All the photos here belong to Gonabad city and the towns around. This place has not inherited much from natural sources and is located in the middle of the desert, but that is its attraction: having one of the oldest qanats in the world to take water from underground, having a village famous for its warehouse, having untouched deserts and so on . Beside its ancient attractions, I have other reasons to like this place: its kind and honest people, its delicious food and the old houses that have been reconstructed to host tourists. As this city is where my ancestors used to live in, I go there time to time, photos here belong to three different travels, one is when my son was not born, one is when he was 2 years old and one is when he was 3 years old.
Ghasabe Qanat of Gonabad is one of the oldest and largest qanats in the world built in 700-500 BC. How people made it to excavate to that depth and make such long canals in that time is truly amazing, for example, it is still not completely discovered how they could breathe in such small deep canals while working.
Riab is a village close to Gonabad city with a very calm atmosphere. Walking through its pathways, it feels like returning to hundreds of years ago. The photo of the entrance gate is containing a sentence written in blue from Quran believed to keep people safe, the one in the middle is a cistern and the one on the right is a view of one of the village’s traditional hostels.
The tall structures behind me in 2 photos are ancient windmills that used to keep houses cold in hot deserts in summer. The machine I’m sitting behind is a sewing machine, I buy my towels from this place as they are made from wool and dry really well and if you wear them after a bath you feel a pleasant warm soft and light cloth on your skin.
The food on the table is Aash and Kashke Bademjan (Persian Eggplant Dip) with a local type of bread and it is served in an old house designated to tourists and guests and the handsome boy in the back is my son 🙂 . You can find a few of these tourist houses in Riab. I like Riab people as they are so kind and honest.
Mazare Soltani in Beydokht, located close to Gonabad city, is where five very important religious leaders are buried. It is an especially important place for people who believe in Sufism. I love the shrine’s calm and full of positive energy atmosphere.
Kakhk gristmill used to work by Kakhk waterfall. It is in the middle of a desert but close to the mountains. We went to an earthenware store and they were making things themselves so I asked to try it and they kindly guided me, so this is my first and last bowl so far and I seem so happy with it. I will take more photos of pottery stores if I go there again as one of this area’s souvenirs is earthware and there is a street full of these stores.
Mend is a small village close to Gonabad. There is a street full of people making earthware, shopkeepers are mostly really kind people and I buy a lot every time I go there. I never lose the chance to sit behind the wheel and make a very simple bowl asymmetric :D. Once I did it when I was young and the next time I had the pleasure of my kid helping me by damaging what I made 🙂 .
Saffron crocus is picked right after it has grown enough and then the saffron threads are separated from petals. Picking and separation of saffron is practically done in its traditional way as these flowers are so delicate and quickly wither. The best saffron in Iran is said to belong to Qaen and Gonabad regions.
Omrani is an uninhabited village which is used to be a connection between other villages in the desert. They used to use Gonabad Qasabe water. Although it is relatively a small village, you can find cisterns, mosques, castle towers and windcatchers in its clay architectural complex. The structure of the buildings belongs to the Seljuq dynasty in the 10th century*. The good thing about visiting this village is that it’s free, the bad thing is that it’s completely unprotected.