Snowboarding in Dizin
If you want to visit Dizin have a look at DizinSnowboard.com which includes information about accommodation, transportation and other stuff about snowboarding/skiing in Dizin, Iran.
5 am, a good long time before my usual awakening. But to get cheap transport it is necessary. The plan is to go to Dizin by minibus for 100.000 rials. At 5.20 am a red minibus stops outside my hotel and a friendly guide welcomes me. The bus is within the next hour filled up with Iranians throughout Tehran. During the day I become friends with half of them, among them a particularly charming girl. Snowboard and ski pass puts me back 300.000 rials. The place is fantastic. The last part of the bus ride shows what is coming. High mountains and a lonely sun on the sky. Ab avalanche blocked the road for fifteen minutes and we wait in the bus after a long que of four wheel drives. Rich Iranians go to Dizin to have fun and show of in a liberal environment. They all have the latest style of ski clothes and they all hang out outside the restaurant to show it off. The que for the ski lift is quite long but they all just go to the restaurant and drink tea, the slopes are not crowded at all. The police are in the slopes though, but they spend most of their time trying not to fall down and ignore the liberal Iranian girls showing an indecent amount of hair.
I was planning to go back with the minibus but luckily the hotel manages to find me a room. In the night it turns out that I am far from the only tourist there, in fact there are heaps of Scandinavians. Relatively speaking of course, this is iran and so far I have only seen forty tourists in total. 75% of them here in Dizin.