Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Maps
Gita Shenasi
(
Click here
)
in Tehran publishes maps of all major towns and cities, country
maps and some mountain ranges. Some are in English, while others list streets and sub-
urbs in English and everything else in Farsi. Maps are harder to find outside Tehran.
Gita Shenasi's
Iran Road Map
(1:2,250,000) is updated annually and is highly detailed.
Outside Iran, look for the excellent, if dated,
Reise Know-How Iran
(1:1,500,000).
Money
The official unit of currency is the Iranian rial, but Iranians almost always talk in terms of
tomans, a unit equal to 10 rials. The sooner you get your head around the idea of tomans,
the better. However, with inflation soaring (
Click here
)
and the Central Bank of Iran
openly discussing wiping three or four zeroes off the rial or doing away with the currency
completely, in this topic we have converted all prices into US dollars. The idea is that as
rial inflation rises, prices should remain relatively steady in dollar terms. For more on the
economic situation, see Iran Today (
Click here
)
.
RIALS OR TOMANS?
No sooner have you arrived in Iran than you will come up against the idiosyncratic local practice of talking about
prices in tomans even though the currency is denominated in rials. One toman is worth 10 rials, so it's a bit like
shopkeepers in Europe asking for '10' whenever they wanted €1.
To make matters worse, taxi drivers and shopkeepers will often say 'one' as shorthand for IR10,000. However,
before you consider cancelling your trip on the grounds of commercial confusion, rest assured that after a few days
you'll understand that the five fingers the taxi driver just showed you means IR50,000. And as you start to get a feel
for what things cost, you'll understand that if something sounds too good to be true - or too bad - it probably is.
In the interim, you can always have the price written down, and then to double-check ask whether it's in rials or
tomans - using a calculator is handy, too, as the numbers show in Western rather than Arabic numerals.
For all intents and purposes, Iran for the visitor is a purely cash economy. No credit
cards. No travellers cheques. Just bring cold, hard cash - preferably in high-denomination
euros or US dollars printed since 1996. Apart from some hotels, carpet shops and tour
agencies where you can pay in dollars or euros, all transactions are in rials. Where prices
