Yazd

I just got back from the city of Yazd, one of the oldest cities in the world. When you think of the desert, or of life in the Middle East hundreds of years ago, or of mudhouses and sand and the endless pursuit of water, you have Yazd. It was beautiful in a way I can't fully describe because it was like nothing I have ever seen – nothing like this city exists in America or in Europe. It is the most unique place I have been to.

Our hotel was an old renovated Yazdi house where the rooms open into beautiful gardens. I could just imagine being a young lady surrounded by other young ladies lounging around the pool and waiting for our father to find us suitable husbands. We spent hours getting lost in the winding alleys with mud arches overhead and with every turn I discovered some new amazing structure or architectural wonder. Yazd is known for its "badgirs" (wind towers), which are these huge towers that caught the wind and pushed it down to be cooled by a huge pool of cold water. This was the old method of air conditioning and all of the big houses in Yazd had one or more badgirs. The architecture and precise mathematics of these structures is so amazing that apparently a group of Japanese engineers came to Yazd and studied the badgirs for six months and still could not figure out how they worked. I stood under the largest badgir in Yazd and was almost knocked over by the power of the wind it pushed down.

Yazd is also a huge center of Zoroastrianism in the Middle East. We traveled through the desert and drove into the heart of the mountains to reach the Zoroastrian pilgrimage site of Chak-Chak. Its name comes from the story of a Sassanian era princess who ran away from a dangerous situation and came to the mountains to seek refuge. There was no water and so she stood on the ledge of the mountain and pounded her staff down and water emerged. It made a dripping sound like "chk chk chk" and thus Chak-Chak. We climbed up to the see the Zoroastrian flame that must continually be fed wood so that it may burn forever, as it has burned for thousands of years past.

Zoroastrians did not want to pollute the earth so they did not bury their dead. They did not want to pollute the air so they did not cremate their dead. Instead, they put their dead into this enormous tower called a "dakhmeh." They would sit the dead upright and the guardians of the dakhmeh would watch to see if the vultures first picked out the left or right eye. If a vulture ate your right eye first, it meant your soul went to heaven. If it ate your left eye first then......your eternal soul was damned. Vultures would then feast on the rest of you and that's how Zoroastrians took care of their dead. This practice was outlawed about fifty years ago but I saw two dakhmeh's and they were in the middle of the desert and loomed overhead like a constant reminder of what's to come and where we all end up.

One of the most impressive things about Yazd was the kindness of its people, who are known throughout Iran as being incredibly generous and good-hearted. Everyone was so nice and helpful. Little children, seeing our cameras and awe-inspired expressions, would come up to us and smile these huge smiles and say "Hello!" There were so many tourists in Yazd from all over the world and whenever I talked to anyone, they would comment on how kind the Yazdi people were. Not only did I see a part of the world that I had never even imagined still existed, but it felt like I had traveled to a completely different time. Yazd was amazing.