2023-05-27. Tikab - Saqqez

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

I had a bad night waking up often but in the morning my wrist doesn't hurt so much, I take a Paracetamol and put on Physiocrem.

I haven't done half a kilometer of the route and I hear a crash and see that I've lost a suitcase, I go to look for it, I place it and check the anchors, it seems to be fine, it must have been misplaced yesterday with the missing one.

I arrive at Takht-e Soleyman (Solomon's throne) a large religious complex with an important Zoroastrian shrine where the flame was kept alive and a temple dedicated to Anahita (powerful goddess related to water) and an immense wall that protected the whole environment
It is all quite damaged, leaving only some sections of the wall and the foundations where the temples were supposed to be. There is also the large inland lake.

Very close is Zendane Soleiman (Solomon's prison), a spectacular volcanic crater 100 meters high and a diameter of 65 meters opening from where you can observe the immense hole 80 meters deep. I should walk up to the top of the crater but I'm too lazy, I take a photo from below and continue the route.

I arrive in Saqqez where I have a basic hotel under control, where you can sleep and leave.
I settle in and go out for a walk around the city. Leaving the hotel I see that I am in the street of car shops, one next to the other and there are at least 30 businesses, the salespeople can be seen inside playing backgammon or outside in the street all gathered in the around a table they drink tea in the shade.

When I've walked enough to get hungry for dinner, I go into a restaurant and, as almost always, they only have kebab with rice and chicken with rice.
I order the chicken and a 7up and to shorten the wait they offer me some olives with olivada.
They bring me tomato soup and a plate with chicken, rice, cucumber and tomato.

While I'm eating, people keep arriving and the owner updates him, "from Catalonia?" says one, adding Catalonia and Kurdistan are brothers and .......

When leaving I ask how much it costs and he doesn't want to pay, I give him 2 million bills and he only takes 1.

I leave the main streets to go through alleys where there are no shops and lots of people chatting and drinking, children playing football in the middle of the street putting stones to mark the goals, three children having a war throwing stones at each other in another street lonely