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Photographs fron the 1977 British Speleological Expedition to the Zagros Mts, Iran. - Back to index - foward to next image -
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| ...this is at about 10500ft, a mile or so below our top camp and precious spring - Barry Weaver and myself had come back to this Kurd rock shelter to move stuff up to the ... cont below. |
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| top. It was here, just yards away from this cave, that we found the huge bear prints, covering our tracks from the night before ! They were about 10 inches long - almost certainly a brown bear - if so, even for 25 years ago, this had to be rare. So if anyone says there are no brown bears left in Iran - there was one in 1977 ! I took this shot myself, on the self timer ( and rugged Zenit 3m ) when I returned alone to pick up some gear - I stayed here the night alone and remember the deathly silence - which was constant. All the Kurds had moved back down the mountain by now - they kindly left the cave infested with fleas. It was this cave that we had woken in the night to a strange 'tip, tip, tippy' sort of noise - we found it was a thousand fleas jumping up on the polythene and landing again. Although dusty, sleeping conditions were good - no wind, no dew - but bitter cold as soon as the sun went. We had good bags - this probably why the Kurds moved back down the mountain before the end of the Summer. * |