Yazd, Shiraz and Central Iran

The central area of Iran is one of the hottest and bleakest landscapes on earth.  To the north is the Dasht-e Kavir (Salt Desert).  To the south and east is the inhospitable Dasht-e Lut.  It is an unlikely place to build a city.  Yet the city of Yazd has thrived in this region for centuries by creating a special architecture adapted to the harsh conditions.

Tall wind towers (known as "badgir") capture the slightest breezes and channel them into rooms built partially underground for coolness.  Subterranean tunnels channel water from distant mountains into covered cisterns.  The streets of the old part of town are set within high walls to provide some shade and block desert sandstorms.

Yazd is also the largest center in Iran for the ancient Zoroastrian religion, which dates back to before the seventh century BCE.  Zoroastrianism is credited as the world's first monotheistic religion. Depictions of the Zoroastrian God, Ahura Mazda, are seen throughout the ancient ruins of Persepolis and on a modern fire temple in Yazd that holds a sacred flame that has been kept burning for centuries.  Outside of town, the eerie "towers of silence" rise up against the sky.  To Zoroastrians, both fire and earth are sacred and must not be defiled with human remains.  Thus, the Zoroastrians left their dead high atop the towers of silence to be "recycled" by the vultures.  The practice ended in the 1970s when specially sealed coffins were developed that allowed burial in the ground without defiling the sacred earth. 

With its distinctive desert architecture and association with perhaps the world's oldest surviving religion, Yazd was one of the most exotic areas in a generally exotic country.

After Yazd, we visited Kerman, Shiraz (slide show below) and then went on to the magnificent city of Isfahan.