Our visit to Yazd today was a good demonstration of the extra difficulty we are having trying to see some of the towns/cities of Iran. Todays strategy was to enter the city early before the rush of early morning traffic, then find a place to park while we went looking for a hotel. The early start was somewhat thwarted by a poilce checkpoint on the southern edge of the city that wanted to record the details of our passports. Our initial entry to the city was not too bad as there was an extensive modern freeway system. But once into the heart of things the streets narrowed, the traffic became dense and frantic, and we kept getting faced with no-truck signs; however by now we have concluded that those signs can be largely ignored. After a few attempts we found a place to park the truck while I went scouting the central area of the city looking for some of the hotels that claimed to have parking.

My scouting expedition failed to find any suitable hotels, indeed I did not find many hotels at all. The Farsi language and script was part of the problem. In all the other countries we have passed through I could recognise the word for "hotel" in what ever the relevant language was but Farsi has me completely stumped. Eventually I found a secure daytime parking place. We moved the truck to this spot and then set about exploring the old town via the Lonely Planets walking tour route.

According to our guide book (and some of the locals who gave us advice on what to see) the city of Yazd has been continuously occupied for over 7000 years. Amazing.

The tour route took us past a number of mosques and mausoleums from the Islamic period and so we got to see a number of tiled domes and minarets. But to me the more interesting aspects of our walk were the water museum and badgirs.

The water museum had an extensive display of the underground water system called qanats the town still uses and that is used widely throughout Iran. The way these work are as follows. A water source is found somewhere near the base of a nearby (or maybe not so nearby) mountains. A well is dug to tap that water source. Then a tunnel is dug from the water source to and through the towns/cities that will use the water and this tunnel carries the water from the distant source to where it will be consumed. A crucial part of this engineering feat is getting the slope on the tunnel just right. It must have just enough down hill slope for the water to flow but if the slope is too steep the tunnel will be too far under ground by the time it reaches the towns/cities. The qanat that supplies Yazd was initially dug/made/developed before Persia became Muslim in the 7th century.

In the water museum we saw a water clock consisting of a large bowl which contained water and a smaller bowl that had a small hole in its base. The small bowl was floated in the larger bowl and then through that hole it gradually filled with water. The time to fill the small bowl completely was a fixed and repeatable measure of time. This device was used to ration water from the qanat. Each farmer or family got the water flow from a channel for a number of time units.

The other interesting aspect of life in Persia pre electricty is a form of ancient air conditioning. The visible part of this system is a large box like structure on the top of the old buildings (see photo 12 and 15). The are called badgirs or wind catchers and thats exactly what they are intended to do. Catch any air movement and funnel that air down into the building. Some times the caught air is passed over a pool of water. In some cases there is a complementary outlet for hot air from inside the building. I should note that today the maximum temperature was 100°F and we are in early October. What it is like here in July I can only imagine - and don't want to be here to find out.


After our walk around the city, with no where to park overnight, we decided to start the drive to Shiraz. So after some hectic traffic we finally got out of Yadz and onto a nice 4 lane highway. For a period we got a respite from the heat as the road climbed into some mountains and then back down into the desert and the town of Abarkuh. We camped in the desert a few miles west of Abarkuh.