Mountains, villages, weddings and going North!

Hi lads from Rasht, a city nearby the Caspian sea, the famous caviar's sea, all exported and almost impossible to find around! A pity, as we have to keep eating the omnipresent chicken kebab and rice...
Since Kerman and the desert we have been working our way up North quite rapidly, trying to escape from the suffocating heat, and we kind of succeeded near Qazvin where we took some shelter from the heat in the Alamut Valley in the Alborz mountains.
Down South we were in Shiraz for three days, a big city that we did not really enjoy, too crowded, polluted and stressful but the big highlight was Persepolis, the magnificent city of the Persian empire and example of their golden years. A truly impressive site, with fine reliefs, massive columns and beautifully decorated staircases. Being there, the air of grandeur anf power of the empire can still be perceived.
Next stop was Kashan, a conservative city South of Tehran, where we loved the bazaar and its traditional houses but totally hated the heat! Lucky us, a heat wave was hitting the area when we were there and as you can imagine, suffering a heat wave on top of the "normal" heat was quite horrible! Honestly, you could not do anything else than staying under an air-cond from mid-day til sunset.
There we walked on the rooftop of the old-town again and got a different perspective of the city. It is so cool the fact that you can either go underground and walk from one point of the city to another through the bazaar or just go to the roofs and do the same...
Finally we have been four days up in the Alamut Valley, a kind of heaven for us, as nighttime it turned quite chilly and we had to use our sleeping bags in the tent! Yes, just what we needed after last days hell...The valley is just beneath the Alborz range and it offers spectacular landscapes, scattered time-stuck mountain villages and a sense of tranquillity and isolation that we loved! The valley's barren mountains totally contrast with the fertile and lush-green bottom and villages where we could pick and eat the best cherries ever!!! It is also known as the valley of the Castles of the Assassins, as in the 12th century a network of fortresses was built on top of rocky hills and pinnacles making them almost unreachable by their enemies. Legend says that assassins were dispatched from here to do their jobs with political and religious leaders...
Nowadays the big attractions are not the little castle's ruins but the unparallelled landscape and the traditional towns. We stayed in Gazor Khan a tiny village up the hill where we put the tent and just loved it. We kept putting off the departure day, as every day is more tiring to keep moving from place to place, so we ended up staying there four days, and we could say that only the food managed to drag us out of this little paradise! As there was only one restaurant specialised in chicken kebabs and nothing else...
We enjoyed again the authentic Iranian hospitality as one huge family on picnic invited us to join them for lunch and the after-lunch party, meaning singing and dancing while sipping tea! A really liberal family as you can see on the pic's, with some head-scarfs removed!!! Great, no religious police up there!!!
We were invited to a wedding in town also by the family running the restaurant, a really unique experience. All the town up the roofs and looking as the groom and his friends were dancing for the bride who also received different offerings.
We also did some walks up the main castle and other villages, but mainly rested under the shade and played with the kids.
Yesterday we made it to Rasht, an unattractive humid city, but gateway to the North and different inland towns. The journey to Rasht was a nightmare, as we did it with shared taxi and the driver was absolutely mad, a reckless lad with whom was impossible to argue as for him was so normal his way of driving. No wonder why Iran is the world's country with the highest death toll on the roads... This is the real danger of Iran, (Ok, together with earthquakes...) not the terrorists or the nuclear bombs or whatever they tell us on the media...
During the next days we will keep going North to cross into Armenia, a partially unknown country for us that also arouses a lot of curiosity, so time to check it out!!!
Our days in Iran are like a roller-coaster, where on most of them we are on top, but in less we are down. Sometimes the heat, the food, the language barrier or the cultural differences can put you down. But hey, the ones on top are extremely amazing days, worth it enough to totally recommend a visit here, but our energy is kind of running low so we feel like changing now and entering a new country to experience new things and discover a new culture and hopefully enjoy a better cuisine. And where we will be free again when it comes to dressing, something that now we can appreciate a lot more, specially Nuria!!!
All the best. Kisses and hugs!