Kharanq, Chak Chak and more

[Edit:  I repeat this daytrip thirteen years later.  In the age of the digital camera, I capture a lot more in pictures. You can read about it here.]

Excursion to Kharanaq

I started with a good breakfast of fried eggs, cheese, various kinds of bread, coffee and fruits.

Today I had organised to join a Dutch pair on an outing.  They had heard me asking the disinterested hotel guy about an excursion or a car to out-of-town areas.  So they kindly offered to invite me along.  Our first stop was Kharanaq, a partially restored mud-brick village which had a caravanserai.  There’s also a castle next door that was less restored, which included a mosque.

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Chak Chak

Next was Chak Chak, a site that’s important to Zoroastrians.  It is named after the sound of dripping water, due to how the place was discovered.  It was quite a hike up the cliff past sleeping platforms for pilgrims to the small shrine located inside a small cave that’s now framed with bronze doors.

I couldn’t believe how big the complex was, and it’s built for a once-a-year pilgrimage for the masses to come stay, pray, talk, and sleep.

Our Zoroastrian guide told us of South African style discrimination when he was young.  Separate taps for water, separate buses and Muslims would refuse to take things handled by him.

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Meybod

Next was Meybod.  The castle was closed at the time of our visit but there wasn’t much visible work being done in the name of restoration.  We continued to the Shah Abbasi Caravanserai and then a kilim exhibition.  It was a real exhibition of specimens from 400-500 years ago, rather than contemporary pieces being sold under the guise of an exhibition.  To my surprise, one of them had swastikas on them.  I thought that had originated from the Indian subcontinent.

We took lunch in a nice restaurant next to the kilim place.  My Dutch mate ordered “chips and cheese” from the pizza section of the menu.  It turned out to be chips (crisps) topped with cheese and grilled in the pizza oven.  Strange!  But my mixed pizza was beautiful.

Our final stop was Pigeon Tower where 400 pigeons once lived, being reared for their droppings as fertiliser.

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TCM and Persian beliefs

Back in Yazd at the hotel, I chatted to a Hong Kong lady and an Iranian one.  We touched on the subject of heaty and cooling foods, a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).  This had come up with the driver/guide earlier.  It appears the Persian belief is identical to that of TCM:

• Chocolate is “heaty” and gives you pimples and sore throat.
• Sugar is heaty but rock sugar is “cooling”.

It is for these beliefs that my camel meatballs yesterday had to be mixed with beef, because camel meat by itself was too “heaty”.

 

Dinner

I went for a walk with the Dutch pair, and then dinner at Malek-o Tojjar restaurant in the bazaar.  The restaurant-cum-hotel was housed in an old mansion.  The restaurant part took up the courtyard which now had a roof over it.  While it was very nice, I preferred the open-air courtyard of our simpler accommodation and it had real plants.  But my kebab was delicious.

The Dutch are vegetarians but will eat some meat if presented to them.  But they wouldn’t order it.  One of them has a Chinese surname “Liem”, and is descended from Indonesian Chinese.  I wouldn’t have picked him as being of mixed blood if you hadn’t told me.

Tonight I was pushing boundaries with my compliance to Iranian dress code, which doesn’t allow men to wear shorts.  I asked at the hotel if I could go out in my calf-length shorts.  They said, for me, “Yes” but for them “No”.  Not good, but I did it nevertheless.

It was all good walking around until when I sat down for dinner.  Then I realised how much the calves were showing when seated.  Thereafter, I loosened the waist and wore them as hipsters so they would cover more of my calf.

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Zurkhaneh

After dinner my mates walked me to a Zurhkhaneh.  It is like aerobics and weights done with Islamic chanting by a man with a beautiful voice, who rang a bell every now and then. He also drums away rhythmically. The lyrics and picture on the wall suggest that it was devotional to Imam Ali.

What makes it more strange is that they allow tourists to watch for a small fee. I wouldn’t like my gym to sell tickets to spectators while I worked out, but if that subsidised my memberhip … then perhaps? The men wear leather pants decorated with patterns and the audience interject with occasional murmurs to to God, Mohammad or Ali (the Prophet).

The wooden dumbbells which they swing around are shaped like huge bowling pins.  They weigh 10-30 kg apparently.