TEHRAN – On Thursday, a festival of Iranian tribes, featuring live performances, nomadic rituals, and souvenirs, opened its doors to the public in Shiraz, southern Iran.

Tribespeople and clans from nine provinces have come together in the ten-day festival, which is underway at Hafezieh garden, where the illustrious Persian poet Hafez is laid to rest.

According to organizers, the summer festival is aimed to introduce the rites, lifestyle, and culture of different tribes of the country.

Experts believe 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.

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 digital nomad lifestyle offers a certain freedom that most people yearn for. In fact, 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