ransvestia

ruins are really fantastic both from the point of view of size and from the carvings. I've seen a lot of ruins but these are by far the most im- pressive. They had a "sound and light" show just for our group in the evening in which lights play over the various pillars and temples near and far and a tape recordig speaks in the names of Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, all of whom were kings in this palace. It really brought things back to life for us. Those were fantastic times but then, aren't all times, including our own, "fantastic" in their own individual ways?

⭑

Well, back to Teheran and the Hilton, with a stop in Isfahan, which is probably the most beautiful city in Iran, and then off for three days to Mashad, the third holiest city for Moslems, where they were having a celebration of the birthday of one of Mohammad's relatives. There were 1,500,000 pilgrims in a town of 500,000. Was it ever crowded! Amongst other sights we drove out of town about 50 miles to the tomb of Omar Khayam which was quite a beautiful place. It is interesting that eastern and Russian cultures show a lot more respect to their great poets than the west does. They have statues and memorials and tombs to all the great ones, most of whom we in the west have never heard of.

Back still again to the Teheran Hilton I felt like a commuter for overnight and then off to Kabul in Afghanistan. This was a long, dull trip over hundreds of miles of dry terrain dotted at long intervals with spots of greenery and human habitation. One interesting thing was to trace the lines of quanat holes. These were underground con- duits to carry water over great distances. Naturally they couldn't be dug too far without having to get rid of the diggings, so about every 20 feet or so they had to sink a vertical shaft to take out the "dirt." And these holes with the piled-up dirt around them mark out the line of the irrigation system. They were apparently well-engineered to maintain the grade in the tunnel itself as the holes go up little rises and down the sides of shallow gulleys. One more example of the tre- mendous amounts of human labor consumed in primitive times to build temples, palaces, pyramids, tombs, irrigation systems, etc. We don't know when we are well off because in less developed parts of the world this sort of thing still goes on. The Chinese build and excavate with strings of humans carrying things to and from on their heads and backs.