During our three weeks in Iran we encountered a variety of weather conditions from wet to very dry although, being autumn, it never became either very hot or very cold. On the day we visited Kandovan there was a trace of snow on the ground, left from a snowfall the night before but it was not really cold and I doubt if it lasted for very long after we saw it. (For any disbelievers - I do have a photograph of it)

A small patch of snow doesn't quite cover the rubbish on the side of the road

Basically it was wet in the north-west and dry in the south and towards the east as far as we went, with large areas of desert much like Australia. Most of the water came from the mountains and there were villages where food crops were irrigated and the stock seemed, at least at that time of year, to forage on the stubble left after harvesting rice. We saw a lot of sheep of various colours, mostly small flocks of about 20 of the fat tailed variety lead by one or two goats acting as bell-wethers, and an occasional flock of goats. These animals were free ranging and were herded by shepherds, often with the assistance of one or two dogs. However, sheep are pretty silly creatures and tended to follow the bell-wethers so they didn’t wander very far.

A small herd of goats being herded by a small boy who stayed out of camera range and who probably carried a small white ball

I hardly saw any cows at all and they were all near the Caspian coast. The cows looked to me like purebred Guernseys and were obviously farmed for their milk as we were never offered beef to eat - always lamb or chicken and occasionally fish.

The Caspian Sea taken from my hotel window at Bandar-é Anzali

And speaking of fish, when we were in Bandar-é Anzali we were bussed out to an Armenian restaurant where the specialty was sturgeon (which I found rather dry and wouldn’t drive for 20 minutes to eat it again). We were just finishing our meal when the sky opened up and there was a torrential downpour, not only outside but also inside the restaurant; right onto the table I was sitting at, in fact. Looking up at the ceiling it was obvious that it was not the first time this had happened because it was water stained from way back. Perhaps this was another example of bad building; I often wondered what happened in the hotel rooms where the baths leaked from underneath and if the water eventually found its way to the rooms below.

Through the mountains on the way to Tabriz; mist ( and mud at bottom right)

Our visit to Masouleh was in a sort of Scotch mist - part fog and part drizzle; there was mud everywhere in the north west of the country and we tracked it into the bus until the driver placed newspaper on the steps to minimise the nightly cleaning which needed to be done to the bus.