Zahra Nemati, Iranian Paralympic and Olympic archer who won an individual gold at 2012 Summer Paralympics, waved the Iranian flag over her head while smiling as she officially led Iran into the 2016 Olympics.

 

Northern province of Golestan is economically dependent on agriculture and women play a key role in running the industry though in a traditional way.

Dizin has hosted Grass Skiing World Cup where Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Japan have participated along Iran’s national squad.
Grass ski junior world championship in tehran officially ended only after the best athletes were rewarded at ending ceremony.

Iran, Tehran- four days of competitions full of passions and excitement came to end as the ending ceremony was held at Dizin international resort.
After few speeches winners were awarded their medals accompanied with some fireworks.
Teams enjoyed a four they visit however only some of them were happy with their medals!
Photo: MNA, IRAN Ski Fed.

Dizin Ski Resort

There are some good ski resorts in Iran, the best and most popular one is Dizin which is located in the heart of capital, north of Tehran in the Alborz Mountain Range. Dizin is one of the 40 highest ski resorts in the world as the highest ski lift reaches 3,600 m (11,800 ft).  Also the base at around 9,000 feet is higher than the summit of many Alpine resorts. The lifts take you to an altitude of almost 12,000 feet above sea level. Dizin, with its dry climate, boasts some of the best powder skiing in the world. Having high quality of the snow, snowboarders can have an exciting experience; it is tolerant and accepting of snowboarders. Don’t forget it has a large variety of ski runs for anyone from beginners to professional skiers, but it should be said that Dizin is geared towards the more experienced skier.

More about dizin

Nomads have one of the most attractive life styles that can be seen in the modern world. They are not primitive like some faraway Islanders rather they are mainly known for being on the move. When talking about Iran, Nomads are mentioned as one of its highlights. Seeing such a traditional life style just a few miles away from the modern cities is a wonderful life-time experience.

Nomads spread all around Iran in different regions including west and south-west, East and south-east, north west and finally north east and center. Each region is resident to some of the tribes who live in that area; Afshar tribe in the north-east, Balouch in the south-east, Shahsavan in the North West are just a few examples. Still, the biggest nomadic population lives in the west and south-west near Zagros Mountains located in 6 south-western provinces including Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam, Isfahan, Chahar-Mahal Bakhtiari, kohkilooye and Fars.

Bakhtiaris and Ghashghaees
The biggest and most well-known tribes in Iran are Bakhtiaris, Ghashghaees and Khamseh. Bakhriaris as the biggest nomadic tribe who live on western part of Chahar Mahal province and move along way to the East of Khouzestan province in the winter. Ghashghaee (Qashqaee), the second famous nomadic tribe, live in different parts of Fars, the south part of Isfahan and near the Persian Gulf. Most of the year, they are on the move between their summer and winter resorts and they stay mainly in big rectangular tents. Although, many of these were forced to settle down some 100 years ago or decided to abandon their nomadic life, still some big population of nomads is on the move. There are approximately one million moving nomads divided into 96 major tribes.

As the settlement and passing routes of Bakhtiaris and Ghashghaees overlap with touristy routes, there are many possibilities for paying a visit.  In fact, Fars province is hosting the biggest nomadic population probably because the biggest nomadic tribes reside (at least temporarily) in this region. Some of the tribes pass through the Fars province; others move from southern parts to the northern parts and take a shorter trip to reach their summer destination. The latter reside in the plains near ZarinDasht, Neyriz, Fasa , Simakan,  Ghir, FirouzAbad, Farashband, and Kazeroon and then move to  Abadeh, Eghlid, Bavanat, Sepidan, Khorambid, and Pasargadae to find their summer resort. The spring movement usually takes place after the New Year at the beginning of April.

Needless to say that famous Sassanid sites are located in Firouzabad and Kazeroon which are common routes for these tribes as well.  As Isfahan and Shiraz are major tourist destinations, it is common to plan a visit near Isfahan (Semirom) and near Shiraz (FirouzAbad or Kohmare) where they usually reside for a few months.
Nomadic life has many interesting aspect which cannot be explained in a short article. Their attractive colorful dresses, special music, invaluable handicrafts, different type of carpets such as Glim, Jajim, Gabbe are a few examples of their fabulous life. Fortunately, their genuine art and products are still preserved and unaffected by modernity. But to enjoy these extraordinary and amazing aspects, you have to experience it first-hand.

Itinerary
IRAN nomads tour in warm seasons is approximately from May to October. We say “approximately” because the arriving of the warm seasons can vary in different years for a couple of weeks. Our route in Iran to meet the nomads in warm season is usually the colder areas of southwest, west and northwest of Iran and depending the length of the time you want to stay with nomads and the tribes you want to meet we can adjust the itinerary.

Please note that this description is by no means complete. It was a mere attempt to give tourists a general account of various nomadic tribes scattered in different parts of Iran. To have a deeper sense of this aspect of Persian land, further readings and a personal visit are beyond question.

 

By Tom Allen  : It’s really, really lovely to hear this reaction from viewers of Karun. It is exactly the reaction I’d hoped for, ever since my idea to make a travel documentary in Iran was born.

Best of all, it is a natural reaction.

We designed the adventure loosely to let Iran and the Iranians we met speak for themselves. They did. That’s what’s elicits the “wow”.

However, it is possible that by waiting so long (I’ve been visiting Iran annually since 2008) and then investing so much time in making the film (nearly two years at the time of writing), I may actually have missed my own boat.

 

The aim with Karun was always to try and paint a more nuanced portrait of this misunderstood nation, and to make it feel like a viable destination for travel. Following the longest river in the country was just an excuse. But in the 18 months or so between our journey and the film’s launch, it seems Iran has already become such a destination.

I don’t quite know how it happened, but the pioneers of the adventure travel industry, sniffing the wind, had been way ahead of the game, ensuring that the moment Iran became ‘safe’ – as it has this year, according to the ever-reliable FCO travel advice page – there was an offer on the table. Indeed, I remember suggesting Iran to one particular operator after returning from the Karun trip. Their first expedition to the country departed last month.

And the mainstream is catching up. Only last week there was a travel industry event in London on the topic of exploiting Iran’s potential as a destination. Wanderlust’s latest issue features a lengthy piece on Iran. An editor I spoke to at a travel publishing house is working through a dozen book proposals set in the country.

And every major broadsheet (or former broadsheet) in the UK has published, during 2015, at least one lengthy feature on Iran as the next big travel destination. Witness correspondents from The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent all attempting to be seen as breaking new ground by visiting a 6,000-year-old civilization. (OK, Chris used to live there, but you know what I mean.)

Even the Daily Mail has followed suit (obviously this link implies no endorsement), which is, as we all know, the best possible measure of mainstream British sentiment there is.

Part of it is undoubtedly what the media have cast as a ‘thawing of relations’ between Iran and the West. The widely-propagated narrative has been one in which the mardy mullahs, having suffered for years under sanctions imposed by austere Western diplomats, finally decide to sit down over a glass of chay and come to a compromise over the small question of nuclear weapons (which, as we all know, only Western powers have ever been trustworthy enough keep pointed at their neighbours). Another righteous victory for the West; this time, somewhat surprisingly, without resorting to bombing the shit out of another Middle Eastern nation.

I digress. The point is that, by the time our film was released, Iran’s image had already softened.

And several things happened upon the prospect of such a historic kiss-and-make-up between Rouhani and Obama. One was that rich businessmen immediately jumped in their private jets and flew to Tehran in order to see how they might profit from the imminent opening-up of yet another new market. Another was that travellers (and travel journalists) started wondering whether imminent political reconciliation meant that it was suddenly viable to travel to Iran.

Putting aside the questionable logic of two presidents ‘phoning each other having the slightest impact upon the likelihood of being obliterated while taking a selfie outside the gates of Persepolis (which tourists have been continuing to do uninterrupted for centuries), it is wonderful that Iran has started to become ‘a destination’ in the minds of more of us.

And Karun will no doubt feed into this mood-swing in favour of revisiting our long-lost Persian friends.

This is all part of a bigger story, of course, which is that of Iran’s imminent reintegration into global society; a story that goes beyond the remits of newspaper travel sections, all-too-often so sickeningly colonial in tone; and of international affairs correspondents whose agenda is set solely in terms of the nuclear narrative. And this bigger story is one I’m much closer to, given that I’m married to a native Tehrani.

From this perspective, the opening-up of Iran has bugger all to do with Western tourists and the non-existent nuclear weapons programme; and everything to do with the lifting of pressure from the shoulders of ordinary Iranians – pressure which, I hardly need add, has been put there deliberately by foreign powers (including our own government) as a way of blackmailing Iran’s politicians to bend the knee Westwards.

When it costs you a tenner to send a single Christmas card abroad; when you’re afraid to take a domestic flight because you know the plane manufacturer isn’t allowed to sell you spare parts; when you can never take a foreign holiday because the money you earn is worthless and every visa application you make is rejected without explanation anyway – that’s what our politicians have been inflicting upon my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, their extended family, my friends in the country, and 80 million other ordinary Iranians, for years.

It’s these pressures that I can’t wait to see lifted. It’s for the sake of people close to me and those I can identify with. I honestly don’t care if it means that I won’t be able to travel comfortably in Iran on £50 a week because the rial is stronger, or that everyone I meet on the street doesn’t immediately drag me – no longer the first Brit they’ve met in years – back to their home for tea/kebab/stay the night/stay another night/marry my daughter.

Altogether, there’s little doubt that the seed now planted – barring something major happening to turn the tables once again – will see ever increasing numbers of travellers to the Islamic Republic, particularly when the visa regime is loosened, as it inevitably will be (by the way, you’ll need to ask The Visa Machine, not me, for the latest news on this).

Of course, with the territory comes the Smug Traveller with something new to brag about – “Really? Well, when I was travelling in Iran…”

And the equally irritating Superior Traveller – “Yeah, Iran’s so popular now… such a shame…” – a sigh, a wistful gaze into the middle distance as memories of when Iran was actually worth visiting come flooding back. (Diddums.)

Yes, things are going to change. Iranians are going to become accustomed to increasing numbers of tourists appearing on their streets, at their historical sites, in their hotels and restaurants. The rial will strengthen, and the cost of travel to the foreigner will increase from embarrassingly cheap to something approaching respectable. And the novelty of being a foreigner in Iran is likely to become a thing of the past.

But you know what? That is the way forward. The day we can travel anywhere on Earth, be momentarily intrigued by those minor cultural differences that breathe fresh air into our experience of life, and then look our fellow humans in the eye and know that we are more or less the same, rather than being aliens to each other; that we share equally the planet we wander, rather than one of us being born free and rich and the other not – that is the day we will have achieved something of which today’s patterns of travel are just an embryonic smudge.

In any case, come 2016, somewhere else will be populating the newspapers’ travel sections as the Next Big Thing…

Turkmen women of Iran’s northeast while preserving rich Turkmen culture and traditions, are actively participating in economic and social scenes of their community.

Nearly two million Turkmen can be found living along the northern edges of Iran, just south of the Turkmenistan border. For centuries the Turkmen lived as nomadic herdsmen. In more recent years, however, many have changed to a “semi-nomadic lifestyle,” living in permanent homes as well as in tents. Today most of them are farmers and cattle breeders.

Turkmen still live in extended families where various generations can be found under the same roof, especially in rural areas. Many tribal customs still survive among modern Turkmen. Unique to Turkmen culture is kalim, which is a groom’s “dowry” that can be quite expensive and often results in the widely practiced tradition of bridal kidnapping.

Photo: Mehr News, Aliyeh Sa’adatpour

Iran has been waiting to qualify volleyball for the Olympic Games for 52 years. That wait is now over. The Iran men’s team will be going to Rio for this year’s Olympic Games after qualifying in Tokyo on Saturday.

Iran volleyball achieved a historic feat as they earned their first-ever Olympic Games qualification, beating Poland 3-1 (25-20, 25-18, 20-25, 34-32) at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium on Saturday.

Shahram Mahmoudi once again delivered a superb scoring performance. Mahmoudi had 24 points, including 20 attacks, two blocks and two aces.

Poland opposite Dawid Konarski, who started in the match, topped all scorers with 29 points, while team-mate Artur Szalpuk logged 21 markers. Although Poland had more attacks in the match, but Iran limited their errors to a minimum of 18.

Poland coach Stephane Antiga opted to use his reserves in the opening set, which allowed Iran to have a spirited run. Poland led briefly in the first set at 6-4 then Iran levelled the score at 10-all, fivb.com reported.

The Iranian players Shahram Mahmoudi and Seyed Mohammed Mousavi had an upsurge and stole the show from the European side as they led at 16-12 at the second technical timeout. Iran safeguarded their lead then reached set point, until Konarski’s serve went long that concluded the set 25-20. Iran continued to have excellent rhythm, while Poland blundered on their serves and attack. Farhad Ghaemi served two aces that stretched the Iranian lead to 22-15. Then the next few plays were a point-by-point exchange that favoured Iran as they closed the set 25-18.

Iran played a very fast-paced game in the third but Poland had set-up better offensive patterns for Konarski and Szalpuk. Poland gained a three-point cushion that made it easier for them to make a run and take the set 25-20. Iran recovered from their third set loss and led 8-3 and 16-13 at the technical timeouts. Poland gave them a strong challenge after and tied the score at 19-all.

Bartosz Kurek was sent in to help out Poland and his presence gave Poland the strength to comeback. Iran struggled to close set and match, as Poland pushed to play extra points. Finally, Iran got a break as Michal Kubiak’s spike went out of bounds and his faulty reception enabled a free ball for Iran to counter with strong hit down the line at 34-32.

“I feel immensely happy. It is special because it is a historic moment for Iran. The people of Iran have been waiting for this chance to go to the Olympics for a long time. I don’t want to talk about statistics. I’m happy with the result. We will have a party tonight to celebrate,” Iran coach Raul Lozano said.

Raul Lozano’s men defeated Australia, Canada, Japan, China, Poland and Venezuela and lost to France.

 

The sixth camel race competitions was held in “Khara” desert in Iran’s central province of Isfahan. Khara desert covers a vast area near Varzaneh city. Due to myth “Saba” city is buried in these sand dunes.

Jara Desert about 100 kilometers East of Isfahan and Yazd, Isfahan Province, located 150 kilometers West. The desert of East Gavkhoni pond, north of the city Varzaneh and river, on the south by Hassan Hassan Abad Abad and the West to the axis connecting the Varzaneh limited. This area is covered sabulous (sand dunes or geomancy), which has a range of South America. In the southern part of the width to 500 meters. In the northern part of the desert oval shape that environment long oval surrounded by sand dunes and hills greatly reduced in height oval. The highest sand dunes about 100 meters height is located in the northeastern section of the oval.

Sabulous average height of the sea level around 1450 meters. Sand desert in the southern part of South America will become the second wall and the wall between the two calcareous soils are alkaline. The two walls near the southwest lagoon Gavkhuni join together to form a single wall with north-south direction merits. The single-walled trigger about 9 km from the lagoon near the south end Gavkhoni continues.

According to different winds in this area, various forms longitudinal dunes of sand dunes, sand dunes are visible arches and pyramids that is unique of its kind in the country. Sabulous area of about 17,000 hectares.

 

 By Andrew Lawler, Smithsonian Magazine:the courtyard is coated in a fine brown dust, the surrounding walls are crumbling and the flaking plaster is the same monotonous khaki color as the ground. This decrepit house in a decaying maze of narrow alleys in Isfahan, Iran, betrays little of the old capital’s glory days in the 17th century. Suddenly, a paint-splattered worker picking at a nearby wall shouts, waves his steel trowel and points. Underneath a coarse layer of straw and mud, a faded but distinct array of blue, green and yellow abstract patterns emerges—a hint of the dazzling shapes and colors that once made this courtyard dance in the shimmering sun.

I crowd up to the wall with Hamid Mazaheri and Mehrdad Moslemzadeh, the two Iranian artist-entrepreneurs who are restoring this private residence to its former splendor. When these mosaics were still vibrant, Isfahan was larger than London, more cosmopolitan than Paris, and grander, by some accounts, than even storied Istanbul. Elegant bridges crossed its modest river, lavishly outfitted polo players dashed across the world’s largest square and hundreds of domes and minarets punctuated the skyline. Europeans, Turks, Indians and Chinese flocked to the glittering Persian court, the center of a vast empire stretching from the Euphrates River in what is today Iraq to the Oxus River in Afghanistan. In the 17th century, the city’s wealth and grandeur inspired the rhyming proverb, Isfahan nesf-e jahan, or “Isfahan is half the world.”

After a brutal siege shattered that golden age in the early 18th century, new rulers eventually moved the capital to Tehran, leaving Isfahan to languish as a provincial backwater, which not incidentally left many of the old city’s monuments intact. “One could explore for months without coming to an end of them,” marveled British traveler Robert Byron on his 1933-34 journey across Asia. That artistry, he wrote in The Road to Oxiana, “ranks Isfahan among those rarer places, like Athens or Rome, which are the common refreshment of humanity.”

Today, however, the city is mainly known abroad as the site of Iran’s premier nuclear research facility. What once was a sleepy town has emerged as the country’s third largest metropolis, surrounded by expanding suburbs, belching factories and the choking traffic of more than three million people. Nothing symbolizes Iran’s disconcerting modernity more than its launch, in February, of a satellite named Omid (Hope). In Isfahan, however, hope is a commodity in sharp decline. The elegant urban landscape that survived invasions by Afghan tribesmen and Mongol raiders is now threatened by negligence and reckless urban development.

Mazaheri and Moslemzadeh are members of a new generation of Isfahanis who want to restore not just buildings but their city’s reputation as a Persian Florence, one they hope will one day enthrall Westerners with its wonders once again. Inside the cool and dark interior of the house that is their current focus, the freshly painted white stucco ceiling bristles with scalloped stalactites. Delicate gilded roses frame wall paintings of idyllic gardens. (Paradise is a Persian word meaning “walled garden.”) Above a central fireplace, hundreds of inset mirrors reflect light from the courtyard. “I love this profession,” says Safouva Saljoughi, a young, chador-clad art student who is dabbing at a faded painting of flowers in one corner of the room. “I have a special relationship with these places.”

The house may have been built in the 17th century by a wealthy merchant or prosperous government official, then remodeled to suit changing tastes over the next two centuries. Even the fireplace damper is shaped in the delicate figure of a peacock. “Ornament and function together,” says Mazaheri in halting English. Located just a short walk from the medieval Friday Mosque, the house is of classic Iranian design—a central courtyard surrounded by rooms on two sides, a single entrance on the third and a grand two-story reception room with large windows on the fourth.

Rocket attacks during the war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the early 1980s emptied this old neighborhood, and the house was badly vandalized. As Moslemzadeh guides Saljoughi’s careful restoration effort, Mazaheri nods toward gaping holes in the reception room, which once held oak-framed stained glass that bathed the interior in a rainbow of vivid colors. “There are still a few masters left in Isfahan who can rebuild such windows,” he says. Just repairing the elaborate stucco ceiling took five professionals on scaffolding more than a year.

Trained as a specialist in conservation techniques, the lean and energetic Mazaheri, 38, says he has built a restoration business that tackles anything from old ruins to 17th-century wall paintings. Together with his colleague Moslemzadeh, who is 43 and studied art conservation in St. Petersburg, Russia, they are investing their time and profits to convert this wreck of a home into a teahouse where visitors can appreciate traditional Isfahani crafts, music and art. Like many Isfahanis I meet, they are welcoming to foreigners, refreshingly open and immensely proud of their heritage. Without a trace of irony or discouragement, Mazaheri looks around the half-finished reception room and says, “It may take five more years to finish fixing this place up.”

Isfahan’s history is an epic cycle of fabulous boom and calamitous bust. Here a road traveling across the Iranian plateau east to the Mesopotamian plain meets a path connecting the Caspian Sea to the north with the Persian Gulf to the south. That geography linked the city’s fate to the merchants, pilgrims and armies who passed through. Blessed with a pleasant climate—the city lies at nearly the same altitude as Denver and has relatively mild summers—Isfahan evolved into a bustling township at ancient Persia’s crossroads.

A taxi driver, thumbing intently through his Persian-English dictionary as he swerves through dense traffic, offers to sell me a gold statue he claims is 5,000 years old. I would be surprised if it were authentic—not least because such ancient artifacts remain elusive, making it difficult to pinpoint the precise era when Isfahan emerged as an urban center. What little has been found of the city’s distant past I see in the basement of the cultural heritage office, an immaculately restored 19th-century villa just down the street from Mazaheri and Moslemzadeh’s project. A few boxes of stone tools sit on a tile floor, and a couple of dozen pieces of pottery—one incised with a writhing snake—lie on a plastic table. A few miles outside town, on top of an imposing hill, sit the unexcavated ruins of a temple, which may have been built during the Sassanian Empire that dominated the region until the Arab conquest in the 7th century A.D. Within the city itself, Italian archaeologists digging below the Friday Mosque just before the 1979 Islamic Revolution found Sassanian-style columns, hinting that the site originally might have been a Zoroastrian fire temple.

Chinese tourists come to Iran more than before. Annie Dai that introduced herself “Chinese girl living in Paris” visiting IRAN. She shares her photos from IRAN trip in Instagram from Kashan, Tehran, Shiraz, Persepolice, Tochal Ski resort, yazd, Abyane and …Xiaoye Xuan is with Annie in IRAN trip.

 

Iran Overhauls Tourism Industry to Court Chinese Tourists

 

中国女孩在伊朗

中国游客来到伊朗比以前更加。安妮戴了自我介绍“中国女孩住在巴黎”访问伊朗。她分享她的照片从卡尚。小雅轩Instagram的伊朗之行是与安妮在伊朗旅行。