How do I feel about my solo (female) travel in Persia?

Fabulous & Memorable trip ! In this post, I first focus on summarising my general feeling /experience / perception about my 19 days solo travel in Persia. I captured general thoughts applicable to all gender except the dress code was more related to woman. For details of site attractions, please refer to my other posts. Feel free to let me know if you think of other aspects of questions as a solo traveler, happy to share / exchange more thoughts with people planning visits or revisits to this beautiful country.

About pre-trip fact finding
About Hijab (head scarf) for women and fun stories
About Dress Code for female
About Nail Polish and Cosmetics
About Going Around Alone
About Eating in restaurant/tea house/cafe alone
About Hand Gestures
About Locals in general
About Money Exchange
About Shopping Norm
About Tipping System
About Accomodation
About Transportation

1. About pre-trip fact finding process:

Before my trip, I had been a bit nervous. Pre-trip preparation to Persia is quite different from my usual preparation for any other countries. It was not easy for me to access to “reliable” information to give me an idea of what to expect if travelling solo in Persia as a woman. Indeed, there were some info here and there but very minimal. Not only this, from the internet , there were always two camps : one is appreciating for everything while the opposite was criticising everything. Lacking of data source (not like the destinations) made it more difficult to form a proper view as an outsider.

Outside iran, in fact there has not been enough objective and factual information about what’s the latest situation of the country. For example , there were sad stories about the flash flood in noruz just before my visit, I had been searching for latest news in public media but there were not many data available to allow me checking out the situation of my potential destinations. With the panic, what I could do was to raise questions in some Facebook forums (e.g. ” See you in iran” , a site getting higher response rate) and hoped to see if anyone could share some local latest status.

Finally, I decided to still go on my trip since most responses in the Facebook forum suggested the situation could become better. And to plan my trip, my main sources to plan my trip was google, youtube, trip advisor, google map and lonely planet. But after all, the most helpful source was my friend who just came back from Iran holiday few months back who gave me a great comfort about what I should expect as a tourist in Persia. So, I decided to keep my solo trip on !

2. About Hijab (head scarf) for female and Fun Stories :

It’s my first experience to wear hijab. Here I shared with you some wearing styles and most importantly funny experiences I had about hijab wearing:)

I flew in to Iran through Doha to Tehran so I kept observing when did people start to wear hijab from Doha airport. Finally , I noticed most people started to put it on when the flight started to land Tehran. Indeed, I followed suit. To be honest , it’s definitely not easy to keep the hijab on for a whole day without it sliding down. That said, it’s also a special experience and somehow wearing hijab made me feel more feminine than I used to be especially there are may colourful head scarf you can pick from. Let me explained a few styles I tried :

Style 1 : Spread open the headscarf and lay it at the top of ur head. Let the two sides of scarf (with almost the same length) falling evenly alongside your two cheeks and in front of your shoulders I.e not crossing your front neck. This was in fact the best for me to hold the scarf on head without falling down, the main reason was gravitational force to pull the two sides balanced. But it’s not easy to keep this everywhere especially when it’s windy 😉

Style 2: Same as style 1 as first step, then keep one side of scarf on front shoulder and the other side at back shoulder crossing the neck. It’s slightly better but my scarf slides down often still.

Style 3: Same as style 1 as first step , after that, cross the two sides of your scarf in front neck and then throw them to back of your shoulders. This was the worst style as the head scarf fell down very easily like every 15 mins 😦

Style 4: Wrap the whole scarf all the way around your head (above eye brow), covering all your hair and the ears then tied with a knot. It’s pretty stable and won’t fall down again, but I personally didn’t prefer this style for myself 😉 . Practicality and beauty are never totally good friends ? 🤔

Enhanced Style : I was sharing my difficulties to the wife of my local driver , she was very kind to offer me a scarf clip when I visited their house for dinner. That’s really useful tool to pair with Style 2 and 3 mentioned above. Still, it just helped to delay the scarf from sliding off that quickly , it would not be able to stop it from sliding down at all. Maybe only I wasn’t used to it even after three weeks

After all, the material of the scarf counts. Use less smooth ones will be easier to hold for longer on the head . Silk is not preferable in this situation.

Fun Stories : Remember ! Even you were going around within your hotel or guest houses , as long as you were outside your room, assure the full dress code and hijab on. It took me some time to adjust. Share with you three interesting scenarios I experienced about wearing hijab

Scenario 1:

One moment of time I already finished shower in my hotel room. Suddenly , hotel WiFi didn’t work , when I called reception , they could not fix it and requested me to bring down my phone to the reception to check the settings. I told him ok but 1 second after . . .

I said ” Oops wait a minute if I come out to lobby , would it mean I have to be on hijab and full baggy clothing gear? “

The reception said ” yes ma’am”

I said “oh it’s not convenient as I already finished shower”

The reception : ” Ma’am, you can send someone else down here”

I : Um I was travelling solo so I was the only person.

The reception: “Oh…”

Anyway I gave up the wifi access for that night finally as I didn’t want to gear up with all clothes/Hijab and came back to shower again. I just let it be.

Scenario 2:

I was ordering room service to deliver a hot camomille tea to my room as I was a bit sick due to the cold weather. When the door bell rang, I rushed to open the door and forget I was in pyjama i.e. shorts and no head scarf. The staff was also a man and he looked away from me embarrassingly. I was so nervous to take the tray , thank him and immediately close the door. Gosh … …

Scenario 3:

One of the evening when I was in Yazd in my hotel room. I just walked out from shower and sat on my bed , suddenly , all lights were off and no more electricity inside the room . I tried to open the window facing the hotel courtyard but it’s all dark without any light. It was really too dark that I couldn’t seriously even see my fingers when I put my palm in front of my face . I was really scared and immediately searching for my mobile phone in the dark. Luckily I located it after a while and then I turned on the light from the mobile, ran to my door and opened it to check with reception what happened (the reception desk is just two steps from my door luckily). Funny enough, when I stepped out to the reception , everyone was using their cell phone light shining on each other’s face to see who was talking . They told me it’s normal when some repairing work happened and would resume within 30mins to an hour. I was like “is it normal normal?” , the receptionist told me yes it’s normal for recovery time but not normal to have repairing work. I was like…ah ok. At the moment I was a bit relieved and suddenly both him and I realised I was not in hijab and I was wearing sleeping gear I.e shorts . Oh my god, then we exchanged embarrassing glance and I said ´excuse me ´and ran back to my room :p . Haha it’s really interesting and emergency experience somehow haha

My dress code with hijab – trying to make Zilo

3. About Dress Code for female :

I had prepared myself a baggy dark green long dress with long sleeves. On top of that, I also wore full leggings and sports shoes to cover my body. (Note , i could wear leggings since my outermost dress was quite long reaching below knees, If your dress is shorter, you may want to consider loose pants instead). To be honest, if people didn’t notice well my face , I dressed like a complete local except I had my tourist strap bag in front and sport backpack at my back 🙂 . For really cold days, I would keep my normal Columbia hiking jacket on top of my baggy long dress. Originally I was worried I couldn’t have top jacket as outermost layers , but then I confirmed ok as long as I was still having my baggy long dress covering my bottom and legs .

I was a bit cautious as a female traveler, on one occasion, before I went out from hotel to explore in the dark , I especially asked the receptionist was I safe to go outside in dark alone as solo women near the hotel. She asked me to turn around and examined my dress code, then told me I dressed well respecting local rules so should have no concern even I came back like 10pm or 11pm. lol

4. About nail polish and cosmetics :

I know I was a bit silly to worry about this point. But before I visited Persia, somehow there were some websites saying female couldn’t wear nail polish. As I was used to having gel nail polish and that’s why I was worried did I need to remove the gel nail polish before I visited the country. Luckily , when I asked this silly question in a forum , many people told me that nail polish was very popular in Persia and my friend visited just half year earlier than me also mentioned she saw it’s very popular for local to have nail polish. Therefore, I was finally relieved. And I wanna say, I found many local women were very beautiful , stylish and that’s common for them to wear make up , nail polish etc. Local female were also wearing in a variety of beautiful and colourful head scarf and clothing. So I think tourists don’t have to worry about only wearing full colours , Persia is a colourful country ( just mindful to respect local rules if you are visiting some special sacred spots, then simple plain colour would be more appropriate)

5. About Going Around Alone :

Since I landed , I gradually realised most parts I travelled were very safe in fact. People were generally quite polite no matter they were young or old ( except in ticket offices in a couple of main sites people could be a bit rude). I travelled as solo woman, I could feel most men tried to keep a distant normally but I totally understood.

Local people were very curious toward tourists as in some places touristes were rare. Don’t be surprised people would like to say hello to you and ask you where are you from and do u like the country and then say welcome to you and leaving. Somehow there would also be some people asking to take photos with you . Some people maybe a bit shy and dare not ask to take photos with you but they would do selfie of them with you as photo background ;). I found this cute gesture a couple of times and then I simply helped by doing funny postures to make me this background more dramatic 🙂 . I feel local people are in fact very willing to be close to people coming from outside world . And some of them were even nicer towards tourists !

Just shared an interesting experience I had when I visited an important shrine . I followed local ladies to get through the security check and as usual I borrowed a tourist chador. When it’s my turn for security check, it’s almost like other shrine except I was asked a special question and below was the conversation :

Q- Security control / A – Me

Q: Are you travelling with a guide?

A: No, I am travelling alone.

Q: Aren’t you travelling with your father ?

A: No , I am not

Q: Brother ?

A: No No

Q: Husband ?

A: No , I am travelling alone only

Q : Ok, you can go in now

I was glad I could finally get in as I was worried when she asked me all these questions. I visited many shrines, that was the first time I was approached with these questions and since I didn’t speak Farsi, sometime it’s difficult to communicate. Luckily , the security control was very kind to check with me in a nice and caring way. She also helped me to fix my chador before I entered.

6. About Eating in Restaurant and/or Tea house alone :

Food is amazing in Persia. There are variety of cuisine. Please refer for my other posts for the good ones per location. Here, I wanna mentioned about some more practical tips here. For a very very good meal in a very nice restaurant for one person, the price is around US$5-10. You could also locate very good deals for most food in the city for less than a dollar (USD). So it’s your option to try what you like. Most food I tried, no matter which price range, are very clean and delicious. The ingredients they used are very fresh particularly vegetables, fruits, nuts and yogurt made dishes. But still be mindful, every city has some tourist traps, just check out with locals for recommendation or i found google map and trip advisor is very reliable.

7. About Hand Gestures :

Though among locals , they may shake hands , hugs or bisous on face when closed families or friends meet each other, generally shaking hands with tourists was rare except those were you tour guides , drivers or more westernised people. Men and women typically don’t shake hands with each other especially if you didn’t know each other before. That said, Iranians are very polite , they normally say thanks , hello or good bye by putting their palm on their heart to show their respect to you . That’s very nice too. And I learnt to do this instead of shaking hands when I visited around.

Local people don’t do much other hand gestures so I did avoid the usual two finger victory or thumbs up signs during my visit.

8. About Locals in general:

I felt most people I met on my journey were very nice. Indeed , my drivers and guide were nice normally. Other than that , some people (passerby’s) I bumped into on the street were usually polite. If you nodded your head with them, they usually nodded back with a nice smile. Sometime , they may be curious to talk to you and ask about your country. Even they didn’t speak English with you, but they may sometime wanna trigger a conversation by pointing at something.

I specially wanna say my driver driving me cross 4 cities is a very nice person too. He didn’t speak much English so a lot of time we used our gesture mix with a bit English to communicate. He was very kind to be and very attentive to assure I was good e.g. air-conditioning, snacks, rest stops, etc. He even invited me to visit his family for a cup of tea and it turned out his wife invited me to stay at their home for a family meal together. That’s definitely awesome and warm-hearted experience.

9. About Money Exchange :

I wasn’t quite sure where to exchange money and how much before i arrived. So I tried many different scenarios so here I would share my thoughts with you. It’s more about when, where and how much.

Airport – If you have a driver pick up from airport to hotel/town, I don’t think you need to rush to exchange in airport. And sometimes you landed in odd hours so not easy for you to carry the luggage to go here and there to locate and money exchange
Hotel – Normally, hotel could offer money exchange. But even big hotels, they may to be able to exchange big amount with you. Also, hotel exchange rate is not as good as legitimate money exchange shop. At the moment I was there, the exchange rate was around 120,000 Rials per 1 USD . But I could get 137,000 rials per 1 USD in money exchange shop. The hotel is honestly telling you their rate is worse.
Money exchange shops – please make sure you go to the legitimate one. See the exchange rate roughly above. However, this is now about WHEN you exchange. I was running out of cash one time in Shiraz and that was holiday eve’s afternoon. Since most exchange shops already closed, the only opening ones gave me very bad rate and rejected to take my small note i.e. no note less than 20 bucks. I was so pissed as it should not be like this for other shops. Anyway, the exchange rate come 130,000 rials per 1 USD
Streets – All local people remind me never try to exchange with people on street. Either the rate is not good, or there could be other risks and dangers. Just try to avoid them as normally they are crowded outside money exchange shop around noon time.
In Shops – this is much rare as normally the shop will ask you to go money exchange before purchasing from them. However, if you are purchasing goods up to certain amount, either the shops will accept euro and USD direct or one time i had an experience that the shop owner called for a bazaar person to come over for me to exchange the money and then purchase direct.
HOW MUCH? – This is an important question. My experience told me I didn’t need to exchange a lot right at the beginning. You see roughly the meal price above as i mentioned. You just need to take into account how much you may need for coming few days. As money exchange is really in every big city and tourist area. However, they don’t open in public holiday or close early on holiday eve, you need to make sure you have enough cash to pass through those days. That said, Hotel could also help you just with a less favourable rate. Again, depends on what type of hotel you stay in. For some smaller guest house, money exchange is not necessary available or they don’t have enough ready cash to exchange with you.

10. About Shopping Norm:

There are always different type of business men in every country. I like to visit those shops when I observed local people were interested to visit and buy from them as well. Since those shops were normally very reasonable in my experience. And they would not mark up the price to me even I was a tourist. I generally didn’t negotiate the price if I saw I was offered the same price as others. But sometimes I might negotiate a bit for very expensive items as advised by other local people. For those shops who could offered me a very clear best price they could offer, I would be ok to go ahead as I felt they were very genuine. That said , there were some shops not really that genuine so have to be cautious. Anyway, whether it’s reasonable price or not is subject to your own jugement , once you bought one thing, you already made your best decision based on what you knew that moment. So , I suggest not to compare prices anymore for what you had bought but more on next target on your shopping list ;). Also, I found all things i bought from Persia are very unique and special to me. That’s part of your experiences 🙂

11. About Tipping System :

I personally didn’t like tipping system like in some other countries that you were obliged to pay tips on top of charge and service fees. In Iran, there was less such thing. People were honest for accepting what they meant to put on the menu. If you would like to tip, they were happy . Even you didn’t tip, they were equally good to say bye to you. Generally , I didn’t have much issue except one time I was really upset about a bad experience. I was referred by my guide to a pickup hammam experience from Isfahan. I was told upfront not to expect it’s as spa experience in other countries. And my guide didn’t really link with them so she also told me upfront that I could check their website myself and decide. Ultimately It’s primitive style but why not give a try (price is not cheap / the price can allow me stay one night in a very nice hotel here. But still I prefer to give a try). Cool, let me do it. When I read the price online and I was expecting to pay their all-in -price and that’s in the confirmation call arranged by my guide. However , when I met the business runner upon pickup, he charged me 10per cent more. Since I was solo on his car, I didn’t want to argue and I thought ok then maybe that would be the tips for whoever helping me. He told me also if I liked the service with the lady after the hammam, I could choose to tip her or not. I didn’t response much as I paid him extra already as mentioned above. After the experience , personally I think the price was way too high for what they offered, but it’s an experience no matter good or bad, at least I know. Indeed , the actual duration was also half the time than I was told upfront. Anyway, when I was disappointed coming out, the next thing the business runner and the lady kept asking me 3-4 times “if you want you can pay tips to the lady” . I was like……. .Since I was in a remote place like 30mins from Isfahan and worried about my safety if they didn’t send me back to my hotel as the original package included. I just politely while firmly told them I did pay the full amount plus extra right before I arrived to the place and he could kindly help to give to the lady. Then , they let me go and asked me to refer more friends to come in the future. I wasn’t sure this was common but I believe and hope this was exceptional cases as most people generally were not like this. Just be cautious !

A side note , for my cross cities taxi driver who was very nice, truly caring and helping me a lot with my heavy luggage for a four-day journey. I did offer some tips out from my own courtesy to thank him for his kind help though he never asked for such thing himself.

12. About Accommodation :

There are in fact variety of options of accommodation in Persia. As I am travelling solo and not yet knowing much about local culture before my visit. I preferred to have my own private bedroom and shower place so I have less concern about my belongings as well wear hijab and bagging clothes from room to the shared bathroom:) . Booking a hotel is not straightforward as for other countries say I cannot use the usual booking.com or airbnb. I did some research about accommodation for different cities and finally i decided to hire an experienced local Persia agent to arrange for my accommodation in different cities and also drivers that allow more flexibility as well as local recommendations. Please refer to my other posts for accommodation in each city. Here I would like to share the type of accommodation I tried.

Hotel / Service Apartment – This is normally quite modern but there could be different standards. Normally in bigger cities like Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, you could locate easily good standard hotels. However, in some less touristic cities, locating a hotel is not easy. Even you locate the best one in the city, the standard is more like a simple guest house. But it’s an experience anyway . There are also service apartment style hotel and I specially like one i stayed in Isfahan which is very big apartment with a very big bedroom, living room, 2 bathrooms, big dining table. The chamber was really spacious. And the service apartment also provided instantly cooked breakfast with fresh ingredients. Therefore, I think service apartment is not bad here.

Traditional house – I personally like so much to stay in traditional houses in different cities. All of them are completely different style and i felt like many special experiences like living in the old days while still having up to date facilities. Many traditional houses are of very good hospitality too. If they are available, I would say I prefer staying in traditional houses than hotel. And most traditional houses have the persian garden ad court yard in the middle. Very lovely !

Eco lodges – I don’t know are these common in Persia. I did try one close to Kalout Desert which was quite nice. It’s very close to nature for sure but it’s ran by family. Food again was amazing and the stay was very cozy.

Caravanserai – This is the highlight in terms of accommodation. Bear in mind, it’s very fully booked most of the time. I was having a spot last minute. I didn’t manage to have a private big round rooms. Instead, i was staying in one of the wooden cabin arranged in the caravanserai. There was a shared bathroom that i had to pass through a public area and the court yard before I reached the shower place. There could be noises at the night as all the cabins are very close to each other. With all my description above, don’t think I didn’t like it. Instead, It’s the greatest experience i tried. I had a feeling i was in the middle of nowhere but on the old silk road caravanserai. I managed to watch the stars at the rooftop of the caravanserai at night time too. And in the morning, i enjoyed watching the desert from the rooftop again with my cup of self-prepared local tea with sugar. I would recommend if you could experience it.

Passport – Please note, somehow the hotels like to insist to keep your passport as they told me that’s by law. However, it only happened to certain standard of hotels. Traditional houses, service apartment and some other type of accommodation don’t require to keep your passport with them. They may need a copy but will not keep your passport.

13. About Transportation :

International flight – I landed Persia thru Tehran and left from there as well. However, i later realised international flights could fly to quite different cities but maybe less frequent or more expensive e.g. Shiraz and Isfahan. I flew in via Qatar airway so I needed to transit via Doha. But the overall experience was good. I understand there were other airlines you can consider e.g. Emirates, Turkish Airlines and also Russian Airlines. Bear in mind, airline is very straight about the luggage weight for international flight, if your luggage is over your ticket bearable weight, you will be asked to removed things or pay extra. The staff are very strict towards local as well as for tourists. And when you are departing from the country, it’s really recommended you arrive the airport much earlier as the queue to go through the luggage was really long and waiting time was unpredictably longer than usual. I observed many people got overweight and kept debating at the counter which lead to the long waiting time. And it happened not for one family, but many people as well.

Domestic flight – This is quite convenient. The checkin counter only open 1 hour before the flight but it’s very fast. And again, airline is quite straight to luggage weight. Be mindful about your class. That said, for obvious international tourist, i think they have some tolerance as long as your luggage is NOT more than international fight standard. If it’s above, you will be asked to removed things from your luggage or pay extra. Domestic flight ticket is not expensive and somehow it’s far much better than taking 9 hours drive between two cities. However, the flight wasn’t available every day and you need to call or read farsi to be able to arrange properly. I indeed asked my agent to help me arranging it.

Cross cities – I know there are train and overnight buses. As i travel solo and wanna visit some special sites falling between cities. I decided to ask my agent to arrange for me drivers to move between cities so that they can arrange some special site visits on my way. I still will do the same if I travel again as this is very convenient and save a lot of time. And i found lots of interesting thing on my way and the car can drop by anyway I like to explore too.

Within City – Indeed it’s very easy to choose to take a cab. You can use the local apps (like over) to call cab. But since I was travelling alone. My strategy was i would locate places i would like to go and found out nearby hotel or good restaurants nearby that area. So after i finished visit and i would prefer to walked to those restaurants or hotels to ask their help to order cab for me to return to my accommodation . It took more time but i found it’s relatively more reliable and safe considering i didn’t speak farsi with driver and worried i couldn’t communicate well my destination 🙂 . In Tehran, in fact you can take the subway which is easy.

Google map – EXTREMELY USEFUL!!! Indeed , you can download the local map apps. However, i fobbed google map is super precise even in very old cities with a lot of small branches of aisles. I was so impressed especially when i was in Yazd old city, google map could precisely showed me which small lane i was in. See below photos about those lanes i mentioned. Google map became my best friend in Persia (provided that you have internet signal though 🙂 )