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Yes touring is hard work and for the past ten weeks we have been under the watchful eye of one guide or another. In fact, since we left home twenty-three guides have looked after us with varying degrees of commitment and interest in what we want to know and learn.
But it was our guide Rasoul and our driver Hamid in Iran that had the greatest impact. Rasoul’s knowledge was exemplary and Hamid’s driving was excellent, but it was the other little things that happened like finding us a coffee shop when Bruce was suffering caffeine withdrawals, a watchful eye when I went to a public toilet, without imposing. The many jokes and laughs we shared during kilometres of driving, the courtesy extended by both of them.
Choosing a dinner venue was fun. They’d chatter in Persian and then present us with a heap of options. Plan A, plan B, plan C. Sometimes plan A didn’t work so it was plan B. One evening we got down to plan G and it wasn’t a good choice. Great venue but we sat in glass boxes in a beautiful garden with inadequate heating on a night where the temperature dropped to 0C. We never went as far as plan G again.
And with all the planning and also impromptu happenings I have began to feel like a twenty-something year old again. Throw away the shackles of age and conservatism and go with the flow! It’s fun.
Best guide and driver ever – in Iran
