I will not bore you with what EVERY visitor to Iran says: “Iranians are one of the friendliest people in the world. Safety? Stop reading CNN and BBC and start travelling”
My first visit (a year previously) was the classic route: Tehran-Shiraz-Yazd-Esfahan. I was so enamoured by the country that I made a second visit within a year.
This time I went north towards the Caspian Sea visiting Rasht-Anzali-Ardabil-Tabriz. At the port of Anzali (Bandar-e-Anzali), we stayed right on the shores of the Caspian.
During an evening walk along the Caspian, we spotted a man astride a horse. Picture a misty evening, the calm waters of the Caspian gently lapping on the shore, and then out of nowhere appears this horseman of apocalypse.
My travel companions could not resist a horse ride so they conversed with the horseman and settled on a rate. Please take the words ‘conversed’ and ‘settled’ with a pinch of salt.
For after both my companions had had their rather short horse-rides they gave to the horseman what they thought was the agreed sum (I will not even go into the who Rial-Toman confusion every tourist faces in Iran - http://peripateticously.blogspot.in/2012/05/getting-introduced-to-iran.html).
The horseman demanded more money - we could not figure out how much – we anyway refused to pay more. At which point he took out a knife from his pocket and started making violent slashing gestures. We could not make out if he was saying that he would cut us to pieces or whether he would slash his wrist. Either which way we did panic a bit and started wondering what to do with the mad knife-man (by now we had forgotten that he was a horse-man to start with).
After a few more minutes of this slashing motion, we decided to take him to the hotel and get him to speak with someone who spoke Farsi. Keeping a fair distance from him, and his knife, we took him to the hotel manager who calmly invited him into his room, offered him a cup of tea, and after a brief chat with him, led him out as one would someone one has just interviewed.
There is nothing tea cannot solve in Iran.
