Water is the new oil

We could all drive less, go with public transportation, use photovoltaic cells, etc, but we cannot stop drinking

There are some hints that water may become the new oil.

Here's an interesting piece of news on the topic from Central Asia

(written in Rome)

Readings: Adib-Moghaddam's "Iran In World Politics"

This past Sunday was particularly hot, and both jet lag & yesterday night required that for once I'd take it easy, so I simply ended up reading another book related to the trip

Last week Arshin Adib-Moghaddam's "Iran In World Politics"(Columbia University Press, 2008), a scholarly affair that has just been published. I had never heard of the author, an iranian currently at the University of London.

This book was featured quite prominently in the bookstore where I found it (Montreal's "Indigo Livres Musique & Cafe" bookstore), but interestingly no real review seems to exist on the web yet.

A somewhat pretentious introduction positions this book (which is in reality a collection of four long essays) as an "out of the box" research output, i.e. a work challenging the status quo in terms of consideration of Iran politics, especially from an international standpoint. This might be true for a North American audience, but on the other hand I did not find this work to be as provocative as promised

The first essay deals with the formation of the collective sentiment of nationalism rooted in the Islamic revolution of 1979. The phenomenon is de-structured in a "theoretical" manner inspired by the Frankfurt school of philosophy (Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer). This essay attempt to explain how the Islamic Revolution, and the subsequent movements, were perceived "from inside", i.e which kind of self-awareness existed in Iran in the 70s.

The second essay employs a similar apparatus for the Iran-Iraq war. Also in this case the discussion tends to become focused (sometimes fastidiously) on the "relative perception" of the actors. I personally did not find anything shocking in the discussion of how Saddam's status in world politics in the 80s was favored by the West, especially the US, as these piece of information have become common knowledge in the last few years. Similarly, the fact that the Iran-Iraq was falls outside any (true or false) Persian-Arab rivalry, is equally nothing new, as Saddam's Baathist regime was itself superimposed to Iraq.

The third essay deals with the spin on Iran provided by the neo-con in the US. This essay is a bit more factual, and one can find a few interesting reconstructions of the neo-conservative mantra. Whoever has been following US politics in the last 5-10 years in some level of detail will find nothing extraordinarily new, as the main characters here are the usual suspects, e.g. Richard Perle, David Frum (the celebrity speechwriter who invented the "axis of evil" expression), and many others of the same clique.

The last essay provides a glimpse of the complexities of the Iranian society to demonstrate the existence of a pluralist society in Iran, with democratic and reformist tensions. The main goal is to show that Iran is not a "monolithic" and bellicose country as often portraied in the context of certain political discourses.

The main target of this book appears to be the ordinary Westerner, whose knowledge of Iran may very well be limited to the occasional Bush declaration. On the other hand the style of this book, and its extensive usage of academic "conceptualization" are such that it is very difficult to see it becoming massively popular in the West (not to mention that it presume some level of background knowledge on the last few decades of Iran). Definitely not an entry-level type of work.

(written in Rome)

Persepolis and real life

While Lorenzo was crossing the ocean and reading Persepolis, I was having a drink with a couple of Iranian friends at "Le Tournesol", a very nice bar in Paris which I recommend...And, curiosely enough, we started talking about Persepolis. They told me that the film brought memories of lots of thing they had forgotten but they lived during their childhood. Their parents were Iranian communists and they spent occasionally some days in prison...The father of one was a great producer of homemade wine and my friend still remembers when she helped him pressing grapes with her foot:-) Exactly as in the movie!

Readings: Satrapi's "Persepolis"

These days, I am trying to read a variety of things for our trip (and I have a small pile of books in my living room at the moment)

A few minutes ago I just finished Persepolis, a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi (you might have seen the animation movie that she did herself out of this, and that won the Jury Prize in Cannes in 2007). Yes, yes, it is just comics, but it is as serious as it gets.

Persepolis is Satrapi's autobiography from the age of 10 to the age of 22, growing up in Iran during the revolution in a family of communist sympathies, moving to Europe, and then going back to Iran.

It is the story of a girl raised by her family to be independent and emancipated, and yet so painfully attached to her own traditions. It is a story of coming of age, discovering life always too early, or always too late. It is a story about the people of Iran, their tensions, their deep humanity within the cracks of society.

It is above all an emotional act of love towards the Iranian people, and a beautiful example of oneself's acceptance.

Politics as a personal matter.

(written in Rome)

Our departure date

Sounds like a few visitors of this blog have been wondering when are we leaving (possibly to finally get rid of these posts, but nevertheless be assured I'll look for connectivity wherever I can :-)

Well, it's no big mistery - we are on our way on July 15th, on the night flight Milan-Tashkent (yes, it's a direct). We are back on August 21st.

(written over the Atlantic Ocean)

Visa tips

Voilà some information on how to get a visa for Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The easiest visa to get is the Uzbekistan Visa: if you are a Austrian, Belgian, UK, Spain, Italian, French, Swiss, German, Japanese or Latvian citizen all you have to do is to fill in the application form, hand it at the embassy with your passport and 2 photos. The visa will be handed in about 2 working days. The visa will cost 40 euro for a 7 days stay, 50 euros for a 15 days stay, 60 euros for a 30 days stay, 80 euros for 3 months.

Regarding the Turkmenistan Visa, to receive it you need a Letter of Invitation (LOI),
which can be obtained only if you book a guided tour in Turkmenistan. We did it with
Stantours (www.stantours.com), a very efficient agency which provided us the LOI in less than 3 weeks. Once you have received this LOI by email or fax you can go to the embassy and get your visa (even immediately if you are lucky). Just have to fill in 2 copies of the form, 2 copies of your passport and 2 photos. As they told us, with the LOI, it seems also possible to get the visa directly at the Turkmenistan border.

To get an Iranian visa, it is also necessary a LOI. On the internet you can find many agencies which can provide you wtih a LOI, paying some fees or booking with them a part of your trip, like 3 or 4 nights in a hotel. Once you get the LOI you can go to the Iranian embassy, fill in the visa application form, give 2 photos (women must be veiled in the pictures ).
The visa costs 60 euros, and it is valid for 30 days and it takes almost a week to receive it.
Anyway the LOI procedure it is not always necessary: a friend of mine, who is in Armenia now and who is going in Iran soon, obtained the visa without LOI, just going to the embassy in Paris with an Iranian friend of him who declared to host him during his staying in Iran…

Hope to have been clear enough…

p.s. as you will notice I will cover the serious part of this blog :-)

(written in Paris)

Cell phones in Central Asia

So, I was idling around here in the alleged high-tech world (in practice: in a windowless meeting room in Canada), and I was wondering about the cell phone coverage in Central Asia....

Well... here we go.

Seems things are pretty good in Iran: MCI appears to cover all the main areas, city & transportation routes (MCI is the one with the largest roaming agreements, at least based on the GSMA website). There's also other operators, but with more limited coverage or roaming agreements.

On the other hand, not much coverage in Turkmenistan at the moment, it seems. MTS has plenty of roaming agreements but just 3 coverage spots in the country. A second network from another operators is reported to be in the making.

Uzbekistan has 3 operators all of them with quite good coverage along the main routes & cities.

(Needless to say, this covers GSM - if you wander the world with a satellite phone it's not even fair)

(written in Montreal)

Our journey on a map

Here's our itinerary on a map, courtesy of GoogleMaps (I had been looking for some tool to draw an itinerary on a map, and, sure enough, they had thought about it in Mountain View....)

Well, it is not exactly what you would call a straight line, and probably you gotta follow the link to the larger version to figure out the details (in case you care...)

The journey starts in Tashkent and proceed westwards through Uzbekistan, then south through Turkmenistan, and finally into Iran up to Teheran. (The green bit is a leg we are thinking to do by plane)

At some point maybe we will post also our tentative travel plan...

(written in Rome)


View Larger Map

Three out of three

.... and we finally got also our Turkmen visa, yesterday, in Paris.

Here's our receipt:



(written in Rome)

There is always a start

So, how to start this blog? (There is always a start). 

There's an Uzbek visa and an Iranian visa on our passports. And we are doing the paperwork to get the Turkmen visa as well tomorrow morning.

Or maybe I should have started from who we are and where we are going....let's give it a try. 

It is two of us, Giulia and Lorenzo (maybe we can talk more abour ourselves in another occasion). About one month ago we started ranting about travelling to Iran this summer. (But we are the kind of people that take rants seriously). Somehow one of us proposed to add Uzbekistan. Then we added Turkmenistan since it's on the way. Then we decided to switch the sequence and start from Uzbekistan. (Most of it took place over the phone or on instant messenger, since we don't even live in the same country, but yes, we do know each other in person)

And here we go. We are leaving a few weeks from now. Nearly 40 days on the road, from Tashkent to Teheran, as self-organized as possible. I shall post our itinerary soon. This blog is going to be our travel-book

Oh, and I forgot. Giulia would have probably been able to write the same with half the words and twice the wit. Maybe she will :-)
(written in Paris)