Filband travel - day #2

After having a good time with friends in Tehran, it was time to leave this crowded, polluted and noisy city, some quality time in mother nature.

We had a bus ticket for Amol at 7:30. Tehran is the Capital of Iran and it's very crowded. That time in the morning is the time when most people go to work so there was traffic in nearly every street. We had to get up early. We did our best and woke up at about quarter an hour to 6. Said our prayers, packed our things, ate breakfast and left the house for bus terminal. Fortunately using the BRT, we reached the terminal at 7:30. We ran in to the terminal just to find out that our bus won't leave in half an hour. So all the rushes and hurries were pointless. We bought few things to eat in the bus and then got in the bus.

Everything going according to the plan, we reached the road that leads to Filband and Got out of the bus. The only problem was that our plan didn't include anything after this.

As we were gathering our backpacks, we were thinking and talking about how to go the next 30 km to Filband. It's completely uphill with a steep incline, and the road to Filband is not a main road, so there's not much traffic going on.

It was time to hitchhike. There was a relatively high truck traffic that brought us hope, but after stopping one of them, we found out that they're just going to the mine that is about 2-3 km far. So we waited more and we got our selves a pickup truck. A blue Nissan pickup which is very popular in Iran. It's so popular that we just call it Blue Nissan and everyone knows that we mean this vehicle:

And if it's not blue, (as a funny way to refer to it) we say something like "a white blue Nissan".

That Nissan took us about 4-5 km further, but it was still much left to go. So we waited for the next car, not too much. The next car was even older:

First, we thought we're hitchhiking, but at some point, we found out that the driver is in the tourism business and definitely he will charge us for this ride.

In the middle of the way, the driver stopped to eat some local fruits. (which i don't know the name).

The road wasn't smooth or even wide enough through few of the turns, but it was beautiful.

When we reached Filband, we paid about 4 dollar (1 dollar each) for the ride. It might sound so little, but it's not. Because gas costs so little in Iran (about 12 liter for 1 dollar), transportation costs are low here. So we blamed the friend who talked with the driver and made fun of him for the rest of the travel.

When we reached Filband we headed toward the mountains to find a good camping spot, but we were weaker and lazier than what we thought. There were many dogs (friendly ones as you can see) wandering around in the village. It wasn't hard to make friend with them, so did my friend.

We tried not to miss any natural beauty.

[No! i didn't step on it!]

After less than a kilometer of waking, which took us more than half an hour, we reached a beautiful place that was good for camping.

But... we didn't set the camp there... . We realized it's more safe to sleep in the village. So we settled down there for eating lunch.

We cooked sausage and egg (have you ever tried it?. Filband is famous for it's clouds but unfortunately there wasn't many clouds when we reached there. We asked the driver about it and he told us that there will be more clouds by sunset. So we waited. But:

Even those few clouds were GONE!.

We headed back to the village, examining every possible spot for camping. Finally we set our camp here. In a wide open area, close to a cell phone telecommunication tower.

And the dog was still with us. (lower left corner).

It was time for boiling water to drink tea and cook something for dinner. Though we were prepared, but we didn't have all the necessary stuff for cooking, so we used what was presented around the camp site with creativity to set a fireplace, stir the food and boil the water and cook a meal at the same time. Blaming each other, suggesting a solution, laughing, trying and finally reaching what we want after lots of compromising. And while all this were happening i was (to be more exact, my camera was) taking a time-lapse of the cell phone telecommunication tower, the sky, the stars and the clouds.

And that was how the day ended. We were tired but happy and fullfilled. And i thinks that's what we all are looking for, being happy from deep inside.

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!!! I had difficulty uploading photos via steempeak, so i uploaded photos via steemit and copied the link in steempeak. Steempeak has a good editor but i had problem with uploading photos many times.

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All photos are taken by me, except noted.