Travel to Behestan, Zanjan: Colorful Mountains

Iran and its roads appear to me like a captivating and enchanting lady. Not merely because I was born in this soil, but Iran is an image of a woman that one can love unconditionally. Time and again, in imagination and dream, I have lived with Iran, even in moments when my body was far from it. I am intertwined with this land, I have felt it in the very fabric of my being. Here is where my emotions reach their peak, a place where I would fight to the death for it. Not that I have drawn imaginary borders for it, but here, without any borders or names, is a land to which I belong. I am in love with this corner of the world. Iran is beyond words, beyond any description.

You might call me a patriot, but the truth is beyond that word. I am, openly and sincerely, in love with this point on earth.

It's not that history and culture have become unimportant to me. Lately, in my travels, I've been paying less attention to man-made things. A different meaning, or perhaps one could say, new dimensions of the world have emerged within me.

The world has taken on a new shape and form for me, as if I've been newly born. I used to see the world in grayer tones, but now I quickly find a vast spectrum of colors. It's not even that I'm searching for nature... Simply put, it's as if I'm in a middle of nowhere, searching for the meaning of the world. It's as if "tourist attractions" for me are the sky. It's as if the details and the arrangement of stones and their colors are what matter. It's as if I want to register all the clouds, the way the light shines, every single stone, with UNESCO. And it's here that I understand love.

In the search for the world and oneself, humans always feel a sense of loneliness, and it is this feeling of loneliness that keeps people together; without this feeling, the world would be a different world.

I personally love this photo very much. This man had come to this spot in his car, he was gazing at the view you'll see in the next picture, and after a while, he left.