Ruined Safavid village of Kharanaq, Yazd, Iran
Heavily advertised in Yazd we could not resist spending a day and 95 USD (!!!) on this trip. We certainly paid way too much. The driver was organized by the manager of our hotel – the Oriental Hotel. An amazing person, who deserves to be mentioned here. He seemed to be the only person around and in command, always ready and answering endless questions and requests.
We insisted on an early start knowing the temperatures in the desert would quickly become unbearable. Our first stop was Kharanaq, a deserted and crumbling village made of mud brick buildings believed to be 1.000 years old. Though everything seems to be fallen apart, we learnt that an old man had lived in one of the houses until recently. Most fascinating was the complete silence while we walked around. The new village nearby was still sleeping, only the quiet gushing small gnat running through could be heard. From the rooftop of an old building we watched how it made its way down to the green fields in the valley.
View of the city from Narenj (Narin) Castle in Meybod, north of Yadz
To imagine an icehouse in this heat is hard, but in the town of Meybod, in two small basins ice used to be produced in the winter. Hacked into big chunks the ice was stored in the circular windowless building all year around. Due to the sizzling temperatures we kept the visit to the renovated caravanserai short. Luckily there was a place to hide, an interesting carpet museum. It provided an overview of the different styles of Iranian carpets, some of them incredibly old.
Narein Palace is Meybod’s other attraction, also extremely old and crumbling and built / rebuilt over many centuries. Unforgettable is the view of the mud brick village below with its bright green trees in-between. We believe to truly enjoy this trip, more time is needed than a day, especially to avoid visits during the scorching heat.
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