caves containing vast clear lakes and rivers. It had been surveyed in 2001 by a joint German and British geological team who recorded a total of seven miles of chambers, but there are probably far more as of yet undiscovered.
I got down to the bus station but had no idea which bus to take, so asked a young guy by pointing to the Persian script for the caves in my guidebook. I needn’t have bothered as he spoke good English and informed me that the next minibus to the caves left in forty-five minutes. But, being Iranian, he couldn’t just leave it at that and insisted also on buying me a cool drink at a cafe nearby. We both had an orange Capri Sun- style drink in a foil carton. Instead of sticking the straw through the tiny, fiddly, purpose-made hole in the top, which from my experience nearly always leaks, my Iranian friend just turned the carton upside down, stabbed the straw through the base, and drank it this way. I did the same and it worked great.
Although it was just a small minibus, I got a great seat all to myself by the rear door where I could stretch out my legs and recline. I felt surprisingly fatigued in the heat, and drifted off not long after we hit the road. I awoke just before the Ali Sadr village. On the outside, the caves looked very commercial with souvenir shops, ticket booths, playgrounds, and a huge hall next to the entrance for the caves, the purpose of which I couldn’t work out. Inside the hall was a huge grumpy-looking Khomeini picture. Despite all of the tourist infrastructure and a warning in my guidebook that the place could be crawling with Iranians and hundreds of screaming school kids, I found it virtually deserted.
I purchased a ticket and walked to the entrance of the cave. The blessed coolness of the air was the first thing that hit me as I walked down a gradual flight of steps into the opening chamber containing a massive underground lake. Here a long jetty-like platform hugged the water’s edge and two paddleboats waited for passengers. This was clearly where the crowds must have queued on busy days but today, mercifully, there was just a single family and me. I couldn’t believe my luck.
We all had to put on lifejackets, which for the family’s little daughter of about four was nearly as big as she was. We got in the boat, which was connected with a rope to a paddleboat operated by a young guy of about fourteen. A guide joined our boat and slowly we moved off. The water was a shimmering green color, and the clearest I’d ever seen in my life. Looking over the boat’s edge, I could see an immensely long way down into the water, which was as deep as forty-five feet. Strangely, nothing lives in the water or in the caves themselves. Even bats don’t inhabit the place, and there is no evidence of human or animal activity in the caves over the centuries.
We slowly drifted past otherworldly rock formations, which our guide described in Farsi only, leaving me to ponder them myself without explanation. I preferred it that way. Hanging down from sections of the cave’s stalactite-covered roof were labels for some of the larger formations, identifying them with appropriate titles such as “Statue of Liberty,” etc. These were accompanied by separate placards containing quotes from the Koran. I was mesmerized as we drifted slowly along.
The lighting was just enough to reveal the cave’s grandeur but not so bright as to illuminate every nook and cranny and take away any of its mystique. We glided gently past many interconnecting chambers, all filled with the same clear water. Some looked like mystical and holy grottos, others like the hidden underground lair for a James Bond criminal’s secret submarine. We drifted along for about thirty minutes, passing only one other boat going the opposite way, before arriving at another little jetty where a walkway led into the center of the caves. Here we disembarked. I let the family go first, not out of good manners but to give them a few minutes head start so I could walk around in complete silence.
It was simply wonderful and I felt a reverence for the place. That is until I got to a little cafe playing music. I quickly skipped past this and came face-to-face with the most awe-inspiring chamber. It was 131 feet high and had a jagged boulder protruding from its roof. Strewn all around were the remains of many other boulders from partial collapses over the millennia. I stood in this cathedral-like inner chamber and truly felt as if I were in the center of the earth.
The trip back was just as good and as I climbed out of the swaying boat, I felt completely energized. I emerged, blinking, into the sunlight and baking heat with a big smile on my face. Here the family from the boat asked if they could take their photo with me, and after posing for a total of three shots, I headed toward one of the cafes.
It had the usual collection of water pipes for smoking tobacco, and carpeted platforms on which to recline. Three men sat here whiling away the afternoon in apparent bliss. I ordered a tea and got chatting to one of them who spoke English. He asked whether I liked the caves. “According to the government, they are officially the most beautiful nature in all the world,” he told me. And I guess if the Iranian government officially says so then it must be true. When it was time to pay for my drink, I wasn’t allowed, despite trying the usual three refusals.
I caught the minibus back to Hamadan and arrived just after the sun had disappeared. As I walked through the town in search of some food and an Internet cafe, the evocative sound of the calling to prayers emanated across the city from the mosques’ speakers. The Internet cafe was overflowing with people, half of whom stood around sipping away at tea whilst giving advice on what to write to those at the keyboard. Interestingly, Iran has the fourth-largest blogging community in the world, which may very well account for the painfully slow speed of the Net in some places. This was the case here, where it took me the best part of half an hour to send two very short messages.
Not far down from the Internet cafe, situated along the thriving high street, was a Western-style fast food restaurant. It wasn’t traditional local cuisine, but I didn’t care as I really fancied a change from all the kebabs and rice.
I decided on a cheeseburger and fries.
Whilst ordering my food, I got talking to the cashier and asked him if I needed a calling card to make a call from a public phone booth to a cell phone. I wanted to get in touch with Leyla before I headed to Tehran tomorrow. The guy working the register went and got a girl in the restaurant to translate for him. She explained that the restaurant staff were happy for me to use their phone, if this was okay with me of course. This was more than okay.
I got through to Leyla, who was delighted to hear from me but had not yet heard from Ricardo as I’d hoped. She said to call her again when I got to Tehran and she’d come pick me up from my hotel in the evening.
The English-speaking girl joined me at my table while I ate. She came bearing gifts—a huge ice cream sundae complete with two crispy wafers, Jell-O, and sprinkles. I dropped a wobbly bit of ice cream clad Jell-O on my pants. The girl was a pretty twenty-year-old student from Tehran, although I didn’t make a note of her name. Without my asking, she wrote down her e-mail address for me, seconds before her mother joined us at the table. The girl gestured to the piece of paper with her e-mail and said, “Secret, cannot tell.” Mommy was a crone-like wretch with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, who eyed me and my table manners suspiciously.
Her mother spoke only a word or two of English, which was just as well, as her daughter asked my opinion on Khomeini, and I suspected for some reason that her mother was an admirer of his. The girl gestured to a framed portrait of the man in question on the restaurant’s wall, which like every other shop in Iran has to have one. I had yet to meet a person who actually liked Khomeini, but on a hunch I asked her first what her mother thought of him. She translated the question to her old lady, who, as I suspected, expressed her admiration by putting a hand on her heart and bowing slightly toward the picture.
I told the girl that I wasn’t a big fan of Khomeini, but for her sake, in front of her mother I would pretend that I was. I put my hand on my heart and bowed in a similar fashion at the picture. My reasoning must have got lost in translation as the girl seemed surprised and said quietly, “No, he is not good man!”
Interestingly, in none of the pictures you see of Khomeini is he ever smiling. His PR man didn’t do a very good job; in all his photos he wasn’t just a little on the grumpy side but downright angry. The girl’s mother was the first, and in fact the only person, I met in Iran who openly expressed a liking for Khomeini. But if the information in my guidebook was correct then there were a substantial number of Iranians who not only liked the bloke but looked upon him as something of a saint. Since I encountered the opposite of this, I did wonder how accurate and up-to- date the book was in this regard. That said, Khomeini was definitely popular at the time of his funeral in 1989, which drew a phenomenal 10 million mourners. Not a bad turnout by anyone’s standards.
The Khomeini-loving woman and her daughter left the burger bar a minute after my fake picture-bowing, but then the girl returned briefly on her own. She looked back to see if her mother was watching then held out her hand illicitly for me to shake. We shook hands, she smiled, and then left for good.
Before I left, two staff members came over and gave me a customer questionnaire. It was partially in English
