Iran Discovery Guide

Iran has twenty-eight UNESCO World Heritage sites and a fraction of the visitors that number implies anywhere else, so a twelfth-century mosque courtyard can be largely yours. Isfahan holds one of the world's largest squares with two of the finest mosques ever built on it; Shiraz has the gardens, the poets' tombs and Persepolis an hour away; Yazd is mudbrick and windcatchers. What visitors report most is the hospitality, which is relentless.

The main travel issue

The British government advises against all travel to the whole country, and US sanctions have now stopped most international flights as well as leaving foreign cards useless everywhere. Entry rules differ sharply by passport, with some nationalities required to travel on an approved itinerary. Nowruz at the spring equinox then puts the entire country on the move for a fortnight.

The solution

Start from current government advice rather than from an itinerary. Settle the visa question for your specific passport before booking anything, carry the whole trip's budget in cash, use the cheap domestic flights for the long legs, and travel in April-May or late September to early November.

The classic route

Tehran, Kashan, Isfahan, Yazd, Shiraz and Persepolis — two weeks, all connected by road, rail and short flights, and taking in the best of the Islamic architecture, the desert cities and the Achaemenid remains.

If you want the desert

Stay in a restored caravanserai or a desert camp near Garmeh or Mesr on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir, and go to the Kaluts of the Dasht-e Lut, wind-carved ridges in a place that has recorded some of the highest land surface temperatures ever measured.

If you want mountains and green

The Alborz north of Tehran, with Damavand at over five and a half thousand metres; beyond them the Caspian coast, humid, forested and rice-growing, which surprises everyone who assumes Iran is all desert. Masuleh, a village built in terraces where one house’s roof is the next one’s yard, is up there.

If you want the less-travelled parts

Tabriz for the bazaar and the Azeri north-west; Kerman and Rayen for the mudbrick citadels; and the Gulf islands of Qeshm and Hormuz, where salt domes and coloured mineral cliffs make the geology the attraction.

Iranians distinguish sharply between Persian identity and the state, and a visitor will meet the first constantly and the second mainly as paperwork.

Taarof

A ritualised etiquette of offering and refusing that governs an enormous amount of daily interaction. A shopkeeper may say the goods are worthless and refuse payment; a driver may decline a fare. The offer is sincere as a form and is not meant to be accepted at once. Refuse twice, insist gently, and settle on the third exchange.

Poetry in ordinary life

Hafez and Saadi are quoted in conversation by people with no literary pretensions at all. Households keep a copy of the Divan of Hafez and open it at random for guidance, and his tomb in Shiraz is visited like a shrine.

Persian, not Arab

Iranians are Persian, the language is Indo-European, the calendar is solar, and the new year is at the spring equinox rather than in the Islamic lunar year. Conflating Iran with the Arab world is the single most reliable way to irritate someone here.

Public and private

There is a marked distinction between the birun, the public face governed by rules, and the andarun, private life behind the door, where the rules relax considerably. Visitors invited into a home see a different country from the one on the street.

Sanctions have cut Iran off from the international payment system, which means a visitor’s cash goes directly into local hands — guesthouses, drivers, craftsmen, restaurants — with no intermediary. Choosing family-run eco-lodges and traditional houses over hotel chains keeps it there.

Water is the constraint. Iran is in a serious and worsening water crisis: lakes have dried, aquifers are being drawn down faster than they refill, and some cities ration. Short showers and refilled bottles are the minimum.

Buy carpets, miniatures and metalwork from workshops rather than from airport shops, and be aware that antiques and older carpets may not legally be exported.

Be careful about what you say and photograph, less for your own sake than for the people you meet. Conversations about politics can carry consequences for Iranians that they do not for you, so let them set the subject and do not record or post anything that identifies someone without asking.

April and May, and late September to early November, are the two good windows — mild across most of the country, with spring blossom and autumn colour in the gardens.

Nowruz, the Persian new year at the spring equinox on 20 or 21 March, is a fortnight when the whole country travels. It is extraordinary to witness and very difficult to book around: transport and hotels fill weeks in advance.

June to August is severe. Central desert cities reach 40°C and above, and the south — Ahvaz, the Gulf coast — is among the hottest inhabited places on earth. The mountains and the Caspian coast are the exceptions.

December to February is cold, with snow in Tehran and heavy snow in the Alborz and Zagros, where there is a genuine ski season. The desert is pleasant by day and freezing at night, and the Gulf coast and Kish are at their best.

Ramadan shifts by about eleven days a year and changes daytime eating and opening hours everywhere.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Iran is very cheap for foreign visitors because of the exchange rate, but bring all your money in cash — euros or dollars. No foreign card works anywhere in the country.