Pondering the Mysteries of the Desert

Inside Zeinoudin

Interior of Zeinoudin

Exterior of Zeinoudin

Zeinoudin corridor – rooms are behind the carpets.

The title for the day I took directly from the itinerary that the travel agency emailed to me;  “Today you will travel to Zeinoudin Caravanserai and ponder the mysteries of the desert.” I learned that a caravanserai was an old-timey motel where you parked your camel and ate and slept before you continued your Silk Road journey from Europe to China or China to Europe. I truly had no expectations of the caravaneserai prior to leaving Kerman, just that I would be spending the night there.

That morning, I had my breakfast (without Nescafe) and wandered around Kerman and then met up with Lina. We were picked up by a nice elderly taxi driver was to drive us to Zeinoudin, whiich was located in the desert between Kerman and Yazd.  They would drop me there and I’d spend the night at which point I would ponder the mysteries of the desert.

How romantic to ponder the mysteries of the desert! I thought of Lawrence or Arabia.  But then Priscilla Queen of the Desert came to mind.

We get into the car and start heading out of Kerman and I ask the driver about the AC.  He pretends to fiddle with it and then finally fesses up and tells me its broken.  Then why the big charade of trying to fiddle with it, I ponder?  Its all fine because we only have 250 kms to the caravanserai, not 600 like 2 days ago.  I can deal with 250 at this point.  About 100 miles in we stopped for bread and tea at a roadside bakery and then continued on.

A few hours later around 2 or 3 p.m. the driver makes an abrupt left turn off the highway and into the sandy median strip. He then crosses the median, and I’m wondering what the hell is this about. Before I can even say anything, he leaves the median and makes a right turn smack into the lane of oncoming traffic and proceeds down that lane as if he has every right to be there.  Please realize that this is a major highway, full of trucks and buses who may not be paying attention to tiny yellow taxis heading their way in the wrong direction. I start yelling to Lina “Jesus Christ – will you tell him to get hell out of this lane  – I don’t fucking want to die right now.” Lina told him what I said, presumably minus the expletives, and the guy reluctantly drove back across the median into the correct lane until he reached an exit about a mile down the highway.  He got off at the exit and then back onto the highway, backtracking in the direction from where we came.  After about a quarter mile into our backtracking, he exited on the little dirt road which was the road to Zeinoudin.

So, figured out what this guy was doing (in addition to trying to kill me); He was trying to save a couple of minutes by avoiding going to the next exit and backtracking. He figured that he’d just drive in the wrong lane for a while until the dirt road appeared on his left. Even for Iran, this driving technique seemed a bit extreme.

We traveled down the dirt road until we came upon a large, circular sand-colored structure.  This was the caravanserai. We knocked on the large wooden door door and a boy with traditional Baluchistan clothing opened and invited us in. The interior was about 30 degrees cooler than outside.  Three or four Baluchis in traditional garb greeted me and registered me and then took me to my “room,” which was really just a raised platform with traditional Iranian mattresses on it the floor.

Zeinoudin contained about 20 of these rooms, which were arranged in a circle on the outside of the structure. Each room was separated from the other rooms by hanging Persian carpets so there was visual privacy but a communal atmosphere where you could hear the goings on of the other guests. There were no real doors or locks and I knew that Oscar, being a mistrustful Colombian, would have not have been keen on this arrangement.  The middle of the structure was an open atrium and on the opposite side of the entry was an indoor eating area.  There were two sets of staircases to the roof, where the contemplation of the mysteries were supposed to occur. Zeinoudin was now just for tourists but there weren’t that may present this early in the day.

Zeinoudin was built in the 16th century and was one of hundreds of caravanserais scattered through Iran, most of which don’t survive. The main Silk Road had at lease one of them every 30 miles, as 30 miles was as far as you could travel in a day by foot or horse or camel. As it was still hot, I decided to go to my room and read. It was amazing to me how cool the interior of the place was compared to the 100 degree temperatures outside. After about 2 hours of reading and napping, I decided to circulate again and even though it was 5 p.m. there still weren’t too many people around and it was still too hot to hang out on the roof.  I was thinking that this caravanserai would be more interesting if it had a pool and spa and maybe some massage tables and a bar.

Or course there was no wifi. but that was kind of a relief because it alleviated any aggravation of trying to connect.  It would have, however, been more compelling to pass the time pondering the mysteries of the dessert if I had the ability to subsequently post such ponderings on Facebook, rather than just keep them to myself.   But since that was not to be, I will use this forum to post my ponderings of the mysteries of the desert:

Pondering #1:  The desert is hot.

Pondering #2:  The desert is also dry.

Pondering #3: And there aren’t too many people around.

Pondering #4: And the people who are around didn’t speak English so I can’t speak to them.

Ponderings #4, 5 & 6:  There are some mountains in the desert far away. And cacti. And not much else.

Later in the day a group of elderly French tourists arrived and then a Dutch couple.  When it cooled off the tourists went up to the roof to watch the sun set. I heard English in a corner so I went over to the group of English speakers and broke the ice asking them to take a photo of me.  They were from Canberra, Australia – two couples in their 60s. We started talking about travel and Iran and they turned out to be advanced world travelers who had been pretty much everywhere. One of them used to work for the U.N. and had lived in New York and the other couple had lived in Washington DC in the 1980s. They were recounting their Mideast travels and one of them mentioned traveling to “the country next to Palestine.”  I said “you mean Israel?” and she said “shhh – we heard that you weren’t supposed to say that word here.”  I knew the Government of Iran wasn’t too enamored with Israel, but I didn’t realize that the word itself was like Lord Voldemort.

At least I had people to eat dinner with now. I didn’t want to sit there all by myself while the other people ate in couples or groups. Dinner was traditional Iranian – kebabs, eggplant salad, flatbread, yogurt, cucumber and tomato salad. The Australians were very friendly and talkative and well-versed in U.S. politics. After dinner I went back up onto the roof. There were lots of stars in the sky that night and the desert air was clear and everything was silent.

I still did not, however, uncover any additional mysteries about the desert in spite of many minutes of pondering. Likewise, I hadn’t yet uncovered any mysteries about myself during this solo journey of supposed discovery – except maybe that I’m totally dependent on the Internet, and that even though I’m not into women, I don’t like seeing them covered up, especially in the desert heat.