Home > Notebook > Wind Towers, Gaudí on LSD

Yazd is quite pleasent town. The only thing missing is proper park for hanging out in which you could wait till the midday heat passes – more than forty centigrades is common. Old city is huge, flat, disorienting and seemingly created for getting lost and remminds medinas in Morocco. There is a badgir on every roof. Or so called wind tower. Ingenious contraption that catches wind and directs it into the houses taking it over a pool of cold water. Thus cooling the interior. Today, the badgirs are not used anymore. Air-conditioning cools more (it is not as healthy though). Two knockers on every door – one for men, other for women – are no longer used. Intercom and CCTV are order of the day.

City's most famous sight is Amir Chaqmak Complex. Iranians gather there once a year and mourn Husayn bin Ali. Its roof looks as if designed by Gaudi on LSD.

I made a daytrip from Yazd. In very capitalist style I hired car with a driver. First to Kharanaq village. Close to hundred abandoned houses, quietly falling apart. People moved to new village of the same name just few meters away. Apart from the houses you will stumble upon a caravanserai that has been recostructed so well it looks brand new. The most entertaining thing is the shaking minaret though. You climb all the way to the top (if you fit, it is very tight squeeze) and than you just lean and minaret starts to shake.

From Kharanaq it is just a short hop to Chak Chak. Zoroastrain temple of fire in middle of desert in which it is all about water that drips to strategically placed buckets.

And then it was Meybod. They have the usual collection of caravanserais, ice-houses and mosques but most interesting is pigeon tower. It used to house about 4000 pigeons, kept there for guano. Today you will see there only few stuffed specimens. And this is one the very few buildings that I found more interesting from inside than from outside.