EP 6 – Iran As I knew it : Bus ride from Tehran to Zahedan Via Mashad
By Colonel V K Bali, Retd
By now it was nearly three weeks since we had moved from Delhi by train to Bombay and boarded the British India Steam Navigation ship named MV Dwarka for Khorramshahr via Persian gulf and then sailing up north in river Shatt al Arab till Khorramshahr.
Shatt alArab river formed the geographical boundary with Iran on its East and Iraq on the West Bank. Our ship had zigzagged through ports of Karachi, Oman, Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait and had finally reached Khorramshahr.
After a break of two days we embarked on our train journey to the capital of Iran, the most modern and beautiful city of Tehran. We had four days stay at Tehran and this city was quite an eye opener for someone coming from a country like India. It was called Paris of the East those days…Iranians were steeped in French culture due to their education in that country, most people wore European clothes and followed their lifestyle.
We Next started our journey from Tehran central bus stand and proceeded to Mashad. We were warned that it would be a very long journey and will be able to reach Mashad only the next day in the afternoon.
Though the bus manufactured by Mercedes was a very comfortable one and had its signature three points Star logo in metal mounted on the front grill.
We traveled the whole day with breaks for breakfast, lunch, evening tea and finally for dinner around midnight. The journey had been through a pleasant landscape with vast open areas but with very less population. Though it was not as green as areas around Tehran were. After dinner we had a break at that place for about three hours..every body slept. While some spread sheets on the ground,others walked back to the bus and slept there. After around three hours, the conductor of the bus went around waking up the sleepy passengers, asking them to have tea and get ready to move.
The restaurant was alive again as we were offered tea. The tea was brewed without any milk and without sugar in small decorative glasses resembling the European liqueur glasses. They also offered some crude looking cookies and biscuits… sugar cubes were kept in separate plates for consumption. The locals ate the sugar cube and then sipped tea and then took bites from the biscuits….that’s the way of Iranians tea. In fact,it’s same way tea is consumed in all of Central Asia.
In Hyderabad, in India, there are many shops which offer IRANI CHAI or tea….it’s too rich in milk and sugar unlike any tea in Iran that ever came across my way. In fact I hardly saw any milk being consumed or sold in their markets, its not in their culture. They make lots of cheese and ice cream out of milk but I didn’t see them having milk tea ever.
We reached Mashad by noon next day and retired for the night in a small hotel
There was nothing much to see in Mashad except for a grand mosque with blue tiled domes seen from afar and very spacious. Mashad was largely an ancient trading town close to borders of Turkmenistan in the north and Afghanistan on its East.
Next day was our final leg of bus journey to our destination of Zahedan located in the South East tip of Iranian province of Sistan and quite near to the Pakistani Western border.
