In 2004 nearing the end of the holiday, we stopped for lunch outside Hamadan. We climbed a hillside to see what was there - oncos!
We had stopped at just the right place to see the 'Moleskin' iris - they were in perfect condition and in reasonably large clumps.
In the middle of photographing these special irises a hailstorm broke out - everyone except Bob Wallis rushed back to the bus. Bob explained that he had found a very special clump with an unusual colour and knew that he would not find it again if he went back to the bus.
In 2005 we returned to the hillside but as we were earlier there were few flowers to see.
In 2008 we returned again and were nearly arrested. Although there were no signs on the hillside to prevent you wandering, as soon as we started to look for the irises a gentleman appeared and shouted at us. John Ingham, who had worked in Iran for 10 years and spoke Farsi, explained that we were trespassing and must leave the mountain. Worse was to follow.
When everybody was back on the bus, the man demanded that our cameras be placed at the front of the bus where they would be examined by his boss who would arrive shortly. Fortunately we all had digital camers and having looked through 2 cameras and confirmed that we were only taking photos of flowers, we were allowed to leave.
We are not sure why we were prevented from exploring the hillside, but we think we heard explosions that could mean they were tunneling into the hillside. A nuclear site