Iran - Andrew Burke [157]
Getting There & Away
AIR
Flights to Tehran (IR315,000) leave thrice daily on Iran Air ( 824 8610; Beheshti St; 7.30am-2.30pm Sat-Thu, 7.30am-1pm Fri), plus four times weekly on Iran Aseman. Tickets are sold by Tagh Bostan Travel ( 824 6222; Vila St; 8am-6pm Sat-Thu, 10am-1pm Fri), Setareh Soheil ( 727 1115; fax 727 1116; Kashani St; 9.30am-7pm Sat-Thu) and other travel agencies.
BUS, MINIBUS & SAVARI
The huge main bus and minibus terminals are side by side about 8km northeast of Azadi Sq. Use savaris or bus 2 from Azadi Sq. Several offices sell advance tickets including Iran Peyma (Javad Sq), Taavoni 7 (Modarres St) and very handy Pars Peyma (Modarres St) beside the Hotel Nobovat, which offers tickets to almost anywhere. Useful options:
For Khorramabad, Taavoni 7 has an 8.30am bus via Eslamabad (IR35,000, 4½ hours), but it’s generally much quicker in hops. Start with a minibus to Harsin (IR3800, 45 minutes), a sizeable town in an agricultural valley surrounded by moorland bluffs reminiscent of a drought-stricken Scotland. Cross town by shuttle taxi (IR2000, 3.5km) and continue by savari to Nurabad (per person/car IR10,000/50,000, 40 minutes) from which there are minibuses/savaris (IR4500/15,000, 1¼ hours) to Khorramabad.
For Hamadan there are direct minibuses (IR10,000, 2½ hours) and savaris (IR40,000).
For Sanandaj, savaris cost IR35,000 (two hours), but strangely it can prove cheaper to break the savari journey in Kamyaran (IR12,000, one hour), which works well for visiting Palangan.
Transport to Ilam and Qasr-e-Shirin (for the Iraq borders) uses the quite separate Rah-e-Karbala terminal (Sabuni St) in the southwest corner of Kermanshah.
Savaris to Paveh (back/front IR20,000/25,000) depart from Gumruk St close to Azadi Sq.
Savaris to Bisotun (IR5000, 25 minutes) start from the southeast slip-road of the intimidating 15 Khordat (Labab) overpass.
TRAIN
A new railway is planned linking Tehran to Baghdad (Iraq) via Kermanshah and Qasr-e-Shirin, but construction will probably take years.
Getting Around
Bisotun-bound shuttle taxis from 15 Khordat Sq pass the airport gates. Shuttle taxis from Azadi Sq head in all directions, most usefully to the terminals and to Mo’allem Sq for Taq-e Bostan. On Modarres St, city buses usefully drive the ‘wrong way’ (northbound), but northbound shuttle taxis have to wind around the one-way system until 8.30pm.
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AROUND KERMANSHAH
Bisotun
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Awesome dry cliffs line the north flank of the busy, partly industrialised Kermanshah–Hamadan road, looking especially majestic when approaching Bisotun from Sahneh. At Bisotun these cliffs are inscribed with a series of world-famous bas-relief carvings dating from 521 BC. They were awarded Unesco recognition in 2006. The key feature is a well-preserved Darius receiving chained supplicants while a farohar (winged Zoroastrian ‘angel’ denoting purity) hovers overhead. Though hard to make out from ground level, the scene is surrounded by cuneiform inscriptions expounding upon Darius’ greatness in three ‘lost’ languages (Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian). In 1835, eccentric British army officer Henry Rawlinson bemused locals by dangling for months over the abyss to make papier-mâché casts of these texts. It’s hard to know how his superiors gave him the time off to attempt so life-threatening an eccentricity, nor why Rawlinson didn’t just tootle up to Ganjnameh and copy those inscriptions instead. Nonetheless, his transcriptions later allowed the deciphering of the cuneiform scripts, a thrilling breakthrough that renders Bisotun as significant to Persia-philes as the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptologists.
To reach the carvings jump out of a savari from Kermanshah where the road entering Bisotun’s swings 90º right (east). Then walk through a large car park following the mighty cliffs west. You’ll pass a club-wielding little Hercules statue from 148 BC (albeit with recently