As you may know, I’m an amateur hiker, but I really enjoy hiking—especially challenging myself with high peaks. Alam Kuh, standing majestically at 4,850 meters, is the second-highest mountain in Iran. It’s particularly famous for its rocky northern face, which attracts many climbers.

I live in Mashhad, which is about a 13-hour drive from Kelardasht, the city near Alam Kuh’s base camp. I had planned to meet my group there on Thursday, but things didn’t go as expected. I was forced to stay in Mashhad on Tuesday, so I had to start driving on Wednesday instead. That meant a full 13 hours behind the wheel, practically nonstop. I probably rested for less than an hour in total—absolutely insane. By Wednesday evening, I finally arrived in Kelardasht. For the record, Kelardasht is a lovely town, and the Takht Jamshid Hotel where I stayed was surprisingly comfortable. Early Thursday morning, I met up with the hiking group. I didn’t really know them beforehand, but they seemed like good people. We gathered at the Alam Kuh base camp, a well-built facility with a restaurant and dormitory for hiking teams coming from all over the country.

Our first step was taking a pickup truck for about an hour and a half to reach the trailhead. The views along the way were stunning.

From there, we started our hike—about two hours of walking to reach our campsite in a place called Hesar Chal. It’s a beautiful valley that used to be covered in permanent glaciers, but unfortunately, due to global warming, most of them have disappeared in recent years. After arriving at Hesar Chal and resting for a bit, we set up our tents. Everyone pretty much collapsed into sleep immediately since none of us had slept well the night before.

The next day, we woke up at 3:00 AM and began our ascent at 3:30. The sunrise and the surrounding mountains were breathtaking. You cloud literally see Damavand Mount in the horizon (the high mountain far away in this photo).

I’ll be honest: the path was very steep, and at certain points, I was genuinely scared. At one moment, someone almost slipped into one of the valleys right in front of me, so I started placing every step with extreme caution.

We eventually reached the peak around 9:00 AM. Ironically, after having no phone signal the entire climb, I had perfect internet connection at the summit—so yes, I finally checked Telegram after a day and a half (I confess, I'm an addict). But something unfortunate happened up there: Ali—the coolest guy in the group besides me—had brought an expensive filming drone. He launched it to capture the scenery, but it suddenly lost connection and crashed somewhere down the slope.

After spending some time at the peak, we began our descent and made it back to our starting point. The van ride back was surprisingly fun; we were singing with one of the guys, and the whole ride had a great energy. Of course, after the hike, I still had to face the 13-hour drive back to Mashhad—but at least this time I allowed myself to sleep somewhere along the way. 😄