Salmiya

I assume that only few Westerners who have lived for some time in the Middle East have not become addicted to oriental carpets. It is wonderful, handmade artwork. You’ll see the efforts, the vision, and talents of the artisan. A good carpet always tells a story. Interesting carpets may also have little anomalies in symmetry or irregularities in pattern which invite us to study them in greater detail. Sooner or later you will end up in counting the colors and checking the type of the knots: Is it Ghiordes (Turkish) or Senneh (Persian) ? And you may also count the knots per square inch. The finer the better, but tribal carpets may have few and are charming anyway. Persian carpets have been manufactured for thousands of years. The so far oldest fragment is the Pazyryk carpet which had been discovered in the Altai Mountains in Siberia in 1949. Although it was found in a tomb of Scythian prince, the pattern is Achaemenian. Amazing is the number of symmetrical knots per square inch: 232 (or ...

Tehran is buzzing, an exploding city of 14 Million. In very rare circumstances breathtaking and quite horrible air pollution from the exhaustion pipes of a million or so cars, and 2-wheel vehicles as well, may have been washed away by some rain showers giving sight to the marvelous snow-capped peaks of the Alborz mountains. Or even the near-by, 5671 meters high, sleeping volcano Kuh Damavand. It is a perfect cone, as that of Mount Fuji in Japan, but 3000 meters higher! Be aware of the taxi drivers at Mehrabad Airport in the very center of the city! They know their job well. Trust them as long as you know the difference between Riyals and Toman. And the true distance from one terminal to the other! In any case, if you have not an urgent appointment there, avoid that city. Unlike on other occasions I arrived at Imam Khomeini International Airport on November 1, 2006. That modern airport had been finished in 2005 and it is a more or less empty place. It is located far outside the Capital...