Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(US$2) if you ask ahead and the flat roof facing Gazor Khan's village square makes a
great people-watching perch.
Managed by a Grimm's fairy-tale crone, the
Golestan Inn
( 377 3312; r/'ste'
US$15/18)
offers rather tatty accommodation amid trees on the slight rise that directly
overlooks the stairway to Alamut Rock. The 'rooms' share a decent kitchen and a grotty
squat toilet. The 'suites' are a pair of semidetached concrete houselets with run-down bal-
cony seats amid overgrown foliage. Kabab meals cost US$4 (by pre-arrangement).
Hotel Farhangian
( 377 3446; tr US$6)
is a converted former school whose former
classrooms now form reasonably well equipped though not luxurious 'suites' with kitchen
and bathroom. Beware that the place gets locked up when the receptionist (a small boy)
goes home for his meals! Bring your own food. There's no English sign, but it's tucked
behind the Alamut Research Centre, up a short driveway that heads south from the castle
trailhead. Don't rush to believe locals who tell you it's closed.
Savaris usually run to Qazvin at around 7am (US$5, 2½ hours). At the same time
there's a bus to Mo'allem Kalayeh (school days, US$0.5, 45 minutes). Both leave from
the village square outside Hotel Koosaran.
TREKKING TOWARDS THE CASPIAN: GARMARUD TO YUJ
Crossing the Alborz on foot from the Alamut Valley to the Caspian hinterland is geo-
graphically compelling, scenically stunning and culturally fascinating. You'll be one of
just a handful of foreigners since Freya Stark (in the 1930s) to make such a trip, but hurry:
road builders are slowly extending tracks further and further into the isolated mountain
villages and a whole way of life revolving around donkey transport will soon be a thing of
the past.
The route described here isn't especially arduous, though a guide and/or mule-driver is
recommended to avoid difficulties at a few awkward spots, especially if you attempt the
walk before June, when you'll be tramping through treacherous snows on the highest sec-
tions. It's most pleasant to allow three days, though two days or even less is quite possible
if you're in some inexplicable hurry. (In midsummer you could shorten the walk by arran-
ging a 4WD to take you as far as
Salajanbar
.)
The hike starts in pretty, canyon-framed
Garmarud
village, 18km east of the Gazor
Khan turning, where the Alamut Valley road's asphalt ends. Whether you walk or drive,
the route goes via picturesque
Pichebon hamlet
and across the 3200m
Salambar Pass
beside the small, partly renovated (but deserted)
Pichebon Caravanserai
. There are fab-
ulous views here. On foot from Garmarud it took us 5½ hours to that caravanserai (with a
guide, short-cutting through flower-filled meadows and beneath a waterfall). From the
caravanserai it's another three hours to Salajanbar, descending very slowly through pretty
