Weekend of Adventure

Last weekend was amazing.

On Friday I jumped into a minibus with a big bunch of people I'd never met (and three I had met, to be fair), and drove off into the Iranian morning.

We drove for hours, climbing higher and higher mountain roads that seemed to get windier the higher we got. We stopped halfway for breakfast, overlooking a plain, complete with a lake and the most incredible snow-capped mountains in the background.



The drove some more and ended up in this little village. This village and it's inhabitants are the custodians of the most magnificent waterfall I have ever seen. Surrounded by apple orchards, giant cliffs rose up out of the earth, providing the melting snow an avenue to race down and fall from.

We drove some more, heading to another wee village on another mountain side. We unpacked the bus and headed for a little clearing, where we built a fire to cook our chicken on.

After a great hot meal, and some well-timed rain, we piled back into the bus, full fat and happy (and damp) to tackle the mountain roads home again.

We piled out of the bus in a mad rush, because by that time we were terribly late for our next adventure - an Iranian wedding.

We raced home, and I found myself squeezing into a red dress, my hair was primped, my face was painted, and suddenly we were racing to the other side of town. Finally, painfully, we arrived, 20 minutes away from the end of the proceedings.

It was a segregated wedding, so all the women-folk could dress in their finest clothes without the men ogling them. We walked in to see a hall filled with literally hundreds of women - a living, breathing rainbow of colours. There was more make up in that room than the storeroom of Myer, I swear.

They saved us some food, so we ate, and a bottle of the hardest liquor on offer: orange soft-drink, did the rounds of meeting family, and then all of a sudden it was over.

It was an incredibly intense day, but every minute was amazing.