When we first got offered to do this trip by our lovely
bosses in Oasis HQ I'll admit that I was a little anxious about travelling to
Iran. While Malcolm was imagining conquering new lands which few had travelled
to, I was imagining being ignored as a woman in big, bad Iran while wearing an
all black cloak that covered me from head to toe. Well having completed 19 days
in Iran I can safely I a) survived and b) enjoyed it!
I had done a fair amount of research on Iran before our
visit, reading peoples blogs and getting in touch with friends of friends who
had been. Both talked of Iranians being some of the most friendly people in the
world and it being a completely different country to what it is perceived to be
in the media so my initial worries had been quickly squashed. Instead, in a
very girly fashion, my mind turned to what on earth I was meant to wear while
travelling there in the 35 degree plus heat! I found out the big black cloak
which I had imagined was called a Chardor and although still worn by a lot of
woman in Iran, was unnecessary for travellers. Instead many women, in
particular the fashion conscious, choose to wear manteau's; a kind of knee
length trench coat couple with some trousers, shoes and a headscarf.
Myself and the girls on the trip spent many hours trawling
the clothes shops we came across in Turkey finding a suitable manteau for our
time in Iran. We had decided to air on the side of caution for the border
crossing and all dress in dull colours with a manteau that at least came to our
knees, you can see us in the picture below. Meanwhile the boys dressed up for
the occasion as well in a collared shirt, trousers and closed shoes. Our border
crossing although long went smoothly and
upon crossing into Iran we instantly saw women pushing the boundaries on what
they could wear. Colours ranged from reds to blues (with the dominant choice
still being black though), tunic tops could be worn instead of a full trench
coat and head scarves were loosely slung over their hair. Needless to say we
all relaxed our dress code a lot!!
People wise, the stories we heard were correct the
individuals we came across went out of their way to make us feel at home in
their country. While putting up with the crazy traffic, which again we had
heard lots about, the passengers in the back were deafened by people tooting
their horns and madly waving hello. We were lucky enough to have a visit from
the ministry of tourism who gave us each gifts of a handmade tablecloth and
passengers were regularly asked to come to dinner at the houses of various
locals. We had heard from a few people
that it would be hard to interact with the women in Iran however we found this
not to be the case. Women happily striked up conversation with both myself and
Malcolm and even enjoyed striking up a fair amount of banter!
Another thing which you can't avoid when researching Iran is
religion; formally known as an Islamic Republic we were expecting the call to
prayer to be a soundtrack to our trip there while encountering the majority of
the population in traditional Muslim dress. We were therefore surprised to
discover that a significant number of the population either practised other
religions or were Atheists (both guides which we had on the truck were atheists).
Furthermore we learnt that instead of the call to prayer being 5 times a day it
was instead 3 therefore we heard it a lot less than we originally thought.
Dress wise as I already mentioned a lot of women still choose to wear the
traditional chardor but it wasn't until Mashhad, a holy pilgrimage city, that
we saw men in jalibiya's.
The Islamic faith was however very evident in the sights of
Iran. With each city providing beautiful mosques for us to explore, alongside
medressahs and masouleums. We also visited two spectacular shrines during our
stay one in Shiraz and one in Mashhad as well as the ancient site of Persepolis
an important residence for Alexander the Great.
