Book "Unforgettable Iran". Chapter 9. Qeshm Island
Qeshm Island
Qeshm Island is the largest island in the Persian Gulf. You can get to it by ferry, departing from the main pier in Bandar Abbas and arriving in the main city of the island, which foreigners call "Qeshm Town", a one-way ticket costs $8. I visited about. Qeshm in mid-September.
Hamid and his family met me in Qeshm Town, they ordered falafel in the restaurant in advance, and by the time I arrived, it was already on the table as the main dish. I wanted to introduce them to Belarusian cuisine, and I cooked thin pancakes in a frying pan. Since they strongly resembled thin pita bread, which is quite common in Iran, I managed to surprise my Iranian friends, but everyone liked the skill with which I twisted the filling - ham and cheese, jam, pieces of fruit and even salads, while folding pancakes envelopes and rolls. Thanks to the variety, our meal turned into an exciting pastime.
The sights of Qeshm Island are poorly described in the 2008 LP. So Hamid drew detailed instructions. Traveling around the island, which stretches along 136 km, is best divided into two stages: exploring the northern and southern coasts.
South coast of the island. Starting point: Qeshm Town. In the city itself, you can see the Portuguese fortress and several captured cannons. However, of the entire southern route, I visited only the beach, the reason for this was the terrible heat, because of which I did not want to leave the house until late in the evening.
10 km: "Golden Beach Resort" (Plage Simin) with a small fortress opposite. Entrance to the beach cost $3, I gave $1.5 to the guard and showed my student card. With gestures, the Iranian explained to me that there were no discounts, but looking at my surprised face, he nevertheless let me through the barrier. The beach is well equipped - there are toilets and showers, sheds near the shore, clean sand, but nowhere to leave things, so I carefully put them in a bag and gave them to the hotel attendant. For the first time in my entire stay, I put on shorts in public, embarrassed to wear swimming trunks. The beautiful panorama of the beach was badly spoiled by an oil rig, abandoned and therefore rusty. In general, such a huge structure near the shore constantly inspired me with fear, so we can say that I did not like the beach.
Reference. At 10 km from the city of Qeshm towards Susa there is a curious object called Harboz - several shallow cultivated caves in the rock, and in one of them there is a bas-relief of about 400 years ago depicting Noah's ark.
10 km: "Fallen Star" (Satare Oftade or Darre Setarcha), where there are rocks with bizarre outlines, polished by water, but they say that it is better to see the Chahu gorge in the north.
10 km: Naz Island (Jazire Naz), which becomes a peninsula at low tide. The receding water exposes several hundred meters of coral reefs and makes it possible to drive to the island by car.
30 km: Hengam Island with a park with crocodiles and other reptiles. If you buy a boat ticket, you can sail to the territory, which is a natural aquarium for dolphins.
North coast of the island. Starting point: Qeshm Town. During the daylight hours, I examined the entire northern coast, visited a salt cave (namakdan) and returned back, driving 170 * 2 = 340 km around the island.
20 km: a relatively large city of Dargakhan with a developed market for seafood.
30 km: Laft village. It is here that tourists come to see fishing boats at the pier, to take beautiful photographs of houses with windcatchers (in Farsi they are called badgirs, they are part of the air conditioning system, read more in the article about Yazd). There are a lot of windcatchers, and they continue to be installed even on modern houses, so they say that the Laft panorama is a variety of windcatchers.
On the mountain you will see a special dome-shaped reservoir, which used to store fresh water for the whole village, in addition, a very long time ago, experts dug wells in the ground for the number of days in a year in order to open a new well every day and pump out the accumulated fresh water from it. Some wells are still in use today.
30 km: the village of Tabl. Here you can see the mangrove forest (Jangal Khara), which is located in the reserve a few kilometers from the main road. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that mangrove trees, whose leaves resemble willow, grow not in fresh, but in salty sea water.
The driver who drove me for a long time could not understand why I wanted to see the mangrove forest, and in the end he volunteered to take me there. Bushes grew among the boats in the sea water, the locals had just brought a few trees, cut them down and put them in the back of a pickup truck, I took a branch for myself as a keepsake. They say that if you drive a few kilometers on a boat, you can see tall trees growing right out of the water, but since I did not see them from the shore, I quickly got bored and asked to be returned to Tabl.
25 km: Chaku Gorge (Char Kuh, Chahkouh) - the most interesting place on the island. After the earthquake, the mountain split in two, a narrow crevice formed inside it, the modern look of which was shaped by winds and rains. Some believe that this place was once the sea. The gorge is interesting for its bizarre landscapes; a well is dug in the very center.
In the village of Tabl, I easily stopped a pickup truck and, after saying “Char Kuh” to the driver, I jumped into the back. The man who was traveling with me found out that I was traveling alone, and began to worry:
- Khatarnak e. Unja mardom nist! Abnist! (dangerous, there are no people, no water) - he explained to me.
I showed him a bottle of water, and this calmed him down a bit. The driver stopped at the "camel's head", a rock with the corresponding shape, which is Chaku's landmark, and pointed to go left along the dusty road towards the lifeless prairie, asking again if I had water.
To hide from the scorching sun, I moistened the scarf with water and tied it around my head. Passing by the two large stones that the driver was talking about, they looked like an unfinished arch of natural origin, I realized that I was moving in the right direction. There was a sandy road ahead, but from where I was standing, it was hard to tell where it was going. My biggest fear was getting lost, by this time I had been walking for about twenty minutes, but because of the heat it seemed to me that an eternity had passed. Therefore, when I saw a sign for tourists in Farsi, I was very happy with it. There were a lot of footprints on the sand right there, which meant that a bus brought tourists here, but there were still five hundred meters to the very gorge.
Chaku looks like this. A path leads into the crevice, to the right and left of which there are high mountains with bizarre shapes - either deep asymmetrical holes, or some kind of fabulous images. As you go further and further, the path will become much narrower, and cobblestones will appear on the way, at first it will be enough to jump over them, then climb over, then in order to overcome them you will already need to pull yourself up, resting your feet and hands on neighboring stones. I climbed as far as possible into the gorge, but over time, the stones on the way became so high that it became unsafe to climb over them, besides, the mobile phone did not work in this place, I ran out of water, and due to the fact that I time was alone, it became a little creepy. After taking the last photo, I decided to return. At the entrance to the gorge in the very center, I found a well with water, but I did not drink it.
Driven by thirst, I quickly found myself back on the track, but since there were no cars, I hid in the shadow of the mountain. A motorcyclist was passing by, who himself stopped and gladly agreed to give me a lift to the city, where I got water from the refrigerator installed in the mosque.
60 km: Geological park with the world's longest "Salt Cave" (Namakdan) with a length of 6200 m.
My idea with traveling around the island was that I just needed to get to the “Salt Cave” (Namakdan), but every time the drivers, having learned about my route, said that it was impossible to get there by a passing car. So an Iranian from Qeshm town said that the cave is 170 km away, and no one will take me such a distance for free. The driver from Tabla noted that it was impossible to get to the cave, because it was very far away - 115 km. My new travel companion from a town near Chaku said that I would never get to the cave, because I had to travel 72 km, but no one goes that way.
He dropped me off on the highway near the turn to the village, from where it was 12 km to Namakdan. The presence of a settlement actually meant that you could spend the night there, replenish food supplies, ask the inhabitants for a lift for money, or in the worst case, walk to the cave. A few minutes later I was picked up by a local resident on his way to the village and told that I had only 8 km to go. I told him about my adventures in Tabl and Chaku and asked him to take me to the grocery store. We searched for him for a long time, with difficulty trying to drive a bulky pickup truck through the narrow streets. Arriving at the store, the driver asked me to wait in the car and went there with a friend. A few minutes later they returned with a bag containing several types of cookies, a tortilla, soda, and juice. I took out the money and tried to pay, but the Iranian showed that it was a gift, saying: “dustam” (in the sense: you are my friend).
I was taken to the main road leading to Namakdan, from where I had to drive 8 km on a bad road. Of course, no one traveled here, except, perhaps, for rare tourists, for whom exploring the cave was the same obsession as for me, so the hitchhiking method did not work here. I sat down by the roadside to finish my biscuits and juice and think of a back-up plan, such as arranging for someone from the village to take me to the cave for money. At this time, a car pulled out onto the road and headed towards me. I vigorously waved my hands, and immediately stopped her.
- Namakdan? I asked.
- Bale, befarmain (yes, sit down), - the driver answered and immediately agreed to give a lift for free.
I explained that I really wanted to see the Salt Cave, and as far as I could understand in Farsi, the driver was taking my father to a healing (maybe just salt) spring next to the cave to heal his legs. After listening to my story of traveling around the island, the Iranian said that they would be at the cave for about an hour, and on the way back they would pick me up and take me to Dargakhan, where they were from. This city was only 20 km from Qeshm town, so the fact that they agreed to give me a ride was a great success for me.
For several kilometers we continued to drive on asphalt, but then a dusty primer began. But the road went along the seashore, and we could enjoy the scenery, along the way we passed a cave in which a hermit once lived. We stopped at a fork with barrels of water. My driver and my father turned right to the seashore, where the source was, and I went left through the territory of some factory, where there was equipment for sorting rocks, perhaps crushed stone or table salt is still being mined here. The earth, cracked from the heat, literally fell under my feet, with each new step a cloud of dust rose, and I periodically shook the sand out of my boots.
The mountains around had a red tint, to the right was the largest salt cave in the world, 6200 m long. tourists. To the left was a small cave, which is a small room. Nearby were springs with a highly concentrated saline solution, similar to those that I saw in Russia on Lake Baskunchak.
Having seen enough of the wonders of nature, I went for a swim. However, this place was inconvenient for swimming - in order to be in waist-deep water, one had to go far along an unfamiliar rocky and muddy bottom. So I began to hunt for crabs, of which there were many.
An hour later, I left Namakdan in the same car in which I arrived, and late in the evening I was in Dargakhan, from where I took a taxi with other passengers for $ 3 to Qeshm Town.
Author: Kozlovsky Alexander.
Book: "Unforgettable Iran". 159 days hitchhiking.
