Backpacking and Hitchhiking to Pamenar - Dezful - Khuzestan

I needed an out. That's how it all started. Couldn't stay anymore in the city, and I had to plan another adventure, another great experience. I had heard the name of Pamenar, a village near Dezful from an Iranian travel blog. The pictures in that website looked beautiful and natural and wild. The kind that I love. I had to go there. I looked into the calendar, looking for a holiday next to a weekend, so I could backpack there and at the same time, not to miss any classes at university. And by the power of god of travel (if there's any! I mean, there must be!) I found out that next week there's a holiday right after the weekend. So I had three night and four days. I decided to go. Now all I needed was travelling companions. Some trips you have to go solo, some trips with other people. This one, I felt like, I had to have a companion. At least one. But I told this to many people. None of them came, except for one. My roommate, Aria. He showed his interest early when I was planning and kept his word and came with me.
Slowly the days passed and slowly we packed our backpacks, and slowly it was time for us to go to the train station.

Aria, on the train, looking outside, talking on the phone with a family member

The trip to there was rather long. Its start wasn't promising. We were waiting, waiting and waiting...to reach there. On the train and in the stations...
But finally we arrived, tired and exhausted, at 4 am to a city near Dezful, called Andimeshk. It was hard to keep the morale of our little group up. Aria was seemingly exhausted and hard to talk to. I told him he could go to sleep in the station, and he did. We were waiting for the sunlight to come up, so we could start our real journey to the lake behind Dez Dam.

Asleep, like a baby

We had our breakfast in Dezful, right next to the river, on a park bench. It was a lovely morning. We watched the river's water flow fast, and the birds trying to catch their own breakfast from the river. It was truly a lovely morning.

River and Birds

It was then when I knew I was going to have a wonderful time.

We were in Dezful now, and we had to go the village, Pamenar. We were 50 km away from the village. We decided maybe we could hitchhike there. It was a lonely road to there. Few cars went to where we wanted to go.

There's always time for a selfie, when you're hitchhiking...

You wouldn't want to miss the sunflowers besides the road now, would you?

We gave up and called for a local taxi. We passed villages and plains and beautiful valleys, filled with newly grown grass from last night's rain. We arrived in half an hour. First sight of the water was...beyond words. It was like we had arrived to another continent, to another world. The water was pale blue, and the mountains around it were a beautiful brown and yellow. In the village we had to call for a boat to take us to the island, and camp there. We met Farhad, a proud owner of a boat. We talked to him, and negotiated for a return ticket (:-D) as well. We hardly agreed on the price, but we went there anyway. It was not like we could swim. The island was few kilometers in, and the trip by boat took about 15 minutes.

The Lonely Island

We couldn't believe our eyes. A lonely island, surrounded by beautiful water, all for ourselves. We put our backpacks down ran around the island. It wasn't very big, but it was beautiful.

Our Neighboring Islands - View From Our Tent

 And a few minutes later, we realized we aren't alone. There were - and I counted them - 6 donkeys just idling about. Unfuckingbelievable. What? Donkeys in an island? What were they doing there? We never found out...

Can you find Aria?

Me, trying to put up my hammock. but failing...

We camped there for the rest of the time that we had - for two nights - that is. Those two nights past as quickly as they could, as we swam in the water during the daylight, and as we watched the full moon swim all over the dark sky at nights... . I had brought with me the book "Breakfast of Champions" and I read it with the light of the bonfire, around which we were sitting and, and sometimes with the light of my headlamp. I could go on an on about the adventures that we had in those two days...buy the rest is, as they say, history.

We had told Farhad to come and pick us up after two days, and he did. We were back in Pamenar. Locals offered us to be our taxi, but we didn't want to take a taxi anymore. We decided to start walking back to Dezful, in the hope of a car to take us back. I wanted to hitchhike in the back of a Nissan truck, and as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for... and there it was...a blue Nissan truck, going the same way that we were going... . So we hopped in the back:

This trip ended with so many good memories to carry for the rest of our lives.