The Caspian's Endless Blue

Caspian Sea near Ramsar (Mazandaran)

By Heidi Noroozy

The first time I saw the Caspian Sea, I thought I’d never seen water quite so blue. And since blue is my favorite color, I instantly fell in love. We’d passed other hues during the five-hour drive over the Chalous Road from Tehran—the gray of Iran’s smoggy capital, the red cliffs and white snowcaps of the Alborz Range, and the green forests clinging to the mountains’ northern slopes. But when we reached the sea, it displayed a vast expanse of cobalt that merged with the sky.

Although some call it a lake, the Caspian Sea, or Darya Mazandaran as it’s known in Persian, is actually an inland sea, formed 5 million years ago when shifts in the earth’s crust divided up the ancient Paratethys Sea (also creating the Aral Sea, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov). The Caspian is surrounded by five countries: Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran. This land-locked sea covers 143,000 square miles and holds 18,800 cubic miles of water. Its salinity is one third that of the ocean, and it receives 80% of its fresh water from the Volga River, one of 130 rivers that feed the sea.

The best known inhabitant of these deep waters is probably the Beluga sturgeon, which produces those salty black eggs we call caviar. I don’t care much for this elegant treat nor for the sturgeon itself, which I’ve tasted in seaside restaurants in Iran. It has dense, meaty flesh and a strong flavor, and is often served in the form of kebabs. But two other species of fish that I much prefer also thrive here. One is the azad, which is sometimes called Iranian salmon because of its pink flesh and its habit of swimming upstream to spawn in freshwater lakes. The other is mahi sefid, or white fish, which is the traditional accompaniment to the herbed rice served on Persian New Year. It is riddled with fine, sharp bones, but the delicious flesh is well worth the trouble of picking them out.

Fish market in Tonekabon (Mazandaran)

Iran hugs the southern shore of the Caspian Sea with three maritime provinces: Golestan, Mazandaran, and Gilan (viewed from east to west). Iranians call this region Shomal (“the North”), and it is a popular vacation spot for the residents of overcrowded Tehran. Shah Reza Pahlavi built two palaces here, one in Ramsar, located in Mazandaran Province, and the other in Bandar Anzali, a bustling seaport in Gilan. Both palaces are open to the public as historic sites and museums. Before the Islamic Revolution, Ramsar even had a British-run casino where Reza Pahlavi’s son, Shah Mohamed Reza, entertained foreign dignitaries. The building is now a hotel, open only during the summer months, but I was once treated to a private off-season tour of the casino by the hotel’s elderly manager, who had been a young waiter in the shah’s day.

Moisture from the sea and a mild climate make Iran’s northern provinces an agricultural breadbasket that is perfect for growing rice, tea, citrus, and even silk worms. Garlic is another major crop, as I discovered last May upon spying entire truck beds filled with recently harvested bulbs, their pungent odor occasionally overpowering the ever-present perfume of orange blossoms.

New garlic crop in Chaboksar (Gilan)

The winter snows descend from the mountains to the seashore, but summer can feel like the tropics. I learned that too one August when I sweltered in what felt like a sauna under my long-sleeved tunic and scarf. I cooled off by wading in the Caspian’s shallows and wishing I could go for a swim. Iran’s beaches are gender-segregated, with women entering the water from behind a screen. During the week we spent in Gilan Province that summer, the beaches were closed after a storm blew in and created dangerously choppy waves. The men routinely ignored the closure, but the women’s screen had been removed. Unable to shed my Islamic covering, all I could do was wade up to my knees.

One of my favorite pastimes on trips to the seashore is to sit on a bench and watch the fisherman set out in their narrow wooden boats. But even those who lack a boat are undeterred. Enterprising anglers simply strap a couple of old truck tires together and hang their nets over the sides.

Fisherman in a boat made of tires (Gilan)

Calm as it was on the clear day I first saw the sea, the Caspian has its temperamental side. It can turn steely gray to match clouds that threaten rain. A strong undertow has sucked more than one hapless swimmer far from shore. And in a storm, it can roar like a lion.

The first time I heard that alarming sound, I asked my husband, half joking, “Do you have lions in Iran?”

“Of course,” he replied with a perfectly straight face. “Elephants and rhinos, too.”

Hah!

Caspian coast on a cloudy day (Mazandaran)

Each of my visits to Iran has to include a trip to Shomal. After we pass the high point on the Chalous Road, and the red cliffs make way for green forests, I perk up in anticipation, eager for my first glimpse of the Caspian’s endless blue.

Home Cooking in Gilan’s Misty Mountains

View of the Caspian Sea from
Khavar Khanoum's back porch

By Heidi Noroozy

I have a confession to make. For me, travel is all about the food. Sure, I like to visit museums, explore the back streets of ancient cities, and admire the myriad natural wonders our planet has to offer. But at the end of the day, you’ll find me in a café or restaurant, people watching and sampling the local cuisine.

Tehran has many culinary delights, everything from melt-in-your-mouth lamb kebabs at the Lux-e Talaee Restaurant on Vali Asr Avenue to Turkish coffee and pastries at Café Naderi, once a gathering place for writers and philosophers, where you’re served by aging waiters in red jackets who hark back to the days of the monarchy. Between exploring these local eateries, I can often be found sitting in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, helping prepare her famous kufteh Tabrizi, large meatballs made of lamb, rice, split peas, and herbs, simmered in a tomato sauce. For what better way to delight your taste buds than to offer them a home-cooked meal?

But if I want the best of both worlds—a home-cooked meal away from home—I head out of Tehran and over the Alborz Mountains to Gilan Province on the Caspian Sea, a five-hour drive on the scenic Chalous Road. High in the misty hills above the sleepy fishing village of Chaboksar, an energetic woman named Khavar Khanoum invites guests to enjoy Gilani specialties based on her family recipes and serves them on the back porch of her modest home.

Khavar Khanoum with
an assortment of fruit preserves

It’s not easy to get a table at Khavar Khanoum’s. Until recently, the first step was to get your hands on her phone number, which got passed along from friend to friend and relative to relative according to a system I call the Persian Grapevine. The day before you planned to visit, you’d call her up and tell her what you wanted to eat and when you planned to arrive. She’d do the shopping for your meal and those of the other guests who’d called that day, and by the time you arrived, your kebabs would be marinated and ready to slap on the grill.

At the agreed upon time, you’d get in your car (or call a taxi) and navigate the narrow, switchback road that leads up the mountainside, winding through green forests, fruit orchards, and past red-roofed farmhouses. Khavar Khanoum’s service includes a weather report because heavy rains often wash out the local roads, and when that happens she’ll tell you to come back the following week.

In those days, the restaurant was an extension of its owner’s expansive hospitality, with tables set up on her double-decker back porch. Every seat had a clear view of the green landscape, so while you waited for your hostess to cook your food on the open grill in her front yard, you admired the orange groves clinging to steep mountain slopes and the knobby tea fields tucked into hilly corners. Or let your gaze sweep over the blue expanse of the Caspian Sea as it stretched endlessly to the horizon.

Tables with a mountain view

A few years ago, Khavar Khanoum expanded her establishment and built a second structure next to her home. On the ground floor, it houses a new kitchen, built right into the hill. Two upper floors accommodate dining rooms that can seat two or three times the number of guests as the original restaurant’s wraparound porch. She even sells an assortment of home-made fruit pickles and preserves. The only downside is the pity I feel for the poor waiters who have to climb many flights of stairs carrying heavily laden trays.

Although you no longer have to call ahead of time, it’s still not easy to get a table due to the restaurant’s ever growing popularity. If you want a seat with a view these days, it’s best to arrive early. I miss the intimacy of the old arrangement when I’d sneak around front and watch Khavar Khanoum cook my meal, practice my Farsi (I’ve always been far more fluent in conversations about food than any other subject), and try to decipher her nearly incomprehensible Gilani accent. But the food remains as delicious as ever, and the menu still features the proprietor’s family recipes.

The meal begins with a tray of appetizers: yogurt, olives, and mirza ghasemi (a thick spread made of eggplant, tomatoes, eggs, and loads of garlic), served with paper-thin lavash bread. Next comes the main dish, a choice of kebab torsh (lamb or chicken marinated in a sweet-sour sauce made of pomegranate or plum paste and ground walnuts), grilled trout served with Seville oranges freshly picked from the orchard below the house, or roast chicken stuffed with zereshk (barberries) and herbs. All entrees come with rice topped by crispy tadigh (the golden crust from the bottom of the pot.) The meal ends with glasses of amber tea, syrupy dates, and perhaps a plate of rosewater-scented cookies.

Kebab torsh with...

...chelo (rice) and tadigh

I once convinced Khavar Khanoum to part with her precious recipe for kebab torsh, which she gave to me in the usual Iranian fashion—by listing the ingredients and leaving it up to me to figure out proportions. (You can find my version here.) My back yard lacks the spectacular view one sees from hers, but whenever I fire up the grill and slap on lamb skewers marinated in her special sauce, I’m transported back to the misty mountains of Gilan.

Praying Hands

By Heidi Noroozy

In Iran, blue and yellow collection boxes are scattered about the country, on street corners, beside roads, in front of restaurants and shops. People slip money through the narrow slits in these receptacles, acts of charity for the poor. It’s considered good luck to donate to the “praying hands” before embarking on a trip—a form of divine travel insurance to guard against accidents, I suppose.

Most of the charity boxes look like this:

But on a recent visit to Iran, I saw a more elegant version made of wood and glass:

I took the photo outside a restaurant on the coastal road that runs along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. Lovely, isn't it?

Iran's Misty Mountains

Heidi is still traveling in Iran, and her plans this week include a trip to Gilan Province, where the green mountains above the Caspian Sea are draped in mist: