Längerer Beitrag – schneller Überblick:
The little escape of the chilblains
We've had enough. It's arse cold and the heating keeps coming on at night. That's annoying. But it's quiet in the morning. Quiet as a mouse. What's going on?
The whole of Yazd lies hidden under a blanket of snow, it's that typical snowy silence. Our heating is still purring and it's cosy and warm in our Felix. But the city itself is losing its desert charm. We don't care about the excursion destinations, we want sun, warmth and fewer thick coats. And we decide: We'll come back then.
So we set off early, I'm soooo sick of freezing. The roads are full of snow, as are the palm trees by the roadside. We are probably the only ones with proper winter tyres (the universe must have known, after all we really are still on the road with winter tyres!
But we've done the maths without the other cars. What good are winter tyres if everyone else is pushing along the road at an unsafe snail's pace? Things don't get any better when we see the first snow clearing machine. It slips into the ditch before our eyes due to a lack of good tyres. Sand is quickly shovelled, the machine digs itself free and pushes the snow up the pass. We can't say why exactly we chose the pass today. We should actually know better that there is more snow on the mountain passes than in the towns.
At some point, hours later - our sat nav had predicted 27 minutes - we arrive accident- and slip-free on a plateau that suddenly resembles a desert. There is no sign of snow, and certainly no sign of people. A herd of camels in the distance. Oh!
The cypress of Abarqu
"Turn left here!" "Why, there's nothing here." "Yes, we're looking at a tree." "A tree, aha." Of course, I can't think of much except that it's an old tree. Gerd is not very enthusiastic about looking at a tree. Nevertheless, I persevere and tell him that I've read about this tree somewhere. It is old. The tree, not Gerd.
Shortly afterwards, we are standing in front of the old cypress tree of Abarkooh (or Abarqu, depending on the spelling). I read aloud, having photographed a few pages from a travel guide from the early 90s in a hostel: The tree has just turned 4,500 years old. It is the third oldest tree in the world, after a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (5,062 years old) and Methuselah (4,845 years old), both of which are in the White Mountains in California.
The cypress tree is deeply connected to Iranian history and can be found in many symbols and in ancient Persian poetry. However, the cypress of Abarkooh is a special case. It is Iran's oldest living heritage, 25 to 28 metres tall, with a trunk diameter of 11.5 metres and a branch diameter of 18 metres.
Of course, there are many secrets and legends surrounding such an ancient tree. Some legends trace the origin of the tree back to Japhet, the son of Noah, while others believe that Zoroaster, the ancient Iranian prophet and spiritual leader, planted the tree. Some myths attribute a soul to the tree that carries it through the centuries.
No matter what you think, we, including Gerd, find the tree impressive. It's about 90 times our age and could tell us a lot. But it doesn't. At least we don't hear anything.
Refrigerator from the old days
We continue eastwards. At the end of the village there is another ice house, which is famous in the Iranian desert plateau. A yakhchal is typically a large, free-standing domed building with an underground storage room. The walls are made of a special mortar called sarooj, which is made of sand, clay, egg white, goat hair and ash. This material is particularly resistant to heat transfer and is therefore ideal for insulating and protecting the ice from the outside temperatures.
The ice house in Abarkooh, one of the best-known examples of this type, utilised the cold of winter to freeze water in large, shallow pools. The ice was then taken to the yakhchal and covered with straw and special insulating materials to preserve it until the summer months. This meant that people had access to ice and chilled food even in extreme heat.
After a short stop at the "old fridge", we climb back into our Felix, have a quick look to see if our "ice house" is still working and roll on eastwards. Because tomorrow morning, after today's foretaste of the old trees, we're off to the really old stones!
Merci for "travelling with us
We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.
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