Day Tour around Yazd

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Yazd is a small city so for one of the days we decided to book a tour to visit sites outside of the city.

Our first stop of the day was at Kharanagh, an abandoned village in the middle of the desert in Iran. I walked along the cobblestone streets of this old yet beautiful adobe-like village and got lost on the many alleys leading to the different parts of town. The best part was that there wasn’t anybody around; when we got there there were a couple of tourists but then it looked like the whole village was left to ourselves.

The iconic pomegranate tree

Then we moved on to the famous chak chak village, the most sacred of the mountain shrines of Zoroastrianism. I did not know about it until we got there and our driver told us the story behind it. Apparently there was once a princess being chased by the Arabs so in order to escape she climbed the mountain and it opened up to give her shelter. The main attraction to see in chack chak is the water dripping from the mountain, story goes that it is the tears of the mountain crying in remembrance of the princess.

We climbed up the many stairs and finally arrived to the top where one could pay and go see how the water dripped down. I decided not to pay since we could see it from where we were standing! haha

The crew

The view from up high!

By then it was lunch time and our driver took us to a traditional Irani restaurant where I could eat nothing but salad. Literally they did not have even one vegetarian dish. I asked how much was the salad bar and they told me 60,000 rials ($1.50) so I said I would get salad. I ate cucumber, tomatoes, and some kind of coleslaw. I served very little and went to the bar 4 times, literally getting the last 2 times 5 pieces of tomatoes and 5 of cucumbers. While we were sitting I saw people get mountains of salad, the people carrying the plates had to balance very well so their salad wouldn’t drop, I thought it was funny and kind of weird. It wasn’t until I was going to pay that they told me I had to pay 4 salads because I went 4 times! hahaha I couldn’t believe it, I complained about the size and at the end the guide told me to pay whatever I wanted! haha

Traditional style Iranian restaurant

Kent working hard for hiz dizi

From lunch we went to Meybod where we visited the Narim Castle, the oldest mud brick castle in Iran. The entrance fee of the castle was 150,000 ($4) which doesn’t sound like much but you add up 4 entrances in a day it comes up to $16, more than double my daily budget so I decided to skip it. I sat for a little bit and then thought it wasn’t smart to just sit and wait for others when I could go and explore around it. I went out and it was funny to see that I could see exactly the same from the castle than from the street, the only difference was that I was not walking on the actual castle.

I spy Matthias and Kent

The last stop of the day was Caravanserai Shah Abbasi, a roadside inn used for caravaners to stop and rest. The architecture of the place was really beautiful, the symmetry of the place was unreal.

Across the street was an Ice-house, a structure used previously I think to store ice throughout the year. Honestly I wasn’t really paying attention to the guide but when the guys went in I said I would skip it and they were all like: “Have you seen one before? This is so cool”… It wasn’t… I wasted 100,000 rials!

All in all I enjoyed the tour, mostly the first village! I thought it was the perfect little escape from Yazd.

About Post Author

Andrea

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!