24-Feb-2007 -- In February 2007 friends from Sharif University in Tehrān invited me and my wife to Iran for two weeks. Most of the time we stayed in Tehrān, except for one weekend when my wife and I went to Eṣfahān, which is said to be the most beautiful city in Iran. After visiting the standard tourist places, I decided to attempt a confluence point on our last day.

33N 52E is located about 40 km northeast of Eṣfahān and seemed to be the point most easily reachable. I hired a taxi in front of the hotel and told the driver the approximate direction where I wanted to go. After driving for about an hour on the main road towards Ardestān, my GPS indicated that we were getting close to the point. So I told the driver to leave the highway and follow an unpaved road for another 2 km. He seemed a bit concerned about why I wanted to go in this direction, and since I could not explain the Degree Confluence Project to him because of his bad English, I simply said that I wanted to make a few pictures of the desert, which seemed to be a satisfactory explanation for him.

When the unpaved road did not get closer to the confluence point any more, I left the taxi and walked for a kilometre over a relatively flat stretch of land until I came to the base of a few hills. My GPS indicated that I still had 200 meters to go, so I started climbing uphill. However, the terrain became steeper and steeper as I approached the point, so I finally stopped when I was 20 meters away since I saw no way to get further uphill.

From the point I reached, the scenery was really great, desert everywhere and in the far distance I could even see snow-capped mountains. I made the required pictures and then walked back to the taxi. The drive back to Eṣfahān went smoothly and by 12 p.m. we were back in front of the hotel, less than 3 hours after we left. In the afternoon my wife and I went to a park near the river Zāyandeh Rūd, and in the evening we flew back to Tehrān.