It was our first morning in Iran. 

Mashhad was our base for the first couple of days, as we acclimatised and explored the north-east of the country.  The distances were vast, and some of the journeys were clearly experimental, but to be seeing things in Iran that Bruce had never seen was a privilege in itself.  Our second day took us towards the Afghan border but was broken by a two-mile walk so that we could arrive at an isolated Seljuk caravanserai having understood something of the landscape.  Our trip to discover the secret encampment of Nadir Shah (where his treasure had been stored and where he was murdered by his own bodyguard) was accompanied by a thunderstorm that swept a river of mud, speckled with vast boulders, across the road.  Like all Bruce missions there was an inscription to be identified – up a narrow mountain gorge, carved into the living rock – which took us through a nomad encampment where he picked up a charming young guide.  He was delighted to find that the inscription, like Nadir Shah himself, was vast and imposing, but essentially Turkic with Persian embellishments.

Read more