Iran had just opened up e-visas for Indian travellers, but ours quickly got rejected. I read on forums that it was common to get an e-visa rejection, no reasons given. So we set about charting the archaic, long-winded route to get a physical visa at the embassy: get a visa code through an Iranian travel agency, file an application with travel documents at the Iranian consulate in Mumbai and submit medical test results for TB and HIV. The good news, considering the tense relations between Iran and the West, was that the visa wasn’t stamped on our passports. It was issued as a separate physical document and instead of the passport, that paper was stamped upon entry into Iran.
It soon dawned on us that the long-winded process to obtain an Iranian visa was only the beginning of our travails. During our research, we learnt that travel aggregator websites like Expedia, Skyscanner and Goibibo didn’t list flights to Iran. Nor did accommodation websites like Airbnb and Booking.com work there. Most travel companies, including World Nomads and BajajAllianz, didn’t provide coverage for the country. Visa and Mastercard didn’t work there either; no withdrawing from ATMs, no paying with international debit or credit cards. And, as is well known, websites like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and BBC were banned. Instagram and Gmail worked though, small mercy! (As of 2019) And so, navigating the many obstacles, we finally took the short connecting flight from Delhi to Iran via Dubai, just a few days before my thirty-first birthday. We had scrambled together a wad of cash that would hopefully last us an entire month in the country….
In Iran… we wanted to be in no hurry and had no ‘must-see’ list we needed to get through. We promised to give ourselves enough time to savour the places we visited and to linger longer in those we loved. We wanted to marvel at the architecture and natural beauty of course, but also to live in small countryside villages and experience the lives of the locals. Tehran sounded like a sprawling, chaotic and polluted city. Besides, nestled in the Zagros mountains, it would be too chilly and smoggy in early February, much like Delhi. So we flew to the smaller city of Shiraz instead. I felt excited about the decision back then but questioned skipping the capital when I read the book Reading Lolita in Tehran by Iranian author Azar Nafisi. She described winter in the city in language so poetic that I fell in love with it without ever visiting.
We had a month-long visa and a rough idea of where we wanted to go but no fixed agenda. We planned to travel only by public transport and intended to eventually land up in Tabriz, the home of Shams-i Tabrizi, a revered Persian poet believed to be Rumi’s spiritual guide. From there we’d take the long bus across the border to experience the onset of spring in neighbouring Armenia.
On a sunny winter afternoon, we descended towards the southwest of Iran, into the seventh-century city of Shiraz at the foot of the Zagros mountains, into the land where ancient Persian poetry, art and literature once thrived. With no Uber available when we landed at Shiraz airport, we sat in the cab of a sour-faced cabbie who roughly knew the location of our guest house. He wasn’t very chatty but, on the way, I asked him what places he loved in his city so we could visit them too. Instead of giving us recommendations, he explained, his chest puffed and one hand rising in dramatic movement while the other held the steering wheel, that Shiraz is the city that inspired great poets like Hafez and Saadi. After a few moments of silence, he unexpectedly began to recite Saadi’s poetry in Farsi, followed by a modest attempt at translating it into English.
I was awestruck as I tried to pay attention to his impromptu recital and later dug up the part of the poem (I think) he recited: That is not a face whose beauty I can express/ Let someone else do it as I am astounded/ They all see, but that is not the art which I see/ They all read, but that is not the passage which I read. ‘Shiraz,’ he said, ‘is a city that you can’t just see with your eyes. You have to feel it with your heart.’
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Random House India.