.  I recall some of those sights from my own visit -- the Tower of Silence would be difficult to forget -- but reading that book makes me wish we could have spent more time in Yazd.

All of this leads up to -- you saw it coming, right? -- my announcement that I'm signing up for a two-week trip to Iran in October, this one led by a trekking company that more usually has taken me on mountain treks in the Himalayas and Andes.  The itinerary is somewhat the same as my trip ten years ago.  It eliminates the visits to the more distant cities of  Mashad and Kerman, and devotes the saved time to more intensive explorations of the remaining ones.  It also includes a visit to Kashan, a city between Isfahan and Tehran that I know nothing about.  Rather than being part of a rather large group, I will be on a tour limited to no more than 16 travelers.

Ideally, after that first group visit, I would now be traveling independently in Iran.  The roads are excellent, as are hotels and other tourist infrastructure.  The people are not only friendly, but startlingly so.  If I were European, I'd rent a car and do so, but Americans are required to visit as part of an organized group accompanied by a local guide.  (Our local guide in 2011 freely shared his  personal thoughts on any subject that came up; he definitely didn't fawn over the existing Iranian leadership.)

Whether the trip actually takes place depends almost entirely on the progress that's been made against the pandemic by autumn.  If the trip has to be canceled -- and I'm fully prepared for that to happen -- my appetite will merely be whetted for a similar trip in 2022 or 2023.

More news as the time draws nearer.