Narelle and I would like to invite you to follow our trip to the Middle East this March and April. We hope you enjoy the blogs we post as we travel around this beautiful part of the world.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Sunny Kandovan...

After afternoon and evening of rest we headed off this morning to Kandovan, the Cappadocia of Iran. We had extremely high hopes for this known gem of northern Iran and its beauty did not fail to wow us...! Little needs to be written as the pictures speak for the unusualness of this village and the resilience of a population who have elected to carve their homes out of these strange conical-shaped geological formations, and yes they still live in them (they were even carving new ones!)

The town was divided into two the older higher section with houses carved out of the sandstone and the lower more modern section where most of the shops and everyday business takes place.

Occasionally we caught glimpse into the homes and they appeared to have very low ceilings and two to three rooms that went well back into the sandstone formation. Some were two or three stories, a marvel of carving professionalism. The picture above is actually one big home. The animals slept in a large room behind that wood door on the right.

A few modern touches are added to some homes such as this tiled staircase, little balcony and recessed windows as seen above.
Late April and the mountains above the village are still thickly covered with snow. Within the village there were still pockets of snow which made for slippery walking. Narelle had a few slides!!
Some of the rock homes even had stone extensions added to them. On the lower right appeared to be this lady's new sun room!
 

 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow !!

Gary

Anonymous said...

Wonderful descriptions and photos. When you travelled to Kandovan ... where did you leave from (from Rasht?) and how long did it take(by bus?) - it looks so interesting. Did you stay in one of the troglodyte villages? Thanks for sharing your travels. Liz

Luxx Press said...

Good article..





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