TEHRAN – Tribespeople from nine Iranian provinces have been invited to take part in a ten-day festival in Fars province, southern Iran.  

The festival is aimed to introduce customs, nomadic lifestyle, and the culture of different tribes and clans of the country, Mehr quoted a provincial official as saying on Tuesday.

Experts say that ethnic tourism provides the ground for potential sightseers to feel like indigenous people by living with a nomad or rural family or enjoying an independent stay. However, as the name implies, it’s a trip for recreational purposes rather than an expedition for anthropological research.

Visiting and even staying with nomads during their migration, even for a day or two, might be a lifetime experience. As a traveler, one has the chance to visit, live, eat, and sleep in a nomadic camp with a real nomad family. Colorful dresses, vast black tents, colored-eyed children with rosy cheeks, modest lifestyle, scenic landscape, and local dishes are probably among the delights of such visits.

The majority of the Iranian nomads use mobile internet, cell phones, etc as they still set up their tents on the flanks of the snow-capped mountains. And these days cars and rented trucks, rather than domestic animals, bring them, and their flocks to pastures high up on the highlands and vice versa.

Nomads may surprise visitors with the dignity in their rough and overworked hands and integrity in their compassionate eyes at first sight. In popular Iranian culture, literature, and public opinion, nomads have always been a proud part of the nation.

AFM