Before we left, I learned a couple of Iranian expressions, specifically to “make a tent” (pitch a tent, or go camping) and “make a carpet” (to have a picknick). Especially the latter one couldn’t be more true and important. Iranians love their picknicks. As soon as there is a little bit of shade and time be sure to have an Iranian family sitting there, sharing food and tea.
I also got a taste of what it is like to travel with an Iranian. he packed five pieces of clothes, five kilos of food and fruits, and a tea pot. We were ready to go.
Our first stop was Bandar Abbas. We arrived in the early morning with the night bus and headed to the seaside. I thought about snowboarding just three weeks earlier and now burning in the humid heat already at 9 AM. We wanted to go to Hormoz in the evening, but before that a fellow couchsurfer from Bandar Abbas wanted to meet us and showed us around his city.
When he greeted my Iranian travel mate it was difficult to believe they just met each other at that time. It looked more like they knew each other for ages and were chatting and laughing along the way like old buddies. We parked our backpacks at his place and went with him to the nearby mountains where we saw a hut of a local shephard. We parked the car and hiked up. The hut was as basic as a hut can get, but the shephard was still out with the goats. Later, he arrived with about 100 goats and a skeptic expression on his face. He talked a little with the guys before he left for his goats again. We went back to the car. The little sleep I got in the bus, together with the weather change made me sleepy and slowly but steadily I felt my headache coming. With any minute that passed I was less in the mood to go to Hormoz and pitch a tent in the night.
I got lucky – the weather changed and there were no boats going to Hormoz in the night anymore. So instead, we went to the local bazar and food market. I saw fishermen and women selling the last fish (which I guess had been lying there the entire day) while they were smoking their Shisha. Our host was so kind to let us stay at his place, so we got a bed for the night and took an early ferry the next day to Hormoz.
