Lonely Planet Iran (Country Guide) Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Andrew Burke Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1741791529 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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- Series: Country Guide
- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Lonely Planet; 6 edition (September 1, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1741791529
- ISBN-13: 978-1741791525
- Product Dimensions: 2 x 3 x 0.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
The 2012 version of this book is some 60 pages shorter than the previous 2008 version (368 pages as compared to 428 pages--a difference that is actually much larger than it appears when you strip away sections on culture, history, and language and only focus on the travel guide sections--276 pages of travel coverage in 2008 to 205 pages in the new version), and in many instances the loss in coverage is substantial.
Take the city of Qeshm, for example: in the 2008 version LP lists 7 hotels, 2 restaurants, and a money changer (very important as you get a 20% better rate than banks offer); in the 2012 version (page 271, viewable in Amazon's "look inside" feature), however, there is only one hotel, one restaurant, and no money changers or banks listed. The rest of the information on Qeshm island is clearly based almost exclusively on tourism information provided by a local tourist/development organization (the Avaye Tabiate Paydar Institute), which may be very helpful but doesn't really meet the standard of truly unbiased, honest, and independently-researched advice I expect from LP. This is a major downgrade, but rather typical. The story in nearby Bandar-Abbas is similar: there is no information on where the inter-city bus station is located, and no notation on the map as to where it might be... even though the 2008 edition clearly showed this information. Arriving at a bus station at 6 in the morning and having no idea where the station is relative to the rest of the city is not fun, but it's especially frustrating when you later discover having the previous edition of the guidebook would have solved this problem. These examples are quite typical, and the removal of such important information is difficult to justify.
Where does the bazaari take lunch? Where do the locals buy ice cream and rice cream (bastani and faludeh)? What's the best time of day to see the stained-glass windows at the mosque? These and thousands of other questions are reliably answered in the Lonely Planet Iran. The book opens up the country to the independent traveler and helps enormously in exploring Iran without tour groups or guides. It has good hints for visa extensions, means of transport, and I also liked the suggestions for hotels and restaurants. For these parts the book easily earns five stars, especially as the Bradt Guide, by comparison, disappoints thoroughly. But the Lonely Planets gathers weak points as well:
The new 2012 graphic design in the introductory part looks more magazine-like, more colourful - and certainly less organized. The newly designed city maps are a desaster: Earlier Lonely Planet guides had city maps that gave you easy orientation in any city you arrived; the new maps remind of conductor paths drawn with a trembling hand; you can't even guess the exact location of hotels or sights. The map for Yazd is unusable, for instance, but other maps aren't much better. Nobody at the publisher ever considered the re-designed maps with a practical traveler's eye. I suggest using offline maps in your mobile phone or using the online maps service by Iranian mobile phone companies - and you'll never get lost again, not even when stumbling out of the Bazar-e Bozorg at a gate you've never seen before.
Very unusual: Because of the Iranian currency's drastic decline, most prices in the country are considerably lower than quoted in the guide book.
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