Donklephant » Blog Archive » Life Goes On In Tehran

Life Goes On In Tehran

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Iran, The World

For citizens of Iran, travel outside the country is very rare.

LifeGoesOnInTehran.com is a side-scrolling photo essay that chronicles the trip of a young Iranian guy and his cousin.

Here’s how the trips starts out…

It is extremely difficult for a single Iranian man in his twenties to obtain a visa to visit countries in the West. So when my 25 year old cousin lucked out and got a Schengen visa, we had to take advantage and travel to Europe — his first visit across the borders of Iran. The thing Americans take for granted the most: their passports, which allows them to travel freely.

Due to the US sanctions Iran is not allowed to buy new airplanes. Instead, Iran Air — once one of the world’s safest airlines — now spends millions fixing the planes they already own and keeping them flying at any cost. I didn’t even trust the sticker that read “Life vest under your seat” (roll over). We did land safely in Cologne, Germany, but one of the plastic roof panels fell upon landing!

Definitely check it out.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 and is filed under Iran, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Life Goes On In Tehran”

Ali Says:
March 28th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Its a shame to hear that one of the panels fell off, but Iran air is one of the safest airlines in the world even if they do have a aging fleet. You have to also take into consideration the kindness and the 6 star rating that the cabin crew and pilots have in the flight. I have flown with IR about 10 times in the past few years (most recent one year ago) and they are completely flawless except for delays which plagues all iranian aviation which is either due to aircraft maintanence or late passengers. The pilots of IR are also one of the best pilots in the world and with the fleet of aircraft they have, it is very remarkable the effort and cost they put into the aircraft and the airline. If IR are allowed to place orders in the future, they will most definitely place an order with Boeing and airbus for +100 aircraft without delay. As a matter of fact I talked to the pilots on a flight deck visit and they said that airbus still owe them a few aircraft that were ordered before the revolution (A300, A310)

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:

You must ALWAYS fill in the two word CAPTCHA below to submit a comment. And if this is your first time commenting on Donklephant, it will be held in a moderation queue for approval. Please don't resubmit the same comment a couple times. We'll get around to moderating it soon enough.

Also, sometimes even if you've commented before, it may still get placed in a moderation queue and/or sent to the spam folder. If it's just in moderation queue, it'll be published, but it may be deleted if it lands in the spam folder. My apologies if this happens but there are some keywords that push it into the spam folder.

One last note, we will not tolerate comments that disparage people based on age, sex, handicap, race, color, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. We reserve the right to delete these comments and ban the people who make them from ever commenting here again.

Thanks for understanding and have a pleasurable commenting experience.