Why should Iran be in your travel bucket list?

Well, recently, if you have paid attention to my entries, I have been writing a lot of lists and they have been quite popular. I guess it's because when it comes to it we always like to weigh the pros and cons of everything and then make up our minds.

I have been writing about Iran for a while now. Iran is a breathtakingly beautiful country, with such a rich culture and history that I could never possibly capture it fully. But I have been trying, for a while now, and I really really hope I did get to change a few perceptions or stereotypes about Iran, that was and still is my ultimate goal. In this piece I'm going to give as many benefits and advantages of traveling to Iran as I can. So this is going to be a really honest but rather general entry, let me know what you think. Let's get to it.

1) Rich culture and history of Iran

Iran, which was formerly known as the Persian Empire, has one of the richest cultures and histories in the entire civilization. Iranian culture goes back to about 2500 years ago and, in fact, the amount of historical sites in Iran is so many that you can't possibly cover all. One of the most famous empires were the Achaemenid Empire, one of the world's finest empires in history. The remains of their empire still are in Iran, in the former Persepolis, in actual Shiraz. I will cover it in depth later. Achaemenid goes back to about 2500 years ago but there are much more recent dynasties which I have written about as well, such as Qajar, Safavid and the latest one the Pahlavis.

(Remains of Perspolis in Shiraz)

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Honestly I don't think there's a way I could cover all, I haven't even been to half of it and I have been to a lot of different cities in Iran. The most historical cities are Isfahan, Shiraz and Yazd. Each of them so unique in their own way that you couldn't possibly find anywhere else in the world.

2) Traveling to Iran is cheap

Honestly it is as cheap as it gets in the Middle East. It is a perfect place for backpacking or elite traveling. I mean your ticket prices are probably the only costly thing depending on where you are coming from, but food prices and other costs related to traveling are really affordable and compared to other European countries or north america, much cheaper. I have included exact food and transport prices many times in my blogs, just a look at those and you can see I am pretty right, traveling to Iran is quite affordable.

(Public transport mediums, metro line in Tehran makes traveling as cheap as possible)

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3) Iran is visa free

Have you ever had the trouble of going through long embassy queues, interviews, spend a lot of money on all those embassy fees, just to get a visa to travel somewhere? Well, I know that, I have and honestly, it is not really fun. It is time consuming and you really gotta spend some money and need to get lots and lots of documents, you can still see I'm pretty salty about it. And turns out that you don’t have to go through any of these for Iran because Iran is visa free for almost all countries and nationalities. Thus, many can travel to Iran visa free and stay there for a month, some others will get a 30 day visa on arrival and only citizens of 13 countries need a visa to travel to Iran. Among the countries that require a visa are the citizens of the United States, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Canada, Iraq and a few more, making a total of 13 countries. Even these 13 countries can obtain a tourist visa with valid documentation.

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(A sample of visa issued for an American citizen)

The airport immigrations are very efficient and you won’t run into any problems at all. I have never seen a tourist complain about that; on the land borders it could take a little bit of time but it is still quite easy to come. I know, who knew traveling to Iran could be this easy.

4) Iranians are really hospitable

Ok, I don’t really know how to explain this one so you guys would understand just how hospitable they are; you really need to get into details so you guys would fathom it, I'm not even kidding. Persians are so so nice to tourists and foreigners it will really surprise you. It is in our culture to be extremely nice and kind to our guests, it is one of our cultural values and since tourists are considered guests too, we do everything we can to be nice to them too.

Honestly sometimes Persians are nicer to tourists than to me, I am jealous. No, but honestly ask anyone who has ever set foot in Iran and they will confirm this for sure. Although there is a rigid language barrier, that doesn’t really stop Iranians from being helpful to tourists. But I'm not saying to be super trusting, as that is just not good. I'm just merely pointing out the hospitality of Iranians. I have so many personal experiences with tourists I met in Iran and they all told me the exact same thing, about how nicely they have been treated and how they never expected to be treated this way.

5) Iran is very diverse

First of all Iran is a really vast country - being the world’s 17 th largest country really does pay off. The north and the south have a lot of weather and landscape differences. This diversity makes the country even more exciting to visit. Let’s imagine there’s snow in one part, and then the south has such a mild weather you could walk around with a T-shirt. The north is humid and green, there are deserts in the center, the south has it's long palm trees and the beach smell; you get the picture. Apart from the diversity, the fact that has all 4 seasons, shows that it always has something different to offer, something new.

(Winter in Iran, Shemshak ski resort)

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(Shemshak- Dizin road in summer, the change of seasons)

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I put a lot of thought in to this entry and it turned out even better than I expected. So I hope you guys enjoy it.

Cheers

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