2023-05-19. Tehran - Asara

Iran 2023 (Iran - Iraqi Kurdistan - Turkey - Greece - Albania - Italy)

After breakfast I go to Sa'dabad to the museum of the Omidvar brothers where today between 9 and 13 and Issa will be there and we stayed to meet, I have expressly stayed more days than the account in Tehran for this meeting, we hope that nothing goes wrong
https://irandoostan.com/omidvar-brothers-world-travelers/

Issa goes to the museum on the 1st Sunday of every month but on Wednesday when I went there I spoke to Naghmeh who said that she would be there today but that she better call the museum (+98 21 2704 0306) before going there but I decide that I would go there directly, if it is good and if not.

Well yes, everything has failed. I arrive, I ask for Issa and they tell me that he will not come today, I tell them that I have been waiting 5 days in Tehran to be able to see him and talk to him. In the end they give me his phone number, I call him and he says he can't go out today, maybe tomorrow. I understand that he must not be in very good health, he is 98 years old.
THE sound is very solemn, he is interested in my trip, I explain to him that I am from Barcelona, that I come from Ricardo Fité (https://noledigasalamama.com/) and that I am traveling through Iran.
We wish each other luck and say goodbye.
Pity.

I continue the planned route all the way around Damavand, first on road 77, which in many sections is a motorway, then turn towards road 240, which is already a more interesting mountain road.
There is a lot of traffic on the motorway, today is Friday and people are out for the day. From time to time you can see the Damavand half covered by the clouds but magnificent and majestic and I stop to admire it like many other people do, we say hello and share photos.

In the middle of the morning I stop at a roadside place with tables outside in the shade and buy a coffee and industrial pastry and then an ice cream.
A group of girls approaches, they seem to be doing a school assignment: where are you from, where are you going, do you like Iran?, why?, ...
Then they invite me with some cherries and some apricots. A woman from the next table calls me "tourist?" and I answer her "yes, traveler" and she says "like Marco Polo?", I answer "no, no, in any case a smaller Marco Polo" and I laugh, she laughs too and when I leave she greets me "bye, Marco Polo" , hahaha.

Shortly after I take a road that goes west, parallel to the Caspian, fun, narrow and with bends that climbs little by little until I reach the Lavash Pass at 3,170 meters, too bad it's raining and you have to be careful.
It's cool, I went from 24 to 8°C and the landscapes are spectacular, too bad it's too cold to camp up here.

Once I find the road that goes from N to S, from the Caspian to Tehran, I have to follow it for a few kilometers to take a detour later but because they are doing construction and there is a lot of traffic and that the two lanes have turned into a one-way road on the way back to Teheran I pass the break, it's hard to find a place to camp and when I see a picnic spot I stop there, it looks like a controlled place since there is an entrance gate with people I know approach me, I tell them I'll sleep with a tent and they point me towards the river.
The place is good enough, it is quiet and beautiful, although the murmur of the fast waters is sometimes overshadowed by the noise of the cars on the road.
I'm making dinner and a couple comes up to me and they give me a fluffy bread, very good, I eat half of it for dinner and keep the other half for breakfast tomorrow.
Then I find out that this place is the camping area Dr. Motamed Garden, which costs 50,000 Tomans and which people find too expensive.

Before I go to sleep I talk to my family and friends to tell them about the disappointment with Issa but which I soon got over because I was back on the road and in the mountains.