On the second day of our trip, we went right into action right after arriving to Arfae Deh located in Mazandaran province of northern Iran. 🌲🇮🇷
It went down like this:
After driving all night long, and of course making a few stops here and there to rest, we had finally arrived to the point where we had to park our cars and start getting our stuff ready for the long hike awaiting us.
Our group had been divided into 15 cars. It was around 5 o'clock in the morning once we arrived to our meeting place. Only a few cars had arrived until that moment, and the car which Navid and Nima were in, was one of them. 😄
I said hi and went back to the car to get my stuff ready and take a nap if there was time.
We had covered more than 1000km of driving and staying up at night. So it was a smart decision to have a short nap, and it definitely made a difference on my energy levels.
I think we had to wait around 2 hours for all the cars to arrive so we could start hiking through the mountain and the forest.
Finally, everyone had arrived, and were ready to get on the track. Our master, did the final counting before starting to move.
I also offered to be the last person in the line to make sure everyone is where we want them to be.
This group, was the biggest we had ever handled. Honestly, the responsibility of that many people is no easy task.
But, it was a challenge I was willing to undertake, and I'm so thankful for coming out of it with minimal errors only.
On that day, we were supposed to reach a pond withing the forest.
But we had to make one stop before entering the forest. Our master had stopped the group and told them to take off their shoes and sit in circles.
It seemed like he had a story to share with us, about how that place had saved his life and had brought him back to like and where he is in his life.
His story was very moving! Getting out of rot and building a big community like that is not something that everyone can do.
In that moment I got to realize that why he had so much sentiment towards that place.
After that, he suggested everyone to challenge themselves, and take the hike with bare feet. Not many people took that challenge.
But, I was one of the ones that accepted to take the shoes off. 🙃
We took some photos, and got the back-packs on shoulders again...
As we were entering the forest, we were starting to see a magnificent variety mushrooms. Maybe that day alone, we saw more than 50 different types of mushroom. 🍄
Another amazing thing that I encountered, was a very very green and gorgeous lizard on a tree. Man, standards on color green, changed for me after seeing that lizard. 💚
Hiking through the forest, was for sure something else! All you could see was trees and mushrooms all around you.
However, that hike was not short! Many of the less fit members were starting to cramp up. Me and 
The front runners, were going forward with their normal speed, but we were starting slow down at the back of the line.
I wasn't so worried as the weather was pretty ok and the track was not a hard one to figure out. So, we were letting the people at the back take their time to reset.
Finally, after hiking for 3 hours, we had arrived and I could do nothing else but taking another nap as the lack of sleep had took a hit on me.
Once I woke up, I saw everyone practicing yoga. I just decided to put up our tents instead, so when my friends come back they won't have to worry about the tents.
We still had 2 more days to go and I can assure you that the hard parts were still ahead of us. 😳
I'll tell you more about what happened next in my future posts...
Thank you for reading this. 🙂
Peace! 💚
