The route so far and the route we're planning to go after Ramsar.
I spent three days in Tehran my CS friend Hossein. Except from hiking in the nearby mountains I spent most of the days just walking around in the city trying to get some sort of perspective of the huge city (some 13millions inhabitants). Like I wrote in the previous post its not a very beautiful city. However that is a truth with modification because the difference between the poor south part and the richer northern part is enormous and its was quite interesting see the city transform by walking from south to north.
Also I meet up with Behnam for dinner. Behnam is an uncle of an Iranian friend I met in Lund. An interesting and generous man who treated me with some awesome traditional Iranian dishes. (Be sure to thank your uncle from me again Roozbeh.)
Yesterday (sunday) I once again met up with my NZ friend, Kiwi, who I meet in Esfahan. He also couchsurfed while in Tehran and luckily, one of his CS friends lived in Ramsar and offered us to join him there. We accepted his offered in a jiffy and got on a 6h bus over the Alborz mountains and arrived late last night. The scenery from the bus was amazing with huge surrounding green mountains and picturesque villages and rivers all along road which snirkled its way up and down through the maounains. Mehrad, which is his name came and picked us up and we went to his grandmother's house where we spent the night.
Today me and Kiwi are walking around town and probably will take swim in the Caspian sea in a moment, another box checked on the list of things to do in life:). Tomorrow Mehrad and his brother are taking us climbing a nearby mountain and spending the night in a hut on the summit. The altitude is 3600m and the temperature will be close to zero degrees centigrade during night. However Ive managed to borrow a sleeping bag and some proper shoes so I reckon Ill be fine - although probably exhausted from the 8h climb.
On the map above I draw my route so far (red) and the route im planing on going after this (blue). The resolution is really crappy but the cities after Ramsar are Ardabil, Masoleh and Tabriz in Iran and the well cross the border to Turkey and head for the city of Van (by the lake with the same name). Just type "ramsar" at maps.google.com and you can see the route and the cities better.
All for now.
