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Kerman is a small town about 1000km south of Tehran, and it was the closest airport to the little town of Bam that I wanted to visit. This region is about 300km west of the infamous Iran/Afghan/Pakistan border, the lawless Baluchestan... Its a region where the Silk Road has turned into the Opium Highway. Osama Bin-Laden is rumored to be living just across the border in Quetta, Pakistan. And its also just on the other side of this border that Pakistan tests out its nuclear weapons. You could think of it as the ass-end of the world.
Yet, all that is 300km away, and I am here in Iran. Things are just about as relax as anywhere else I've been in Iran; but the people have a bit of a foggy look about them, surely the effect of Opium.
I have visited my usual share of mosques and gardens, both in Kerman and nearby Mahan. I won't go into too much detail, since I am afraid its going to start sounding monotonous. But the Kerman bazaar was a special treat... Its is several kilometers long, and hides numerous caravanserais. Most of them are sadly falling apart due to earthquakes and abandon. Abdul, a local guide I met in the bazaar took me through padlocked doors, over piles of ruble and into a few of these relics of the past. Particularly interesting was Hamam-é Ebrahim Khan, an ancient bathhouse that is still in use today, and where men were getting massaged the traditional way.
