The Islands

Before my entry into Iran, I actually had no idea where exactly I wanted to go and what exactly I wanted to see. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to go diving in the Persian Gulf. I had been carrying my logbook and dive watch with me since the beginning of the trip. After some research, we decided against diving on the shopping and hotel paradise island of Kish and opted for the natural spot Qeshm. It was also said to be a great place for diving.

We booked our accommodation at ¨Asad's Guesthouse¨, which stood out with an incredibly funny website. The father of the family described, for example, that it would be ¨just one mail [for the reservation] to fulfill all your dreams¨.

At the bus station, we noticed the gloomy figures that also wanted to go to the island. It is not possible to describe exactly what was gloomy about them, but in particular, one looked like a very unpleasant companion. Long braid, blue jacket, not even 60 kilos and several signet rings. As it had to be, the man naturally sat in the seat to the left of the aisle across from us.

However, since the bus was quite empty and the reclining function of my seat didn't work anyway, we took the seats in the penultimate row, which were far away from the pimp type. One minute later, Long Braid also had the idea to see which seats worked best. He liked the seat next to us the most. Great! We felt slightly uncomfortable, but there was little we could do. He didn't even look at us, there was no concrete reason for the discomfort... but... but... why did he follow us?

This time we were lucky, we didn't feel observed for long. An aggressive woman rushed towards us and sent him back to his seat. He argued something, but he had no choice, he was forced to move. I have no idea why, but he was scolded and shouted at several times during the bus ride. Although I would be curious about why everyone, including us, found him annoying, it actually doesn't matter to me - he was gone.

We slept well and woke up when we were on the ferry. Asad had told us that we should get off right after the ferry to get to him a little faster by taxi. I informed the bus driver that we would like to get off after the ferry, to which he pretended to understand and nodded approvingly.

After the ferry, however, the bus didn't stop.

We called out and said that we would like to get off, but the driver, service staff, and about 5 men nearby shook their heads. But why not? Please let us out. Again, there were many shaking heads. We gave up. But then the only young girl on the bus turned around to us and asked in English if she could help. We explained to her that we had to go to the other side of the island and therefore wanted to get off. Now we had someone on our side. In the next small town, we were let off and a taxi was waiting for us to take us to Asad's Guesthouse.

When we arrived at Asad's living room, his 13-year-old daughter took care of us. We were served tea and a small meal, and then the girl took the opportunity to start a conversation about beauty, fashion, and shoes with us female guests. One gets the impression that it doesn't matter where girls grow up and whether they wear a hijab, chador, or manto on the street, they are all interested in the three topics mentioned above. The self-confident girl presented us with her latest purchases, the self-sewn dresses, explained to us which ingredients she uses to mix her face mask that (unsuccessfully) helps against puberty pimples, and showed us which exercises she uses to stay in shape.

The time with her was something between funny and slightly annoying. Because with Siiri and me she had met two girls who are relatively uninterested in makeup, fashion, and shoes. After she also informed us about which girl at her school used to be her friend and is now her enemy, we stole ourselves away from the conversation.

We accepted Asad's offer to plan our tours in addition to our accommodation and agreed to go to the Chakooh Mountains (or something) in the afternoon with a ten-person Polish tour group and him + a guide.

On this day, we met our guide Baman (or something) for the next three days. The short Iranian man with big eyes drove us to the mountains, which were quite impressive. While the Polish group mainly used the time for photo shoots, we preferred to explore the mountains and scramble around a bit. Baman offered to climb the ¨difficult¨ path up the mountain with us, from which you were supposed to have a beautiful view of the sunset. Yippie.

The way up wasn't that incredibly difficult, but still not without danger. Right in the first few meters, an Iranian man slipped on the sandy rocks and fell heavily on his tailbone. That must have hurt. While Siiri hopped up the rocks as if she had never done anything else, I gladly took Baman's helping hand again and again, pulling me up the occasional rock.

When we reached the top, the view over the rocky desert was truly impressive. It was super beautiful and so peaceful. Really an interesting landscape that I had never seen before in this form. Unfortunately, it doesn't come across in pictures, on them, the landscape reminds more of a dull lunar landscape. The memories are mainly in our heads.

However, something brought the idyll back to reality: Barman's stories. Although he only mentioned briefly about his recently expired time in the military, those few sentences stuck with us. He reported that he worked in the prison where he had to maintain order and ¨punish¨ the aggressive criminals. One doesn't even want to think about what that means, neither for the prisoner nor for the guards. The time had affected him so much that he had forgotten parts of his youth. He could no longer remember some of his neighbors, instead, he had to think back to his time in prison over and over again. We truly wish Barman that he can replace the bad situations in his head with memories of his neighbors soon.

For the next day, we had planned to go camping by the sea in the evening. In the twilight of the evening and morning, we should even be able to go swimming... in a bikini...

Until 5 p.m., we were on the 40-degree hot island, which with its 90% humidity was quite a strain on the circulation and didn't allow much movement.

We wanted to explore the island on foot, which would be cruelly exhausting, but sitting in the room until 5 p.m. is also a bit boring. The daughter offered to accompany us. At first, we were not very enthusiastic about it, did we really want to talk more about fashion and girls? In the end, it was really nice. We had good conversations and got a better and better insight into the life of a young girl on Qeshm Island. The girl spoke excellent English and already knew that she wanted to take over her father's business in the future. A concrete goal for which she pays attention in the relevant subjects.

At 5 p.m. sharp, we were picked up by Barman. What we only found out afterwards was that we were the first guests to book the camping trip. Since we wanted vegetarian food, the mother gave us a lot of vegetables. In addition, Barman lovingly brought diced tomatoes, cucumbers, and snacks. To cook for us, we picked up Asad's uncle. The old man without teeth, weighing no more than 50 kilos, and wearing a white chador-men's attire was only a tender 60 years old. The sun and his life had aged him more than his age would suggest. His story took place on the high seas. The man had been a captain all his life and sailed a merchant ship between Iran, Omar, India, and Arab countries. He could speak all these languages, but English was the only one he failed with.

We drove about 20 minutes to the beach. There it was, the Persian Gulf. We were there at the perfect time, the light made the sea look even bluer and the sand even redder. Magical. After an instruction on what to do in case of approaching police quickly came out of the water and put on our clothes, and a test swim by the captain (maybe he just wanted to pee in the sea before us, but he sold it to us as a test swim), we jumped into the not so cool water. Fantastic. In the sunset in the Persian Gulf - that already sounds like the title for a literary work.

We got a little hungry - luckily we had a cook with us.... well... when we were dry again on the beach, Barman gave us an eggplant: 'What is it? And what can you cook with it? Can you cook it?' Sure, we can. We took over the cooking and sizzled ourselves an eggplant mash, which became really tasty thanks to the excellent shrimp seasoning given to us by the mother. The meat-loving men were quite astonished.

We went to sleep pretty early under the starry sky. In the background, the captain told us about his adventures at sea. Here and there, Barman translated a little for us, but actually, you didn't need to understand the language to feel the magic of the old sailor stories. It was about compasses aligned with the stars and legends of survivors of a shipwreck at sea.

We woke up again at sunrise. The men had stayed up all night and driven away the foxes that were apparently circling around us. Creepy and good that we only found out about it afterwards. After the morning swim and breakfast, we packed up, said goodbye to the sea, and went to a salt cave. This is the largest in the world and the pride of the island. Barman reported that unfortunately, the cave is being destroyed more and more every year because on the Persian New Year Newroz thousands of Iranian tourists armed with cucumbers come into the cave to dip their vegetables into the salt. What sounds funny has the consequence that there are hardly any stalagmites and stalactites to see on the accessible first hundred meters of the cave. The cave was pretty awesome. All salt enriched with different colors and minerals. We could have crawled into the next cave through a tiny slit, but we refrained from this adventure - it looked really tight down there.

A great trip.

Back at the guesthouse, we rested, spent time playing UNO, had a dance and ballet class with the daughter, and had some conversations about the latest gossip from school. Slowly, we began to like the pubescent fashion queen, who even chose her high glitzy shoes and slightly transparent clothing for her reading competition with our advice... which of course also glimmered.

In the afternoon, we were picked up again by Barman, who looked a bit refreshed from the trip, and took us to the mangrove forests where we took a boat tour. It was quite nice but not as impressive as expected. More of a nice Sunday excursion.

The next morning was finally supposed to be my diving trip. However, Asad had not yet commented on it. So on the evening before, I asked how it was going. At that time, it was already around 10 p.m. He hadn't taken care of it yet, but he would now look for a dive school for me. Hm…

After some research, he actually reached a dive center - the clocks tick here a little later. Asad told me that he could tell me at 11 a.m. the next day whether it would work out, as the wind was too strong in the morning, but the dive center would clarify whether it would be possible in the afternoon. Since we also wanted to explore Rainbow Island Hormoz in addition to diving on this day, I didn't like the idea of having to wait until 11 a.m. to plan the day.

In addition, I still had some unresolved questions. Was the dive center certified? He didn't know. Are we talking about one or two dives? No idea. Do the dive guides speak English? Asad didn't understand the question, after all, you communicate underwater with sign language anyway. He didn't understand that it was important to me to be able to ask questions before or after the dive and that this was important for my safety.

I have experienced some bad dives in my life where I didn't feel 100% safe. Therefore, I did what we learned during our diving course: put safety above everything else. I decided not to go diving and canceled with Asad. At the same time, I was really sad and a little pissed off. I had already told him three days ago that I wanted to go diving on this day. Why hadn't he clarified it earlier, then I might have had the chance to talk to the dive center myself or to visit it. Diving was my only wish on this trip and now it doesn't work out because I had entrusted this wish to a dive newbie (and of course because of the windy weather). Damn, a huge double damn. But well, I have experienced many beautiful things otherwise.

So the next morning we went to Hormoz.

Barman picked us up at half past 5 in the morning (who else) and took us to the ferry port. Dear, dear Barman had even brought us souvenirs made by his sister. Two pendants in the shape of traditional face masks worn by women here. Before, we had asked Asad's daughter what it was all about with the masks. Her answer that it was a medical sun protection already seemed somewhat strange to us at the time. Although it is also sun protection, above all, it is another way for women to cover their faces.

We also had something for Barman. A tip. And that's why Siiri still makes fun of me to this day: Getting the ferry was quite tight. When we wanted to give Barman 10 euros, he - of course - refused. However, I didn't feel like and especially didn't have time for a long Tarof back and forth. So I simply opened his car door and threw the money on the seat with the sympathetic sentence 'Take it, for you it is a lot of money, for us it is nothing.' Oh man! I have to giggle again with shame when I write this. Since then, this situation has been fodder for various jokes. In taxis, Siiri asks me why I didn't just throw the money on the seat, on every occasion, one of us quietly says when paying 'For us it is no money, for you it's a lot' (of course we don't say it out loud in public).

Shortly before the ferry, we caught the overcrowded ferry to Hormoz.

When we arrived on the small island, we needed breakfast first. We went to the small and trendy Cafe Kelek on Asad's recommendation, where three young and alternative hipster Iranians were sitting together. We ordered omelettes and planned the day. As has happened several times on this trip, we didn't get exactly what we understood by omelette. They were rather onions cooked in tomato sauce. Since this wasn't Siiri's thing, I now had two breakfasts... and a lot, lot of onions.

We were worried about how and when we would get off the island again. Unfortunately, we had miscalculated a bit, and the sleepy Asad had forgotten to warn us. Instead of starting on September 20, the two important holidays Ashura already started on the 19th. Almost everything is closed on these two days, and transportation is fully booked because the whole country is on its way to their families.

For the exploration of the island, we took a Tuk-Tuk from an acquaintance of the cafe owner. Unfortunately, he could hardly speak any English but was all the more enthusiastic about the Google Translate app on my phone. Immediately, he asked me if I could send him this great app... well. Our driver had an inflexible tour waiting for us, which annoyed me a bit. We were driven from attraction to attraction on the bumpy Tuk-Tuk. Actually, I just wanted to jump back into the water after diving didn't work out. Then I would have liked to see the natural wonders of the island. However, this wish didn't fit into the tour plan, so I grumbled to myself and hoped to reach the sea soon at each stop.

Unfortunately, my grumbling spoiled the day a bit. Because the island is unbelievable! In addition to salt caves, there are whole salt mountains and rock formations that are so colorful that it's hard to explain with common sense how each hill is made up of different colorful minerals. Unfortunately, our driver couldn't explain it to us either. Siiri and I made a note to ourselves that one day we would have to come back to Hormoz - but in the cooler and even more colorful spring and by bike, on foot, or with our own motorcycle.

After hours, we finally arrived at the sea, which was surprisingly cool and refreshingly. We splashed around for 20 minutes... until I became the victim of a jellyfish attack. I didn't see the creature, but I felt a fierce burning sensation on my wrist. Ouch.

The scenarios of poisonous jellyfish and thus my imminent suffocation played out before my eyes. When the taxi driver saw me holding my wrist, he looked and could apparently immediately identify which jellyfish it must have been. His reaction: He laughed at me. Haha, that's why you screamed? Does it hurt, right? Hahahaha.

Not very nice, but at least I could now assume that my burning arm didn't have to be amputated because bad news is not delivered with laughter...

Our day in Hormoz came to an end. We took the ferry back to Bandar Abbas on the mainland, where we went to the bus station just in case to somehow get to Yazd.

Right at the entrance, we were intercepted. You want to go to Yazd? No problem, it will leave in 1 hour. That was simple. We left our luggage with the men at the stand and planned to go and eat something. The bus station was gloomy. Again, only men, many in traditional Pakistani attire, who looked a bit creepy.

We left the station towards the restaurant when the bus guy followed us. Where were we going, he asked. To eat. Why not in the station? Because we found something better. He came a little way to tell us in which second and at which spot we should cross the street. Strange.

We walked about 10 minutes, and every 15 seconds a car honked, drove slowly next to us, or stopped to look at us. Strange. Then, just before the restaurant, the bus guy stood next to us, who had come with the motorcycle behind us. He showed us how to walk. But why? Strange.

The restaurant was closed, so we went back to the bus station. Again, the car from the way there circled around us. Strange. And suddenly the bus guy was there again, asking why we were going back now. Somehow we got a strange feeling. Bandar Abbas is an important place for smuggling goods in Iran. Since the islands of Kish and Qeshm are so-called visa-free zones, all sorts of things are smuggled through Iran from there.

Our conspiracy theory was so perfect: for sure the men wanted to smuggle something in our luggage that we had left at the station.

Back at the bus station, we checked our luggage and took a picture of the bus's license plate. In our seats, we looked extra unsympathetic - don't look naive was the motto. Strong and independent and not exploitable for smuggling.

The bus ride was quiet - what exactly happened in Bandar Abbas, we will never be able to clarify. Whether something was smuggled, should be smuggled, we should be sold something, we should buy something, no idea. It could just as well be that the bus guy was just an overly caring man who was worried about whether we would get something to eat. Who knows.