Iran

'This meeting and meeting again, from different points and in other lights, is the charm of hilly travel. The mountain shape, first seen as a dream in the distance, alarming as you approach, lost perhaps altogether as you become involved in its outworks and ramifying valleys, appears again suddenly, unexpected as some swift light upon a face beloved to which custom has blunted our eyes.'
Freya Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins (London 1936)