Home > Notebook > Picnic At The Ostrich Farm, Genuinely Iranian

Walking back from Babek Castle to which I did not get I was picked up by a group of Iranians. And they planned to go to Aras river and did I want want to join them? I did. One of them, Ali, spoke little English. He was from Ahar but lived and worked in Tabriz. He was making technical sketches in a factory manufacturing pistons for Peugeot. The driver was Amir. Architect from Qazvin. He used to drive rally for Citroen and you could tell. On narrow twisting mountain roads he was casually driving at one hundred fourty kph and when he managed to hit one eighty he proudly pointed to the speedometer. Now he doesn't race anymore because he got married and rally is to dangerous. He was quite rich, he travelled all around the world. He just got back from Thailand a month or two ago. Last crewmember was Sayed who played Eminem and Iranian pop on car's stereo and when we passed a military checkpoint he was shouting at them "Fuck Basij! Fuck Sepah!" through the closed window.

We never got to the river. They did not have a map nor a knowledge how to get there. Asking corner boys at the every corner did not work either. Upon recommendation of a mobile phone we end up having picnic at the ostrich and fish farm in a spectacular valley. Genuine Iranian Picnic goes like this: first you pitch a tent and then you grill a chicken. You make tea all the time, smoke the water pipe (surprisingly not all Iranians smoke it), bash the government, Basijis, Sepah and the like and then in the late afternoon you climb one of the nearby hills.

And of course, when a foreigner takes part in Genuine Iranian Picnic he has no choice but to stay a night at one of the locals' home.