Road through the Zagros Mountains

Zagros Mountains south of Kermanshah The landscape in Iran is always dramatic. Even though the flat desert plains had been left behind, the mountainous landscape we encountered as we approached Kermanshah appeared equally inhospitable.

The mountains we were travelling through were at the north-west end of the Zagros chain. Fortunately the mountain peaks here were much lower than those in the southern part of the range.

The Zagros Mountains consists of an arc of mountain ranges which extend for about 1500 kilometres from Kurdistan (Kordestan) on the border with Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz. The highest peak in the Zagros Mountains is Mt Dena which reaches 4550 metres.

Villages were few and would have been quite isolated without the trunk road between Ahwaz and Kermanshah. One such village can be seen just over the edge of the road down on the plateau, built of sun-baked mud bricks.