Omidvar Brothers Travelogue


 

Omidvar Brothers Travelogue is book familiar to historians and tourists of Iran and this very familiarity makes the review of this book a hard thing to do. If we are about to tend to this book the regular way, we have repeated what has been repeated many times and finally we make him push the button and pass the oral history webpage. This matter and also the existence of Omidvar Brothers' website, their museum in the Sa'dabad Palaces complex and many reports about their travelogue on internet makes us set foot on the Omidvar Brothers' world with wittiness and a new point of view which at first looks for the incentives of such journey rather than the journey itself.

As the resources reveal, the enthusiasm for the journey that went on for ten years, did not just spark in one night. Omidvar Brothers' adventures had begun with joining a mountaineering club named Niroo Va Rasti(now known as Damavand). The climbing of Sahand and Sabalan summits, Damavand from the north front, Yahk A'r valley, Takhte soleiman, Alamkooh from the north and south front, were among the adventures which these brothers had while being a member of Niroo va Rasti club.

 The additional incentive was given to them by the French bike rider named Lionel Brans. While Issa Omidvar was a member of the mountaineering club, Lionel Brans who had the intend of travelling the distance between Paris and Saigon -the capital of South Vietnam– by bike, passed Tehran in the middle of his way and was welcomed by the mountaineer buddies of the club. This meeting was a reason for Issa Omidvar to set out on a journey in 1951, with a Peujeot 26 bike toward western borders of Iran to finally end up in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Now, we have to consider the fact that most of the roads at the time were graveled roads and road equipments were almost zero. In spite of all that, Issa Omidvar went through all the unprecedented hardships such as unpredicted rainfall in the midway of Ankara. After passing Ankara, Istanbul, Halab, Damascus, Baghdad, Samarra, Karbala and Najaf, the journey ended in Khosravi borders so that Issa Omidvar would return to Tehran after 4 months.

 6 months after Issa's journey, in 1951, Abdullah and his friend also set out their journey from Tehran toward north of Iran and Khorasan. After passing through the borders of Lout desert, Birjand, Ghaen and Zahedan they arrived in Bandar Abbas. Then they went on toward west of Iran, Hamedan, Arak,… and eventually they arrived in Tehran. The incentive for the main journey which took place in 1954, appeared during these travels.

 Issa and Abdullah Omidvar began their journey around the world in a pleasant sunny day (first page of the book) in 1954 with two English Matchless motorcycles. Issa Omidvar himself explains the reason for choosing motorcycle as follows: “We chose motorcycle so that we could peep into every footpath and board ships easily. It was for sure that if we asked a sea captain to let our motorcycles in, he would do so. But if we would start our journey by automobiles, there would be many problems and things we could do would be much less. Of course Mousa -our brother- had a huge motorcycle which we used to ride before our journey.”

 The journey begins towards the east of Asia and after passing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ceylon, India, Tibet, Burma, Malaya, Singapore and Indonesia, they reach Pacific coast line. Then they continued to Australia, New Zealand, Philippine, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, Hong Kong, and Japan.  From there they went on towards the northern lands to spend 6 months in Alaska and the Arctic.

The next destination is the Americas, beginning from Canada and ending in U.S. in North America.

Now the southern part of the American continetnt constitutes one of the most adventurous parts of their journey. Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil are the countries the mysterious and anonymous regions of which was chosen by Omidvar brothers to travel to.

 The returning path of Omidvar brothers included England, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey. Finally the first half of the two brothers' tourism finishes in 1961.

 In the same year the French company of Citroen donated an Citroën Acadiane -one of its two cylinder station style products, known in Iran by the name of Zhian- to Omidvar brothers. Desert cruising abilities of this light car and the two brothers' incentive to explore the unknown of Africa became a reason for them to decide to travel to Africa the same year.

 They entered the territories of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia via south of Iran and after performing the Hajj ceremonies they crossed the red sea to enter Sudan and Uganda. Then they went onwards the south of eastern Africa to arrive in place now called Kenya. The country named Zanzibar (Tanzania) was Omidvar brothers' next destination for them to visit Zanzibar's Persian residents whose ancestors were from the  Shirazi people in Iran. They were the descendants of a merchant from Kazerun named Hasan Ebne Ali. Their next destinations were Congo, Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia), South Africa, Angola, Chad, Cameron , Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory coast, Guinea, Algeria, Mauritania and eventually Morocco in north of Africa. Omidvar Brothers' journey to Africa took long for three years. This was the two brothers' last journey together. After this travel, the younger brother immigrated to Chile, and Issa stayed in Iran.

 Sometime later (probably 1965) Issa Omidvar journeyed to India and Pakistan alone and at other side, Abdullah Omidvar Who now was a resident of Chile, went to an Expedition to Antarctica along with a scientists' group.

 One of the interesting points about the Omidvar Brothers' travel account is their taste in choosing the places to travel to. They sought not the luxury of the cities but the aboriginal and traditional spots. So wherever they set foot on, the first thing they did was to seek for the path of the places where the aboriginal and tribes lived, and they tried to live at least a couple of months among those tribes- which usually were primitive- so that they would adapt to their customs and traditions. Issa Omidvar's note on the cover of the book is a proof for this point. However the two brothers made stops at various cities and grand universities in order to share with researchers the photos, videos and discoveries that they had gathered during living with the aboriginal of various cities and besides that, cover the expenses of their next journeys. These information was published frequently in various Iranian and foreign magazines. Ettelaate weekly was a magazine being published in Iran which played an important role in spreading the news of the two brothers' travels. Besides touring, Omidvar Brothers' somehow appeared as the ambassadors of Iran as well. They would meet the presidents, prime ministers, kings and cultural figures of the world and talked to these authorities about their experiences in addition to introducing themselves and their homeland. Among the personalities whose pictures are printed in the book are: Zaher-Shah (king of Afghanistan at the time), Dr. Sukarno (president of Indonesia), Ms. Indria Gandhi( prime minister of India) and Malik Saud( king of Saudi Arabia).

 Another point is the precision with which they look for the Iranian roots in their destination places. People from Shiraz dwelling in Zanzibar, the Zoroastrian or Persians in India and Hong Kong, Iranian-Armenian people living in Indonesia and Afghani people residing in Australia, all of them were visited by these two brothers and are mentioned in their notes.

 It sounds like communist spots on the world map, like China and Russia, are the only places where Omidvars did not travel to, and that's probably because of the circumstance of the communist countries after the WWII and amid the cold war. However on page 186, pertaining to the travel to Hong Kong, it is mentioned that if their passport should ever contain the stamp of China, they would not be allowed in the U.S.

 Omidvar Brothers' travelogue has a political application too. They attend to touring the world after the world war and fortunately they had a review on the history of each country they visited. In addition they explain the especial conditions of the times too. If we take a look at the book from a political-historical point of view, we attain good results about Vietnam, Afghanistan, Philippines and especially colonized countries in Africa. That is because many mentioned territories in Africa were either colonies or reviving their independencies at the time, most important among them was South Africa.

 The book is written in the tone of an extremely adventurous travel account. Even the titles chosen for this book is adventurous and reminds us of Joule Verne novels; a place which is named Green Hell, fright road, horror and death, the frozen passenger of the Antarctica, in the mythic land of sun worshippers, the land of slave dealers… even the author follows this style.

 Although we cannot deny the conditions of the time, especially considering the fact that the level of intelligence and knowledge of the people from past and present times are not comparable. We cannot even compare what we were 20 years ago with ourselves at the present moment. Nowadays by the existence of the internet and various kinds of TV networks, we can easily have access to information and images about different places of the world many times more than Omidvar brothers' account of their travels. Although in 1960s publishing such information was like a miracle, and such a style would render it much more attractive. Along with this fact Omidvars were among the first who exercised such explorations and this was a fact that increased the value of their movement a lot. At the end we must add that in spite of the fact that times may have paled the Omidvar Brothers Travelogue, yet no would claim that reading this book has been totally void of amazement, information and freshness.

 As is mentioned in the Omidvar Brothers' blog, the book “Omidvar Brothers' Travelogue” has been published in 1955 for the first time, and has reached 5th edition till now. Right now the copyright belongs to Jomhoori Publishing House and the last publishing has been in 2007, in 776 pgs.

Ahmadreza Amiri Samani
Translated By: Arash Yazdanpanah



 
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