Iran

Contrary to popular belief, Iran, or..."Islamic" Republic of Iran, one amongst the "axis of evil" as defined by Bush does not seem so. If one checks the civility of the people, they are extremely courteous. They perhaps rival us Indians in hospitality (I can even claim that they excel). I have never seen such nice people.

Having been to the USA a few months back, I can realise the vast difference in attitude of people (read government officials, at the entry point in particular), Americans Vs Iranians.

Being materially rich, does not, I believe, make one "civilised", after all.

I was in Iran for the Iran Oil Show, and found almost every nationality doing business in Iran. The Germans, Austrians, Chinese, Japanese, Swedes, French....everyone is here, except Americans. Of course I did find Honeywell, perhaps they don't care about their government diktat (or fatwa, if i may :P ).

The Iranians do impose restrictions on girls, that they should wear head scarfs. But that must be because it's cold out here, and they don't want people, specially ladies, to fall ill. Well, there are still more restrictions, that they should cover their body fully with clothes, which i must say may not go down too well with the male species (and sometimes female too).

But on a serious note, girls are allowed higher education, they are allowed to drive. And I found them quite qualified. They confidently spoke about instrumentation and highly technical DCS (distributed control systems). They man (<--- check out the term, should i say woman) highly technical posts in the Oil and Gas industry. And, there are males working under them, and they (the guys) don't abhor it, or resent it. I must say that Iranian girls are beautiful (not that those of any other nationality are not ;) ).

The mountain Alborz, in Tehran is almost always covered with snow. It can be seen from Tehran. And yet, in summer I can coolly walk in just a shirt and trouser in Tehran.

Had a chance to eat raw pistas. Here they eat raw pistachchios just as we may eat "chanya manya" (local small Indian fruit which grows on wild shrubs) mixed with salt. Khajoor melts in the mouth. Dry fruits are....wow. Akrod, badam, piste...aplenty. But kajus are imported from India (called Indian badam here). And of course "keshar" , is lajawaab.

Our Parsis came from here. They have quite some respect for Indians. We used to share common borders not so long ago (about 400 years ago :P )

The currency will royally confuse you. Everyone here is a millionaire. 1 dollar = 10000 riyal. So if one wants to go around town, we have to pay the taxi fellow 70,000 rial, or more.

That's about as much time i had to write, had to leave for airport, the Imam Khomeini airport, after gulping down a quick omelette.

talldarkman