Our only other stop of note during the day was the 'troglodyte' village of Meymand, which was a bit off the main road, up a shallow valley.
Where we saw (gasp!) roadside trees!!
Meymand is undoubtedly an ancient settlement, dating back over 10,000 years, they say. Its a 'troglodyte' village - that is, dwellings are excavated into the hillside, within the softer volcanic ash layers. Wouldn't want to contest them on age, but Coober Pedy is a lot more extensive underground (ditto Cappadocia in turkey, also very old)! In spite of my interest in things historical and indeed underground, the place didn't do that much for me. Might have been the 'local guide' we were obliged to take on, who rabbited on in immense detail in several sites, much of which got lost in translation by our guide (we suspect on purpose!).
This is about 1/4 of it (about 500 people live here today):
Our guide in full voice:
The underground mosque (relatively new):
Another view of the village:
Driving back onto the plain and onto Kerman, we passed this copper SX-EW plant (a type of copper smelter). I had already noticed that many heavy industrial sites in Iran seem to be plonked out in the middle of no-where, requiring raw materials and power to be brought in, and processed product shipped out. In western economies, mining infrastructure is usually at the mine-site, or near a port or similar. There is a copper mine in the area, but some way off. This thing should have been built there. I wonder if the spreading out of infrastructure is some form of national defence policy?
Onto Kerman, which is the centre of the large Iranian pistachio industry - very big! This year's harvest was made only a couple of weeks earlier, so when we stopped to look at an orchard it was pretty slim pickings.
Like walnuts, the pistachio nut has a fleshy outer casing - pink in this case. The flesh is mashed and the pink colour extracted for material dyes, especially for carpets.
Lots of pistachios everywhere. Mostly they are sold roasted in their shells. In Yazd they had a yummy pistachio cake on the breakfast buffet. It was highly sought after and I'll leave it to
JohnM to tell his sad tale about the Phantom Pistachio Cake Snatcher