A river under the mountain
Visitors board pedal boats at the entrance and glide through a maze of clear, cold water under ceilings hung with stalactites, past formations lit in gold and red. Some two and a half kilometres can be travelled by boat, among the longest boat journeys of any show cave, before a walking path leads on through dry passages.
Thousands of years of visitors
The cave was known long ago. Near the exit, paintings of animals, hunters and bows and arrows, along with pottery found inside, suggest that people sheltered here many thousands of years ago, and an old inscription at the entrance dates to the time of Darius the Great. Then it was forgotten, until Iranian mountaineers explored it in 1963 and opened it to the world. Its old name, Ali Sard, means “cold,” for the chill that never leaves its water.
