Kandovan

On our third day in Iran we visited the village of Kandovan. We went with our friends from couchsurfing by two cars. Our driver was Masoud. The funny thing is, the route was about 45 km but we stopped two or three times to eat or drink something :) When we reached our destination, we met Babak and his friend.

Kandovan is very similar to Cappadocia but still totally inhabited. The people live there in traditional way, they have mules, hens and sell what they make on their own - dried herbs, fruit etc. When you stand in front of the front door of one household, you also stand on a roof of the house below you.

We climbed the hill, got to see some interiors, children hiding from strangers, older people doing the usual things. It's really hard to say how big those houses actually are, I guess they have much more space than they look like. After all, when you're a visitor, you only see what they want you to see.

After seeing the cave houses we went to a market place where people were selling everything they made - herbs, fruit and delicious jelly-like flat things. I don't know how they call it but I think they're quite popular in Iran because later in Teheran a woman was selling it on subway. I liked it because it was sweet but also a bit sour. We also bought some mint tea.

Tony and Martin disappeared for a while and came back with beautiful shots of the whole village:

 

On the way back we saw an abandoned village in the same fashion as Kandovan. The difference was that you couldn't tell it was a village by just looking from the road. It looked like a regular hill. But when we came closer we could see houses dug in the ground and went inside.

We came back to Tabriz in the late afternoon and wanted to get the bus to Teheran but our driver Masoud invited us for coffee and accepting that invitation was the beginning of a series of unexpected events.