Up with the sun again this morning. We are beginning to notice the shorter daylight hours and so for the past week we have been trying to get started earlier. Before leaving the Abarkuh area this morning we went back into the town to see a 4000 year old cypress tree. Fortunately there were a series of signs in English that took us to the tree which was situated in a small park and surrounded by a fence/hedge. Interestingly even at this early hour we found two families picnicking on the entranceway. The Lonely Planet guide for Iran notes that Iranians are the world champions of picnicking as they stop and put our their picnic carpet just about anywhere. We agree with that comment and would add that Iranians are also world champion tenters. As they pop up their little self-erecting tents anywhere.

The strange conical building that Nina is standing infront of is an old ice house. Apparently these buildings could store ice throughout the long hot summers.

So from that cypress tree we got back on the 4-lane highway and continued towards Shiraz.

Pasargadae is a collection of ruins from the period of Cyrus the Great 546BC. There are only modest remnants of what must have been in its day a set of magnificent stuctures. In addition to admiring the remaining stone work we chatted with a couple of tour groups and a number of groups of locals. One of the tour groups were the employees of a Chinese tour company. One of the members of that group had previously worked for Lonely Planet in Melbourne.

Someway down the road to Shiraz (the guide book said 50km) but it was more like 70 km was the famous ruins of Persepolis a simply amazing complex of (the remains of) massive stone buildings. Persepolis was built by a series of rulers starting with Darius (who succeed Cyrus) and expanded by a series of subsequent rules with names like Artaxerxes, Xerxes I and Xerxes II. The people that built this place called them selves Archaemenians. The Greeks of the period called them the Pars (from which the modern name Persian is derived) and the curernt name of the place Persepolis is from Greek and means "city of the Pars". The city was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330BC.

I won't try and give a description - the place is simply stunning - I will let the photos do that job.


We camped in the parking lot at Persepolis along with a few dozen Iranians in their little pop up tents.