nano encounters

The initial plan was to stay in Mashhad for three weeks and then visit some other cities in Iran. However, the second day I was here, two of Gorgan’s friends who were to visit from the USA that week on business, called to say, they have to delay their trip by three weeks. If Gorgan hadn’t volunteered to drive them around and help them, we could have carried on with our plans.

This messed up all our pre-planned travel arrangements and we immediately called several travel agents to get seats for Isfahan and Shiraz. It was near impossible and only became possible after hours of phone calls back and forth with agents. Even then, we didn’t have confirmed seats back to Mashhad from Shiraz, but decided to go all the same and deal with it two weeks later.

The way the airline booking system works here is this: different government organizations have seats available for their employees all the time. If a minister or head of a certain military unit needs to catch a flight to a certain city, there is always a seat available for him. Therefore, right at the end, seats become available if those officials didn’t take a flight. Also, some travel agents have more booking power than others, as they have access to seats registered as ‘booked’ on the flight booking system. Overall, there are a bunch of airlines and flights daily to the major cities in Iran. A lot of air traffic.

The entrance to Mashhad airport has two security posts, one for women and the other for men. Once in the terminal and with your boarding pass in hand, there is a second security post, also segregated. I was relieved to have zipped through both without having to speak much Farsi. My lack of more Farsi vocabulary seems to be my only give away, but this can be corrected with time. Glad I blend in most of the time.

So, on day three in Mashhad, after having not seen much at all, I was flying off to Isfahan and Shiraz for about two weeks.