One of the things which we all enjoyed was the street decorations throughout Iran. These were illuminated at night and unfortunately we were always in a moving bus when we saw them so photos were not possible. I managed to get two photos of one roundabout from my hotel window but, even with enhancement, they give very little idea of the reality.

A roundabout complete with leaping dolphin and a "blossom" tree which lights up at night

The most impressive of these decorations were to be found on the many roundabouts which were scattered throughout the cities. They mostly took the form of trees of various forms, mainly coconut palms or some form of blossoming tree; or both. The blossoming trees came in a variety of colours from plain white through green and red to bright blue. The palm trees mostly had brown or yellow trunks and fruit with green fronds. Occasionally they would flash. There were also light ‘fountains’ in which the lights progressed up from the bottom, and flashing sunbursts.

From my hotel bedroom; a roundabout

There was one roundabout many miles from the sea which had a ship, supposedly symbolising water which , of course, is very important to all Iranians. We were told that there was a naval college in that particular city but, once again, it was very far from the sea - a rather strange place to site a naval base. We passed the ship during daylight and I would have dearly loved to see it lit up.

The lamp posts along the nature strips also had illuminations, usually made up of flowers done in tiny lights - very colourful and pretty. All so different from our rather mundane street art. I have searched the internet but have not been able to find a single comment on the street lighting in the Iranian cities. We joked that a coffee table book of Iranian roundabouts would be fun to publish but perhaps the twin factors of very heavy traffic and long photographic exposure have prevented anyone from attempting this. Maybe on amazon.com … ?

Vegetation on a roundabout. The spines would be lit up at night

On a slightly less frivolous subject, the traffic lights, where they were present and were obeyed, had a very interesting feature; a countdown in seconds to a change of lights so that people knew exactly how much time they had to get across an intersection and exactly how long drivers had to wait for the next green light. I am not sure how this system would work in Australia where everyone tries to beat the lights or get away as soon as the light turns green. In a country where the traffic is totally chaotic it seems to work reasonably well.

The design of this monument in Tehran was computer generated

To digress a bit. The lighting in the bedrooms at the hotels was mostly inadequate due to the placement of the lamps and the almost universal lack of overhead lights. The power points were decidedly dangerous in a lot of the rooms and often the sockets were hanging out of the wall by the wires, or the plugs would not stay in the sockets but kept falling out. I am not sure how this phenomenon came about or how the holes became so much too big but they were certainly dangerous and I, for one, treated them with a great deal of caution.

A loose wall socket. Himself photographed this prime example

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