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IRAN, FROM THE SURVEYS IN NORTHERN PARAU TO THE FIRST EXPLORATION IN THE SALT CAVES Luca Imperio The first La Venta expedition to Iran was carried out in August 2016, thanks to Giuseppe Spitaleri (known to everyone as “Peppe Spit”) who established contacts with the Iranian speleologists Joussef Sornina and Yones Shariatmadari. Having left Italy as a very small group, we met up with them and with other local cavers, and made our way to the Parau massif to carry out an initial survey. The main objective on that occasion was to leverage the contacts with the locals and to get a handle on the potential of the area; then, if possible, to descend into the shaft that the Iranian speleologists were tackling. On reaching in Tehran in the middle of the night, without understanding even a word of Farsi we communicated through gestures until the arrival of Yones, who speaks perfect English – from that moment on, everything became a lot easier. Having overcome the inevitable wariness resulting from the differences in language and customs, we began to bond with the group of Iranians and with the various sector chiefs. There, everyone is given a set of tasks to do, and everything runs like clockwork. Every evening, we held meetings to discuss the day’s events and to organise the coming day. Escorted by two soldiers and assisted on the transport front by four mules, we reached an altitude of 3200 m, on the Parau massif, burnt by the sun and dying of
Entrance to a shaft on the Deh-Kuyeh diapir
thirst. We understood immediately why they are always fully dressed – to protect themselves from the sun, which is utterly relentless there. The early days were all about reciprocal study, to test out everyone’s skills, then after the descent into the cave everything became easier: speleology draws you together, in the cave we all speak the same language. After the first drop, we wandered around the Parau massif in search of caves. The potential figure was incredible, with numerous entrances found and marked with GPS. The mountain is the source for a single spring, which creates the river that then brings water to Kermansha; up there, though, the only water was that which we had brought ourselves, or the snow that we could melt. From Tehran, they had brought a generator that, while not compact or easy to handle, was extraordinarily efficient, and every evening we all dined together, sitting in a circle to share food and stories, but also the pain in our hips – us four Italians were in agony, we were not used to sitting on the ground for long periods, so we were constantly moving around trying to get comfortable, and we did eventually manage to do so. It was during one of these dinners that we started talking about salt caves. Yones had taken part in the expedition that Czech speleologists had carried out in 2014, to the south of Shiraz, on the coast, whe-
