Once again we woke up much too late. For breakfast we had a mixture of egg, tomatoes and garlic – together with the pita bread very tasty. The ladies of the house would not let us near the coffee machine and made the coffee for us. Unfortunately, we could not yet immediately start in the direction of our next destination, because on the one hand we were parked and on the other hand the nice, older parking attendant had forgotten that we had already paid him the day before.

During our drive through the Iranian landscape we noticed how cloudy and hazy it was today, as we were to learn later, because of dust and sand from Iraq. Shortly after 10am we made a small gas and coffee break – again a small adventure. Without knowledge of Persian characters it was not yet possible for us to refuel on our own. Fortunately, we always found helpful people.

On our way to Kashan we made a small detour to the Amir Kabir dam and reservoir – unfortunately the view was not as breathtaking as we had hoped, as there was just too much dust in the air. Shortly before the dam we passed through Karaj – a rather hectic and chaotic city. In the city we witnessed, among other things, a wild chase of a policeman and a civilian on foot through the flowing traffic. We almost rammed both of them with the car.

Due to poor visibility, we did not stay very long and quite quickly made our way back to Kashan. Our way should lead us past the city of Ghom – a religious center within Iran. Already in the run-up of this vacation we had seen videos about this city and Andreas wanted to make absolutely a big bow around the city of the Mullahs. But Melanie prevailed – once again – and persuaded Andreas at least to a short detour, if we were already in the immediate vicinity. She probably also wanted a short break from driving after we had run into heavy, chaotic traffic even on our generous bypass of Tehran and this had “slightly” excited Mel’s state of mind.

After a short procedure in the city, we found a parking garage directly in the center and went in the direction of the shrine of Fatima Masuma to visit it. After Andreas was first slightly soured, because cameras were forbidden in the shrine and he therefore now no longer wanted to enter the shrine, we ran to the main entrance. Men and women had to use separate entrances and after a considerable time had passed, because first a tourist guide had to be called and Mel was forced to veil himself completely, we were received by an older gentleman who introduced himself as an Imam or Muslim scholar.

The guided tour turned out to be quite interesting against all expectations, the gentleman spoke perfect English and showed us the whole shrine and explained especially a lot about Islam. Once again it was very interesting to learn that the actual Islam is peaceful and other religions are tolerated and respected. Especially we were impressed by the statement that all people are descended from one “father”, Jesus and co. are also respected and whoever claims otherwise is not a true Muslim. We were also very impressed by the amount of gold used in the shrine and by a very large prayer board with various greetings to, among others, Jesus, Adam, Noah and Mary.

Very funny was also a security guard who had taught himself English by listening only to tourists, greeted us exuberantly in the shrine and did not say a good word about the normal Iranian police. Both he and our guide agreed that politics had no place here in the holy shrine.

After this little excursion, we ended our trip today in a traditional restaurant in Kashan with very good food, since all the sights had already closed. After we had almost “overeaten”, we wandered a little through the narrow streets of Kashan, which were really busy, before we went for a change “early” to bed in our accommodation.