This city is about as big as Istanbul, but traffic is far more dangerous. These are the most aggressive drivers you can imagine. There is just one law: no speeding, everything else is allowed. Pedestrians live in permanent danger and crossing a street is a sort of exploit. A friend of mine told me that once he tried to cross one of the major Tehran boulevards, he managed to run to the middle lane, and then spent about ¾ of an hour waiting to cross the other half.
My visit started with the former Shah’s palaces, situated uptown north of Tehran, where air is much better then downtown. There are many palaces on the site, but I visited only 2 of them, the white and the green palace. Both buildings are smaller and less impressive then the major western palaces, but have been built at a much later period. Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah lived in the white palace. It is decorated with great taste and a lot of French furniture, but what stunned me, were the carpets inside. They are not just the best what Iranian knowhow could produce, but they are also enormous. The biggest one I saw war 121 square meters big!
The green palace was the summer residence of the first Shah. Most of its rooms are decorated with mirror mosaic that produces an amazing effect. It took the decorators 4 years just to finish one room.
My next visit was Imam Khomeini’s shrine. From the outside it looks like a big mosque, but from the inside it is ugly like an industrial hall, totally disappointing.
Next to it is a huge cemetery for the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war. It is so big that a 6 lane boulevard leads through it. A gigantic example for human stupidity.
While in Tehran I offered a complete lifting to my Golf who had suffered a lot so far. Especially passing from Georgia to Armenia the road was so bad, that I had to drive in 1st and 2nd gear for most of the time. Except for my cracked windshield and my broken spoiler, everything is OK now, and I am ready for the roads of Central Asia.
Just to mention that I filled my tank with some 30 liters of diesel for some 0,80 Euros! This is of course the cheapest I had so far, the most expensive being Turkey with 1,60 Euros for just 1 litre, world record!
If you want to know about people in Iran, I will disappoint you. Although I met many people and some of them offered me hospitality for a night, I will not write here what we discussed about and what they told me about their life in Iran. All this will be in a book I will publish back home end of the year.
Inside the white palace
Inside the green palace
Imam Khomeini's shrine