India overland - Iran, Persepolis

Persepolis
After a long day in the city we head to the outskirts of town to pitch camp and find the other two buses are already there. This trip had so many booking that Norm had to send two buses. The passengers have been divided along marital lines, one bus has all the married couples while the other has the defactos and singles. Ian is the driver of the married vehicle this is his third trip while the defacto bus is driven by Bob Ashford who has a trainee driver Arlo a half Spanish guy on his first trip. We spend the evening getting to know the crews and passengers as we will be spending the rest of the trip together. They have had a good run so far except for John & Ians bus which has very low oil pressure which I will have a look at in the next couple of days. We spend the next morning in town then head of towards Persepolis for our overnight stop. We arrive at dusk and pitch camp in the main car park. This is a very important site in Iran and has just had a lot of money spent on it to host the 2500 year of the Persian Empire. The Shah invited all the heads of state to the celebration even the Queen of England attended. In the distance is the desert city built to host the event, it looks empty and deserted now. It never ceases to amaze me how many ancient ruins there are in the middle east. The major ones are well known but as you travel around there are historic site signs everywhere pointing up dirt roads that wander of into the distance, tempting you to go and explore.	Carvings at Persepolis
Pesepolis at Dusk	Persepolis is one of those place that hints at what it might have been. The rock carving are exquisite, you would never see anything being made today to equal the detail and grandeur. This must have been a very impressive place in its day. I'm sure the likes of me would not have been able to walk around those grand buildings. This city was built by Darius the Great in 581BC but only survived for a little over 200 years before being sacked by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. It lay buried under the desert sand until 1931 when the University of Chicago began excavations.
Temple at Persepolis
Visiting these sites is a very personal thing not everyone gets the same experience. Some passengers just hang around the bus waiting for the others to come back, to them it is just another pile of rocks. To others it is almost a religious experience, walking paths that form a part of history, emperors have passed this way, what did they see? With a good imagination you can invisage the power and splendor of these now crumbled places, that helped form our civilization as we know it today. Jos was a pile of rocks girl, while I could spend days wandering round soaking up the atmosphere my only regret is that I didn't take more photos and that I had not studied the ancient world before my visit, it would have meant so much more if I had. We were use to being the only visitors to these sites, now that there was 3 buses we numbered nearly 100 and it wasn't quite as personal, This was one aspect of travelling together that I wasn't looking forward to.
Bedouin Encampment	After lunch a group of our girls including Jos spotted a Bedouin encampment about 1km from where we were parked and wanted to walk over and visit them. Having had contact with Beduins in Morocco I decided to go with them as Beduin men would not be comfortable talking to women let alone strange women. When we got about 100mtrs from their tents I asked the girls to wait while I went ahead to see what sort of a reception we would get. As I approached the tents several camp dogs came out and started to circle around. Two grey haired old men appeared and stood at the entrance of a large black tent. I called out "Marhaba" (hello) as I reached the tent and they replied "Mârhabtayn" (two hellos), that was the extent of my Arabic so it was now down to sign language. They ask me to sit and a old woman produced a glass of tea which in true Bedouin style was half full of sugar.
Out of my sight I could sense movement and women's voices I think they were all trying to get a look at this strange man. The men soon understood that my women, (I think they thought they were all my wives) wanted to talk to their wives. No sooner had the penny dropped than two bedouin women were sent to bring the girls, they went around the back of one of the tents and I didn't see them again for some time. After about 30 mins a young girl appeared holding Jos by the hand, she spoke to the men while Jos told me they would be staying for awhile as the women wanted to dress them in Bedouin dress. I agreed to return for them in 1 hour. I went back to the bus and busied myself with some maintenance checks, I didn't mention the visit to the bedouin as I didn't want another crowd heading in their direction. I set out for the camp after an hour, so by the time I arrived the girls had been there an hour and a half and were still not ready to come back. I was treated to a couple of the girls appearing in full Bedouin costume and I would have loved a photo but had not brought a camera as I was unsure how it would be received. After about another 30 mins the girls appeared followed by the Bedouin women. This was a great honour for them to appear in front of a strange man. After much hugging and baby kissing we left and headed back to the bus.	Mother and child
On the way back the girls were full of their visit and I heard all the stories of their time in the Harem. They were most shocked that immediately on their arrival the bedouin women started to undress them and had some girls naked and were fascinated by the colour of their skin. They had to try on wedding dresses thick woolen Burkas and have black kohl put around their eyes. Some girls said they had never been stroked and touched like that before, the women were in awe of the blond hair and blond pubic hair had them in stitches. The rest of the crew were spellbound by the stories and many wished they had missed the ruins for a visit to the Arabs. We only had about 50kms to go to reach Shiraz our next stop so we decided to overnight by the Tomb of Darius and his successors As we left the road took us within 300mtrs of the Bedouin encampment and two girls were sent to drop a small gift of cigarettes for the men and some half empty bottles of perfume for the women. They were met half way by three women and as we drove off there was lots of waving from the encampment.	Girls from the encampment

The trip continued	Map of trip so far