Iran the land of controversies

by Emad Mohammadi (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Iran

Discovery is the gist of a travel and what makes a travel interesting for me is finding dramatic differences between my preconceptions and realities of a destination. I was born in Iran but I’m living in the UK. I had been discovering so many cities and provinces in Iran, from Caspian Sea in the north to Queshm Island in Persian Gulf in south. Four seasoned countries are those countries where you can find four sessions’ features at a same time. Atmosphere diversity makes Iran one of the rarest four seasoned countries. The largest lake in the world, called Caspian Sea in the north is the main reason of humid atmosphere of the area that provides suitable condition for jungles to grow. However, this green area attracts a lot of tourists from all around Iran and many made and bought villas there. Mass population is a thread to each environment and that’s happened in the green area of the Iran. Iran has two major chain mountains; Alborz and Zagros. The highest summit is Damavand (5610 Meter) in Alborz mountain and all the year around is covered by snow. In the middle to the south there are two deserts; Lut, Markazi, where always are hot and in these days these areas and it’s people are suffering from shortage of water specially in summer. In the south, Persian Gulf and Oman sea is the boarder line of Iran, Oman, and United Arabic Emirates. The language of this part of Iran is a mixture of Arabic and Persian but they mostly have Arabic culture and ethnicity. Persian and it’s different accent is the main language in Iran, however people near the boarder of Azerbaijan speak Azeri (Turkish). This was a whole image of Iran but what strikes me the most about is the contradictions that you won’t truly understood if you wont travel there. People are truly hospitable and friendly. There is no trace of violence on the contrary of media’s false portrait of Iran. Each and every city if full of unique traditions, foods, architecture style and people. Profound history is being seen by visiting Persepolis (a burnt palace since 1400 years ago) in Shiraz and Islamic architecture of Isfahan. Iranian new year is on March and it’s called Norouz which means a new day. Family members wear new clothes and gather together. relatives visit each other during 13 days of new year holidays. The 13th day of the vacation is called “nature day”, all the family members spend the whole day outside of the houses and have fun in the nature. This nature day has negative consequences for nature. People leave their wastes in the nature, sometimes they don’t set fire off and it cause a huge jungle burning. So many actions are prohibited by low but people get used to bend the rules, for example in Tehran because of the air pollution and heavy traffic jams there is a restriction for private cars to enter the city centre in some certain hours, by the way people manipulate their cars’ number and enter without any fear. The policies of the government and people disobedience and negligence indicate a huge gap between the government and people. There are so many other controversial issues that I would tell you in my next story.