Even if visas can take 12 weeks to materialise Iran is indeed re-opening its door to independent tourists -

Even if visas can take 12 weeks to materialise, Iran is indeed re-opening its door to independent tourists - a door which I finally entered one month later, at Turkey's eastern border under Mount Ararat.In a cold wind, I stepped out on to sunny Iranian steppe land, and into the arms of taxi drivers. Hoping to make a killing from a naive foreigner? If $15 (pounds 9.50) for a 300km taxi-ride to Tabriz represented a killing for the driver, I was a happy passenger. We were soon speeding across a huge desert to catch the early-evening train to Tehran.This was where all my pre-conceptions about Iran could begin to be tested. Tehran? The ugly sprawling capital of an extremely religious country? True, the air was thick with dust when I arrived, and buildings were identical for mile after mile.

But overlooked from the north by the snow-capped Elburz mountains, there were also sunny, tree-lined streets, gushing road- side ditches and leisurely ambling pedestrians. At night there was even a dash of neon.My first day-time outing was to the main archeological museum where, at the entrance, was a large party of school-girls in head-scarves. Mindful of Islamic propriety, I hung back, waiting for the girls to pass. As soon as they noticed the foreigner however, they surged towards me and suddenly I was jammed in a melee of tittering school-girls "Hello!" the naughty ones were calling out, in English "We like you!" came a shout "We love you!" came another. Later, inside the museum, some of them cornered me beside a bust of Xerxes. "We only want to practise our English," they explained, calmly. Tehrani women are certainly in chadour but they are not invisible.After Tehran, my plan was to breeze a lightning circuit of the rest of country by bus, taking in a few of the major tourist centres en route.

Recklessly skipping Isfahan - despite its reputation as the cultural centre of Iran - I sped southwards to Shiraz, on the Fars uplands, the heartland of ancient Persia.On the road, two English speakers graduated towards my part of the bus - one an optimistic, charming soldier, the other a pessimistic, depressing student. When we stopped over in the mullahs' city of Qom the pessimist showed his true colours by stopping me as I was about to drink from a tap "The water of Qom is salty," he explained, blackly. "This is why the people who live here are all mad." It turned out that he had dodged military service and thought that Iran was hell on earth.It is fascinating how many non-Islamic ideas and relics persist in Iran, despite official disapproval. In Shiraz, my ambition was to see the remains of Persepolis, the fabulous city-palace from where Darius and his successors ruled most of the known world in the fifth century BC. Today the ruins lie under a hillside outside the city, commanding a fertile plain.In the hot desiccating wind that sweeps through the ruined city, a self- appointed guide with a stubbly chin stalked me and then began defending his country against the depredations of that villain from the West, Alexander the Great."We ruled everybody in the world," he rumbled, "including you Europeans. But then Alexander came and broke everything up." He pointed gloomily to the broken columns and smashed friezes, the results of Alexander's destructive work in 331 BC On impulse, I asked his name.

It turned out to be Darius.If Shiraz was a surviving bastion of Persian imperialism, Yazd - my next port of call - was the seat of the ancient fire-worshipping religion of Zoroastrianism. Following the pattern, I was approached within minutes of boarding the bus by an English-speaking youth called Ali "You will stay in my humble family home," he announced "And I will show you Yazd."Yazd is built on desert. Arriving after dark, we hitched-hiked on a tractor into a labyrinthine maze of narrow mud alleys. Staying in a house of mud was pleasing enough but I was dumbfounded when we stepped through a low door into a courtyard with divan-style portals, moonlit marble terraces, pomegranate and jasmin trees overlooked by wind-towers.