Valleys carved inside the Alborz mountain range; a place for us to explore and expand!

Here are two photos of different times on a tour of the mountains of north Tehran. The first was taken in the early June 1962 shortly before the college finished and we graduated. In the back, the word Darakeh reminds us of the place we posed for the shot. Darakeh was in those days a valley which started from a point where the notorious evin prison was later built. Darakeh stretched deep into the heart of the Alborz mountains range which skirt the nothern part of Tehran. The uppoer you went the deeper and fresher the air and the more beautiful the scenery became. But of course I am talking about a long gone era. Nowadays, as I have heard, Darken valley had fallen into the hands of developerwho had built high rises and buried the beauty once it was famous for.

The second photo in the bottom was taken in February 1961 in a different location; Shahabad. This again was another opening to the heart of the Alborz mountain ranges from northern Tehran. The valley which began from Shahabad would have its turn and twist and waterfalls and cafes on the way to the peak. On both these photos we were accampanied by Dr Pasargadi who loved to stay close to his students through outdoor activities.