Dawn is just breaking in over the horizon. Zohre is perched on a limestone ledge, hanging out over the abyss, tethered to the wall with an anchor. As I take a photo she is painting her nails. It’s not a vain plight for the instagram followers but a sign of liberty. Out in the mountains she can show her personality. The mountains for most offer freedom, but for Zohre it’s freedom in the most literal sense. The mountains are a place where she can dance, put on her lipstick and wear the clothes that express herself as an individual, such things would be frowned upon in the cities.
We are on a 130m climb to reach an exit point, halfway up the big wall of Bisotun, Iran. The wall is 9km wide and only has a handful of routes on it. It has decades worth of new routing. With the rising sun comes the turbulent thermals. It soon becomes a race to reach the wingsuit exit before the midday winds.
I gear up with Mohsen on the edge of the cliff. I pause to watch what everyone is doing. This is the first jump with my Iranian friends and I want to feel the atmosphere. Are they rushing, nervous, or over confident? There was recently a BASE jumping fatality in Iran. Multiple bad decisions compounded to create the worse case scenario. I wanted to visit my friends in Iran and make sure these mistakes wouldn’t happen again. Embargos and travel restrictions make it hard for students to progress safely with the correct equipment. It’s not a case of willful ignorance; you just don’t know what you don’t know.
Our toes curled over the limestone edge. We count down and simultaneously push off. Moshens exit seemed natural and effortless. But the wind buffered us in flight. From the exit the others looked at our turbulent flights and decided not to jump. There would be plenty more opportunities in the coming weeks. The decision for the rest of the crew not to jump gave me confidence that sensible decision making prevailed over ego. Different cultures react differently to learning new skills. Some cultures pride is very important, bravery or courage. But during high risk sports such as BASE these emotions have no part to play, they need to be quashed in favor of rational thinking and the acknowledgement of one’s abilities.
BASE is internationally dominated by a male demographic, and it’s no surprise that this is the same in Iran, but Zohre is the exception to this. The men in the group take a wide berth as it’s not easy to be seen instructing and helping women in this way. I felt friction in the group and I thought it was chauvinism and disregard for the other sex. But after I see Mohsen help deploy Zohres parachute, he puts his hand on his heart showing me his heart is beating. He was worried for her, the cold face on the outside still wishes the best for his fellow jumpers, whether female or male.
Her parents struggled through the Iranian revolution and she was raised in a very traditional conservative upbringing. Now religion is seen as a constraint. “It’s easy not to be religious because then you have more options.” But it took a while for her family to come round to her way of thinking. Zohre is a mountain guide in Iran, which is not typically a womens job. She took her family to the canyons in Shiraz where they made peace with her lifestyle. It was the first time they traveled out of the city. In awe of the canyons, it helped them understand why she chooses the outdoor lifestyle she has made for herself.
Our next stop is a new highway being built. The bridge spans across a river 75m below. A narrow track on the side of the boulder strewn riverbed will be our landing. Bridges are always good objects to learn from as they limit the danger of hitting the object you’ve just jumped from. This landing however isn’t ideal for the beginners in the group. The BASE jumpers of Iran don’t have the luxury to travel to France or Croatia, which undoubtedly offer some of the safest locations to learn from. We have to work with what we have, unfortunately this means the risk is higher.
As I was packing my parachute I heard shouting from the landing. Mostafa had overshot the track and hit a boulder. A rescue plan is set in motion and fortunately it’s nothing too serious. Unable to walk back up to the road, a digger takes the role of a 4×4 ambulance and the bucket acts as a stretcher. At the hospital they asked if we had permission to jump. I’m not too comfortable with them asking these questions. Zohre feels the same. “You are British and I am a girl. So we are both criminals.” She says laughing.
We carry on the drive south. Everywhere I looked, huge tabletop mountains broke the horizon, each more enticing than the last. One of these looked feasible to climb. We hike through an abandoned town, hundreds of years old and then scrambled through rocky layers of steepening terrain. Onto a plateau where ancient pottery shards littered the grass. In the cliffs you could see rock walls had been built. Either used as prisons or as burial grounds, either way they are unreachable by design.
After hours of scrambling around we found a weakness in the rock bands to reach the upper plateau. This would be our last jump of the trip. Mohssen decided the measurements didn’t give him enough margin for error and removed his wingsuit from his parachute, opting for a safer method to exit. Thermals cradled him, lifting him above the plateau from where he had just jumped, elevated by the heat radiating from the east facing rock. I closed my arm and leg wing, crouched over the edge and pushed off. A body position created by muscle memory from hundreds of jumps.
We have almost driven the entire length of 1200km south where we can almost smell the Persian gulf. Taking in the beauty of the landscape, cuisine and people along the way. There may be many preconceptions about Iran. Having worked in many middle eastern countries, I also had prejudices, but I have never experienced so many welcoming values as I have in Iran. Every night we stayed at a different friend’s house, sitting down as a group for breakfast and dinner. A real communal sense, sharing food and drink while chatting about the day’s plans.
The BASE jumpers of Iran are doing exceptionally well under the circumstances. Life is about decision making, making the right decisions to continue your passion. BASE is a huge part of my life. Without taking such risks our lives would inherently be different, but we need to stay on the right side of caution to be sustainable in our risky sport. I wish all the best to my friends I met on this trip. I hope they continue to keep on making the correct decisions.