I Love Kashan

Kashan is a fabulous city I enjoyed so much during my visit here. Many tourists may think it’s a tiny city so they skipped it on way from Tehran to Isfahan. Though I spent two full days here, I would still prefer to spend a couple of days more to explore All the traditional houses as each of them has its special taste, history and unique attractions differentiate itself from the others.

2 Day Itin : Tabatabaei Natanzi Historical House > Sultan Amir Ahmad hammam > Aqa Bozorg mosque > Noushabad Underground City , Water Reservoir , Ice House > Maranjab Desert & Namak Lake Salt lake > Bazar of Kashan > Fin Garden

Darbebagh Residence :

I arrived Kashan from Qazvin through Qom in the late evening. I was very glad that my cross-city driver Morteza (he was driving me for 5 days already in my earlier journey) invited me to his house in his home town Kashan for a tea and finally a simple dinner with his family in his cozy place in Kashan. Though their whole family didn’t speak English, we had a great evening by using international language (gestures) as well as google translate. I enjoyed so much my time with the local family. Morteza and his family are very kind people and they have very lovely kids too. After the dinner, I arrived my “hotel” in Kashan old city area. The place was called Darbebagh Residence. This was a Kashan Traditional House which means very subtle entrance in a narrow old city street, the “house” was built by digging downward so be prepared to walk down some narrow stairs to arrive a very beautiful persian garden style courtyard. I am glad my room was by the courtyard which was very comfortable and relaxing in the evening. My bathroom was also well equipped and clean. Room size is reasonable. I travelled solo but I booked couple/twin rooms as they won’t normally offer single room with private bathroom 🙂 . This place is very lovely to get an experience to live in Kashan style traditional house.

Simple but very tasting local family dinner

Tabatabaei Natanzi Historical House

My first stop in the morning was this amazingly built Kashan traditional house. As i mentioned earlier, when you were outside the house, you would never imagine inside was so beautiful. This was the Kashan way to avoid drawing attention from outside for safety reason. After I entered the humble and hidden entrance, i was like , oh my god !!! The house was built around 4 beautiful courtyards. The biggest courtyard had a very beautiful fountain as part of the traditional persian garden setup. Going inside of the summer hall, winter halls and various chambers, My eyes couldn’t have chance to blink once and my jaws were down. And I just keep saying “oh my god, was it really a private house for normal business man?” It looked like a palace to be honest. The interior architecture was fascinating and details. There would never be void at the ceilings which were always filled up with perfectly organised art work. The mirror room hall was great but I did enjoy every part of the house. This was designed by the master Ustad Ali Maryam who also had other master pieces of Persian houses in Kashan that you should also play visits if time allows. Recommended to spare a bit more time so you could visit every spots of it (assume those are open to visit). So you could visualise with some imagination how’s a rich family enjoyed their life in a Kashan house which was beautifully designed while extremely practical and functional. Btw, everything was built based on a religious and cultural traditions too. As I mentioned earlier, different door knobs for men/women, the main entrance will never be the courtyard for women and kids, there were always separated with another back courtyard. Different houses had different design, but the social implications were all well considered by the designer.

Sultan Amir Ahmad hammam

I was then heading to another hamman. Though there were different hamman in different cities in Iran, I would think it’s always worth visiting as different tribes or areas could have different decoration, level of details as well as the preservation level. Indeed, a private guide went along did help as he explained to me many stories happening here so i could visualise with imagination like watching the real history. I particularly love the rooftop of this hamman. That’s very cute and I had a moment felt like I was on the roof top of Casa Mill in Barcelona by Gaudi. Any Chance Gaudies was also inspired by Persian(very hypothetical thought) . Though there were lots of glasses on rooftop to bring in sunlight into the hamman, you could not peek through these glasses to the hamman, don’t bother trying , gentlemen. Nearby some lovely mini abandoned ice houses to have a look. But don’t walk inside as it’s not maintained and made by adobe, it could collapse or some pieces could fall off .

Aqa Bozorg Mosque

I like so much this mosque as it offered a very peaceful feeling to me. It’s a mosque being described as “the finest Islamic complex in Kashan and one of the best of the mid-19th century”. The complex has four storeys while you were entering from the 2nd floor. The mosque design is perfectly symmetrical no matter you observed from the main entrance or in front of the mihrab. Don’t stay only outside, I felt so calm when walking into the mosque and there were lot of beautiful carvings on the wall and ceilings, make sure you reached the rear part till the mihrab that i found fascinating to learn more stories here with my guide

Abbasian Historical House

I went to this place for lunch. This is a quite a big interior hall you found lots of benches you could sit comfortably and eat there. You could find different tourists here too. Funny enough, they would ask for your nationality and bring you your national flag on your table during your meal. Probably to show how international they are. 😛

Noushabad Underground City

I would definitely recommend a visit , staying inside, walking through the tunnel, see all those different water level marks after reforming , how smart people were to develop water reservoir with wind tower refreshing system and listen to the private guide with the interesting stories about why the place was developed. I ended up also visited the main city gate supposed to link to this underground network (of course drive there as not all part of this underground city were well maintained nor open to visitors).

I copy below from wikipedia to give you some idea what’s this place about : QUOTE : ” The underground city of Ouyi (Noushabad), located 5km north of Kashan, Isfahan province, is considered a notable piece of ancient architecture. As Noushabad city is located in the central desert region of Iran, it experiences harsh weather. During the day, Noushabad has a very hot temperature and during the nights it gets notably cold. The reason why this city is called Noushabad (meaning the ‘city of cold tasty water’) is because in ancient times, one of the Sassanian kings who were passing through this area stopped here to drink water from a well and he found this water extremely clear and cold. Therefore he ordered the building of a city around this well and named it Anoushabad, which eventually turned into Noushabad. One reason for this underground city being built is thought to be to offer an escape from the high daytime temperature of the region. However the main reason that the underground city of Noushabad was carved stemmed from the fact that in the past, this region was insecure, suffering from raids, and by forming an underground chain of passages beneath the entire city, the inhabitants could shelter there during such attacks. Through these passages they could reach any spot in the city without being seen.The depth of this underground city varies from 4 to 18 meters. To reach the underground city there were several different openings. Some of these openings were located inside the houses of people and others were located in important gathering places, such as the main fort just outside the city. People could live in the underground passages for several days without the need of to go outside.There are three levels in this underground city, planned in such a way that going to the different levels required moving from down to up. This made it easier for the people sheltering in the underground city to prevent enemies from getting to the upper levels. Another interesting feature of their architecture was the curvy passages that made it possible for the inhabitants to ambush enemies. Furthermore there were several other tricks that were used to resist against the enemies, for instance digging deep holes in the middle of the rooms and covering them with rotating stones that would fall down if anyone stepped on them.

“UNQUOTE

Maranjab Desert and Namak Lake

Kashan is in the dessert area, of course i would like to explore the beautiful sand dunes and salt lake. As i travelled solo, I had to hire a private driver (he didn’t speak my language ) to drive me to various interesting spots in the salt lake and the desert (no taxi to go there as for permitted driver only). He then dropped me there and I spent my many hours there as if I was the only person in the world. That was seriously an amazing experiences. I love so much the salt lake though when i arrived it’s dry season so there were not yet reflect like during the wet seasons. But it’s amazing to be on a salt lake with a jeep. My driver looks old but when he drove he drove like a jeep racer. His driving skills were amazing on all these special terrain without an actual road or road sign. After the salt lake visit, i was spending time walking around the sand dunes after he dropped me at one spot, he showed me that i could go anywhere around as long as i know how to come back to his jeep. So , I spend hours walking, running, rolling, sleeping “swimming” , photo shooting on different forms of sand dunes. That’s amazing colour and beautiful scene during day time (i could not imagine how would it be at night though)

Bazar of Kashan

After my driver dropped me back to the hotel. I was thinking to go out alone at night to explore the Bazaar. Seriously, the old city at night consisted of small adobe corridor look like deserted place, when you walled on the corridor, you heard your own breathing sound only. I asked the hotel in advance to assure it’s safe to go out even at dark for a solo woman, and asked the hotel staff to examine my dress code before I went out to assure it respected the local area rule . By following the hotel staff instruction, i managed to find the long bazaar finally. The only issue for me was I had zero clue how to cross the roads as there were no street lights and way too may cars which never stopped and driving zigzag. I had stood there and waited for a while until i saw some local were crossing the street then i jumped in quickly and follow. The Bazar was very nice with lots of local goods. Indeed i was falling in love so much with everything about rose and rose water. Bought many dried rose teas and some perfume. Funny enough , those people didn’t speak well english but there were trying to sell me rose related products. One guy was trying to sell me something like rose essence and he told me it would help for arousing better sex experiences. I was laughing as the last time I heard something like that before was during my travel in India 15 years ago, I didn’t expect I would be offered the same type of products here in Kashan . Huh, unfortunately , wrong target customer, I focused on my tea and perfume only. Overall, I enjoyed so much the bazar as when you walked through from one zone to another, I kept finding different old beautiful and artistic architecture just above my head in the daily casual local market.

Mahinestan Raheb Hotel – Hotel Cafe and Hotel Restaurant

After shopping I was a bit hungry and I located by chance this hotel near the place i stayed. This hotel looks super nothing outside but extremely beautiful inside (but it’s fully booked that my guide could not book for me). The cafe at the persian garden courtyard was fascinating at night time. You were drinking some nice local drinks/tea/snacks/cakes surrounding the fountain with relaxing breeze and moonlight reflection from the fountain. That’s superb experience. I was in fact also very hungry and I decided to go to their restaurant first before coming back for the tea outdoor for the night view. When I went into the restaurant , it was very beautifully decorated and like a fine dining place. Staff were very nice to me as you know not every time when the restaurant staff seeing solo female tourist will behave the same especially some man waiter seem like they didn’t even want to serve you (only a very limited cases but it happened to me at some big cities in Iran, anyway, solo female travel is less straightforward here). This place was amazing. And the food here was great and I was able to order a “B-E-E-R” , yes a non-alcoholic one. What a nice day ending with a lemon “beer” in a fine dining place with good food following a desert and drink outside a persian garden. That’s definitely amazing! Super recommended pls !

Fin Garden

Seriously, before i visited this place, didn’t expect a garden would be that beautiful and regarded as the Unesco Heritage Site. The garden was designed back for Shah Abbas I in the 16th century. The Garden structure was amazingly symmetrical , the fountains were filled by spring-fed water with turquoise colour. One fascinating thing my guide showed me was how the fountain with water pillars coming out? I am a challenging person and always asked very difficult questions. I wonder how come there were electricity back in that old days for the fountain, the guide demonstrated carefully to me how they do with it. I was like, that’s completely based on physics and mathematics! There were not even mechanics or any sort of electricity required. The very slightly levelled water pipe being fed with spring water were having different equally distanced holes on the upper surfaces. Normally, no water will come out from these holes. However, As long as you close the far end pipe mouth with a cover, the water flowing down with same speed will then go out from the holes like water pillars and that’s so beautiful as all the water pipes are going up the same height depending on how you control the covering of the mouth of the pipe. I was super glad my guide who demonstrated to me as I realised some guide didn’t even know how persian garden secret work did and answered me some random bluff. The garden was full of beautiful trees having been growing since hundred years ago. There were very beautiful pavilions that you would find beautiful paintings on the ceilings and some even with half-naked women paintings that would be one of the very rare ones not being covered from Qajar period onwards. A lot of interesting stories you probably could hear here. There was also a hamman nearby which in turn was a murder “crime scene” of an important prime minister . You can get in and heard the full story about the history back then.

Overall It’s too short time in Kashan and next time i would definitely like to come back to visit the other famous traditional houses I missed this time and make some revisits. I would also like to enjoy a bit some relaxing tea / cake time here. After Kashan, I was heading to Abyaneh – the famous historical village. I am going to write about it in my coming posts. Stay tuned !