When we tell our friends about our plans to go snowboarding in Iran, they look at us with doubt and shake their heads. Where are you supposed to be able to snowboard there? Isn't it just desert and war? And if so, it's surely a tour for people who have finished with life. But we experienced exactly the opposite?
Iran is a country where the white giants tower up to over 5600 meters. A country where, they say, it snows at night and the sun shines on the powdery slopes during the day.
Our nirvana in the middle of sheer endless deserts.
Since our arrival, our days have been planned down to the last minute. We are chauffeured from one place to the next and treated like royalty.
This includes sleeping in only the best hotels, dining in great restaurants and smoking the finest tobacco. Our host is Farid, the Iranian general importer for Fanatic snowboards, sports store and ski school owner and a kind-hearted person.
His best friend is Afshin, who is two heads taller and a true man of the world. Afshin speaks fluent English, works as a journalist for ABC and is just as warm as Farid. Over the next few days, he is our contact person and organizes all excursions, hotels and meetings. Thanks to them and their unique hospitality, we experience two wonderful weeks in their Persia.
Immediately after our arrival in Tehran
, Farid's young colleague Roxanna picks us up from the hotel and shows us around the city. She shows us all the places worth seeing and takes us to old teahouses.
According to what we know from travel guides and stories, it seems impossible for five guys to travel alone with a woman in Iran. But as always, the reality is somewhat different.
At night, we are invited by our hosts to a private party in a posh apartment, where we spend the evening enjoying culinary delicacies and drinking vodka from water bottles among golden statues, fine Persian carpets and mirrored walls.
Vodka from water bottles? It actually makes sense. After all, there is an "official" ban on alcohol in Iran. Although we are pretty tired and succumbing to jet lag, the party continues in our honor until the early hours of the morning. Until then, we have no idea what "being a guest" means in Persia and that there will be a few more nights of partying for us.
Tehran is the capital of Iran, home to around 17 million people, is hectic during the day and deserted at night. The five million vehicles clog up the roads, making a regular flow of traffic practically impossible. Nobody obeys any traffic rules. Stopping at a junction because of a red light? Nobody here is interested. For us it is incomprehensible how this "anarchy in road traffic" works. The only rule we can recognize is pure "survival of the fittest": free ride for the fastest cars or the most radical drivers.
We have been in the city for two days
, have seen the glitter and sparkle of a bazaar, absorbed the noise and exhaust fumes of the cars and are now sitting in an old, rusty bus. It is pouring with rain outside and it is very cold. When we arrived, it was still warm spring weather, but this morning there was even some snow in the city.
The journey takes us to Isfahan, a place where churches stand next to mosques, where people smoke water pipes in teahouses and the pigeons have their own castles.
We have been driving through the desert for eight hours. It was bitterly cold in the bus and there was nothing to see but a deep black night. The hotel we checked into looked like something out of "One Thousand and One Nights" - gold sparkled from the ceilings, with chandeliers as big as small cars hanging from them. We feel like we're in another world in all this splendor. The next morning we have a real Persian breakfast, with flatbread, yogurt, tomatoes, cucumber and eggs. The hotel where we are staying is several hundred years old. In the courtyard, which used to be a place for camels to sleep, flowers bloom today, palm trees provide shade and cool water flows from the fountains. A small oasis in the large desert city, which is known for its first-class Persian carpets and centuries-old teahouses.
Thanks to Arc'teryx and Mammut, every trader at the bazaar recognizes at first glance that there is probably good money to be made with us. We are shown how tablecloths are printed by hand and how carpets are made button by button. One of us buys a nomadic rug at a price that makes even the trader laugh. Over tea, we celebrate the good deal and our new friendship. After each of us has been ripped off once, our driver takes us to a huge mosque: its colorful domes and towers rise far above the roofs of the city.
A group of tourists has their tour guide sing a prayer to them.
The huge vault absorbs the song and sends it up to the heavens at a much higher volume. Truly a good place to say thank you to the gods.
One teahouse and two mosques later,
we are slowly overcome by the desire to finally get to the mountains. We are longing for snow and physical activity. But we are still in the middle of the desert. An avalanche has buried the road to the ski resort and we can hardly get any further, with Mount Damawand smiling at us from every water bottle. It is the highest mountain in Iran - and we can hear its call getting louder and louder. It's time to turn our backs on the desert and head towards the mountains, but we still have to be patient and spend two more days on a pilgrimage through the desert towns, filling our bellies with rice, vegetables and lamb, visiting countless teahouses and smoking a few more water pipes.
After another long drive
through the night and desert, we finally reach the village of Dizin, 2600 meters above sea level. Although we are all very tired, we are happy because we have snow under our feet for the first time in a week. The night is clear and cold, stars twinkle in the sky and the snow-covered mountains glow brightly in the moonlight.the next morning, contrary to expectations, the weather is bad. We had actually planned to be at the lift at nine o'clock, but when we look out of the window, the white gold is still falling from the sky. Thick fog was still covering the mountains around Dizin when Mosayeb, an Iranian Fanatic team rider, picked us up at 1 p.m. to go snowboarding after all.
We packed our boards and avalanche equipment
and were standing at the valley station three minutes later. Now we finally want to see for ourselves whether women and men actually have separate entrances at the lift station or whether this is just a rumor. There are indeed separate entrances for each gender! However, the women's entrance is tied shut with a wire rope and when we ask, we are only smiled at and told that women and men are now allowed to ride the lift together. For about four years now, no one has been bothered about this and the so-called "moral guardians" don't come as far as the ski area anyway, as everything is "too late" for the "unbelieving" winter sports enthusiasts anyway! That's why the slopes are the only public place in Iran where women can be seen without headgear and can also flirt with men without hesitation.
The cabins of the four gondola lifts are partly windowless or patched together with wires. Apart from us and the lift staff, there doesn't seem to be anyone else on the mountain and the snow from the last few days still lies untouched on the slopes. We enjoy a few hours in the fresh powder and in the evening we have lamb with rice, a water pipe and some good discussions.
The next morning, Renilla wakes us up with a broad grin on his face: "Servus, nice weather," he says in the broadest Tyrolean slang. And he's right - the sky is finally blue.
Hustle and bustle breaks out: We want to get up the mountain as quickly as possible,
put on warm clothes, fill our backpacks with food and drinks and rush to the lift. It's hard to believe, but despite the beautiful weather, we are once again the only ones at the valley station. The first gondola lift takes us up to 3500 meters. Enough time to check out the landscape and our first lines. We strap on our boards and shred down to the next gondola. Still not a soul to be seen. So we get on the cable car and then up to 3800 m.
The snow crystals glisten in the sunlight and we decide to climb up to the summit. After 20 minutes, we are at the top of a mountain for the first time, in the desert country of Iran. The panorama that opens up before us is overwhelming.
We are standing in the middle of huge white expanses, most of which have probably never been skied on before. Mount Damavand, the mighty peak of the Elbrus Mountains at 5671 m, watches over all the four-thousand-metre peaks. It casts a magical spell over us and we realize that this mountain could be the destination of our journey, the summit we have all dreamed of. We stand there for a few more minutes and enjoy the silence.
The day is still young and the snow is still fresh,
we get on our boards and head towards the valley, singing and screaming. On this day, we don't have to look for lines, we just have to ride them. 1000 lines, 1000 possibilities, where do we start? Everyone gets their own personal couloir and can plow it up for themselves! Happy and content, we sit together again in the evening drinking tea and smoking a pipe.
