Photograph by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz / @ thephotosociety To travel deep into Iran’s Dasht-e Lut basin I had to organize an armed escort from MERSAD; the military branch of the police that tries to stop drug trafficking. Our escort included one colonel and a total of twelve cars (plus our three); with an average of six MERSAD men per car and about half of their LandCruisers had large caliber guns mounted in back. I flew ahead with my paramotor showing them where I wanted to go, and this was the view over my shoulder. The Lut is a major smuggling route for heroin traffic moving from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Turkey, and we were required to have MERSAD along to prevent us from being kidnapped. They assumed it was a day trip and brought no food, but we had bad weather and got them to wait for three days for decent flying weather. We tried to share our food, but they weren’t allowed to accept it. It was an extraordinary display of hospitality for an American photojournalist in Iran. From #DesertAirBook, a 15 year exploration of the world’s extreme deserts.
0 comments :
Post a Comment