Kashmar is a nice town in between the desert in the south and the mountains in the north.
On my first day, after the big thunderstorm the night before, we went to the nearby mountains to get some fresh air. It was the first time for me to see some green mountains after two months in the desert – I was so excited I almost started crying. It didn’t take long to find a spot for a short hike and so we went up the mountain and into nature, I couldn’t have been happier at this point.
Apart from a nice natural landscape, a lot of carpets sold in the touristic cities are actually made there. I was so curious about it that my host organised a meeting with the Kashmar tourism board where I met the person who sketches most of the designs of their carpets and saw a carpenter at work. The designer showed us his different sketches and explained how the design is changing from a very colourful and busy one to a more modern one with less texture and colours.
I also went to the city’s only museum which is mostly dedicated to Ayatollah Sayyed Hassan Modarres, a cleric and politician and apparently one of the most important figures in Kashmar’s history. I was happy that my host was with me as everything was written in Persian and I wouldn’t have understood anything without him.
People got so excited about me being there that I ended up in two newspapers, one showing my visit of the tourism board, the other showing my visit to the museum. I felt like an official guest being sent from Germany, which was a bit weird to me. On the other hand, I received a lot of welcoming hospitality here and people helped me so much along the road, I was happy to give back a bit. If it makes them happy, I can be in a newspaper for once.
Kashmar itself has some nice cityscapes and – most importantly – a good coffee shop. The hipsters have arrived and gave me the second good coffee I had in Iran, after Shiraz. I was so happy I would have stayed longer than planned just for the coffee shop.
But you have to move on at one point, especially when your visa runs out, so after a couple of days in Kashmar I moved on to the next destination, Neyshaboor.
