I've had a day's rest and feel much better. The activities of the past month have been wonderful but we need to pause. We have found a little oasis here to gather ourselves for the final part of the trip. I've found this journey quite demanding physically. I'm normally pretty fit so I'm putting this down to the effects of my illness earlier in the trip rather than advancing age. However, I can't deny that there were moments when I realised I'm not the young man I like to imagine myself to be. I forgot how wearing travel can be, especially in places like airports where you are on your feet for hours and carry baggage. I was reminded of my advancing years when a man who looked well into his 50's stood up on a tram in Istanbul to give me his seat. Maybe it was just 'respect for the aged day' rather than I looked like I had to have a seat before I collapsed.

I have tried to rewrite and edit what I have written about Iran but it is still somewhat disjointed and that reflects, perhaps, the confusion and multiplicity of my thoughts on the country where we spent just 10 days but which left a huge impression. One incident is a totem for our experience in Iran. We were in Yadz airport waiting to depart for Tehran. I went to the toilet and when I came back Gill told me that a woman had come up to her, put her arm around her waist and said hello. Before Gill realised what was happening, the woman held a phone up and on the screen was a woman's face on Skype who turned out to be the sister of the woman who had hijacked Gill. She wanted to speak with Gill and ask about her trip to Iran and where we were going next. It was a short conversation but was emblematic of so many of our encounters in Iran. I had to wonder what had prompted the woman to grab Gill so that she could speak to her sister. Many things stick in my mind but it was the shy smiles that women gave to Gill and the greetings from men as they passed by which caused the greatest impression.

On our last day in Tehran we were going through a food bazaar and ended up in conversation with two women whose children had married each other. They just accosted us and were obviously delighted to talk. Complete strangsrs treated us like friends. On the plane out of Tehran I was trying to find a word, or words, to define my assessment of the people we had met and in the end it was the word 'vulnerable'. Many of the encounters at some point revealed that Iranians were worried that they were seen as terrorists or evil in some way. They worried about how the world saw them and it seemed to me they sensed a powerlessness in respect of their ability to influence that opinion. They were cautious about addressing the elephant in the room - the world's increasing islamophobia. Not once did I hear any comments about that issue or any suggestion that a significant part of the world was 'against' Islam. Obviously, we talked to a number of people about the role of Islam in modern Iranian society.

The conversations we had suggested that it was as complex as you might imagine. When clerics become involved in politics there is always a complexity that is almost impossible for an outsider to understand. Some people were very frank about the eddying forces of restriction and liberalisation in Iranian society. 60 % of undergraduates are women in Iran. They are well represented in STEM subjects. At dinner in Persepolis a group of three Iranians talked to us and the female was an architect. There is a shorthand view of Muslim women which defines them as downtrodden because in countries like Iran they are obligated to wear the hijab. I think anyone who buys into the 'downtrodden' cliche may also believe that because Maori women are not allowed to speak at a powhiri they are they somehow downtrodden. As they say in New Zealand, "Ya... Right."

My impression of Iran is that the politics of Islam and the dictates of religious 'police' (which does not exist Per Se) does not define the reality of the society. 6000 years of history have left Iran with a plurality of views and philosophies. As in any country, there is scepticism and questions about those in power. Travel advisories point to serious demonstrations in Iran where there was loss of life so not everything is rosy in the garden. If one thing did unify the Iranians we met it was love and pride for their country. For some, the full potential of the country has not yet been realised and major changes will have to happen before that can eventuate. For others, the unifying beliefs of Islam provide a path through life towards goodness and piety. Islam is a comfort and a support for so many and you only had to see them at prayer to realise the force of that power in a society where belief is tangible. All travel writers love to point to the paradoxes of the societies which they observe from their helicopter as they pass over.

I didn't really see paradoxes. I saw plurality of opinion. I saw sadness about what Iran has become in the eyes of the world. I saw pride in a modern Iran. I saw religious observance. I saw religious devotion. We drove past the nuclear reprocessing plant at Natanz. This was where all the trouble started in so many ways. If Iran was attempting to make a nuclear bomb it was stopped in its tracks by the Stuxnet virus which virtually destroyed the capapability to enrich uranium. It's generally believed that the US and Israel, both of whom have nuclear arsenals, worked together on that operation. Now the plant has to limit enrichment in line with the agreement which the US pulled out of. Europe is satisfied that Iranians have complied. Who knows what the US thinks? It doesn't matter. Sanctions mean that the ordinary people we met were facing inflation of up to 40% and critical shortages in some areas of their economy. You can't turn off a million barrels of oil a day and not see the consequences at every level of a society. In America there is loud anti Muslim sentiment that flows through the public discourse like a poison. As a Catholic during the troubles in Ireland, I know what it is like when people fail to differentiate between a whole religion and the extremists who have appropriated a flag of religion for their political ends. I am not blind to what happens when extremists spill innocent blood. But I am also not blind to the dangers of sticking a label on a whole society or religion because we don't have the will to understand what lies under that label. I guess at the bottom of all these confused thoughts is the reality that humans respond to humans.

We were enveloped by a warmth at every stage of our journey through Iran. We met nomads who invited us to tea in their tent. We met well educated professionals in Tehran who spoke openly and frankly about their society. We met a young woman bursting with thoughts and ideas about her life whose enthusiasm was infectious. We met people in bazaars who just wanted to say hello, ask us where we were from and what we thought of Iran. Above all our tour manager, Zandi, went out of his way to make our experience a special one. He seemed to sense our desire to see an Iran beyond the beautiful mosques and palaces. He tactfully guided us so that we saw much more. He transmitted his love for his country to us and he treated us like we were the only tourists he had ever guided and also the most important. What he did for us was another totem of our experience in Iran. Simple kindness and generosity. It's very hard not to love a country when people treat you like this.