Iran travel tips

Iran travel health

Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Iran, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Iran: Isfahan, Shiraz, Tehran, Yazd, Kashan, Tabriz and 4 more.

Required to enter

  • Yellow fever certificate, only if you arrive from a country where it is present

Recommended

  • Hepatitis A
  • Typhoid
  • Tetanus up to date

Emergency number

115 for an ambulance, 110 for police, 125 for fire

Care for visitors

Good but costly

Good in the cities, with private hospitals in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan that see foreign patients. You pay in cash and up front: foreign cards do not work, and most foreign insurers will not pay an Iranian hospital directly.

Desert heat in summer — Yazd and Kerman pass forty degrees — and Tehran’s air in winter, when the smog settles. The traffic is the risk most visitors underestimate, as a pedestrian as much as a passenger.

The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.

The guides in Iran

The dome of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque over Naqsh-e Jahan Square — Isfahan, IranIsfahanIranThe Safavid capital, built around one of the largest squares in the world and the tiled mosques on its sidesThe pavilion and pools of the Eram Garden — Shiraz, IranShirazIranThe city of poets and gardens, with a pink-tiled mosque and Persepolis an hour up the roadThe Azadi Tower on Azadi Square — Tehran, IranTehranIranA sprawling capital under the Alborz, with a Qajar palace, a vast bazaar and the mountains at the top of the streetThe windcatchers above the mud-brick roofs of the old city — Yazd, IranYazdIranA mud-brick desert city of windcatchers and covered lanes, and the centre of Iran's Zoroastrian faithThe courtyard and pool of a historic merchant house — Kashan, IranKashanIranA desert-edge town of merchants' mansions, a royal garden on a spring, and rose water made in the villages above itA domed hall of the Grand Bazaar — Tabriz, IranTabrizIranThe Azeri-speaking capital of the north-west, with one of the oldest and largest covered bazaars in the worldThe turquoise dome of the Shah Nematollah Vali shrine at Mahan — Kerman, IranKermanIranAn old caravan city on the edge of the Lut, the hottest desert surface ever measured, with its sand-carved kaluts two hours awayA sandstone canyon on the island — Qeshm, IranQeshmIranThe largest island in the Persian Gulf, a geopark of salt caves, eroded canyons and mangroves, with Hormuz across the waterHouses carved into the volcanic cones — Kandovan, IranKandovanIranA village of homes hollowed out of volcanic cones on the slopes of Mount Sahand, and still lived inThe stepped houses of the village on the hillside — Masuleh, IranMasulehIranA stepped mountain village in the Gilan forests, where the roof of one house is the street of the one above