TEHRAN - The number of foreign arrivals in Gilan province soared 93 percent in the first three months of the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21) from a year earlier, a provincial tourism official has said.

“In the first three months of this year, the number of foreign nationals traveling to the province increased 93 percent compared to the same period last year. Moreover, accommodations by foreign tourists in the province’s residential units increased 9 percent,” CHTN quoted Shahroud Amir-Entekabi as saying on Wednesday.

Amir-Entekabi, however, didn’t referred to the number of foreign travelers but he implicitly said that a majority of them were passing through Gilan to reach other destinations.

Sophisticated Rasht, capital of Gilan province, has long been a weekend escape for residents of Tehran who are looking to sample the famous local cuisine and hoping for some pluvial action – it's the largest, and wettest town in the northern region. Gilan is divided into a coastal plain including the large delta of Sefid Rud and adjacent parts of the Alborz mountain range.

Bounded by the Caspian Sea and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the north, Gilan, in the far past, was within the sphere of influence of the successive Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanid empires that ruled Iran until the 7th century CE.

Iran welcomed 2,030,523 million foreign nationals during the spring that shows a 40.66 percent increase year on year, according to data provided by the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization.

AFM/MG