My name is Negin Boushehri and last week I had the pleasure of spending two nights at Meymand troglodyte village. I am training to become a tour guide and I was there to explore what the area has to offer for future tours. I stayed at MeymandMoon Ecolodge with friendly and caring people who have themselves escaped urban life to seek refugee in the peaceful nature. What took me to the Cultural Landscape of Meymand was that it was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2015, confirming its outstanding universal value as a cultural and natural property which requires protection for the benefit of all humanity. What stands out for me is that the semi-nomadic villagers live in cave dwellings carved out of soft rock by their ancestors, an unusual form of housing in a dry, desert environment. The above picture is a troglodyte room in MeymandMoon ecolodge where I got to spend the night in an over 2000-year-old, man-made cave and fell sleep on its comfy beds reflecting on all the life that had happened there through out the years! I spent a few days away from city life experiencing three different settlements in the area: the caves in the ecolodge, Sar-e Aghol, and Sae-e Bagh/Abadi, where I joined the locals in washing and shearing the sheep, played fun, traditional games, and made the local "kornou" bread and other food, In Sar-e Bagh I was able to taste some great local wine as I watched the beautiful historical petroglyphs. I also had the opportunity to learn to make "namad", and other types of handicraft which I took with me as a souvenir.
Current dwellers are mostly seniors with a decreasing population, which makes authenticity and integrity vulnerable within a generation. Thus, as a guest in MeymandMoon, I was introduced to appropriate sustainable development such as dredging canals and vaccinating livestock, while beautifully taking part in the authentic life to support the traditions and produce that make the village both attractive and sufficiently viable.