spamann.net home bicycle trips HAMBURG - ALMATA '02 artifactspic 21

 

Khomeini mausoleum. Near Teheran, Iran.

It looks like a somber (and on this picture: abandonned) Disneyland, but it is actually the last burial ground of the beloved Ayatollah Khomeini. When this will be finished sometime in this millenium, it will host a shopping center and everything else you need on a pilgrimage. For the time being, only the main hall is accessible (under the blue dome on the right), which looks like a warehouse on the inside with its visible ventilating pipes and steel roof construction. People are performing their pilgrim prayers, including kissing the Holy Shrine, or sleeping on the floor, some of them wrapping one of the many carpets around them as a blanket. Outside, at night, literally thousands of pilgrims are sleeping on the huge, shopping-mall style parking lot in front of the mausoleum in their cars, buses, or simply on their carpets. It's somewhat of a Woodstock atmosphere.

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