Exploration – Evening Report

Iran’s great global adventurers – around the lost world in 10 years

Asia Pacific Report — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 01:15:48 +0000

David Robie, concluding his three-part series about Iran, profiles an extraordinary pair of Tehran brothers who have been pioneering global research adventurers.

They have been dubbed the “Persian Indiana Joneses”. Their adventures are fabled and hair-raising, as shown by a Jivaro shrunken human head and relics from curious rituals on display from almost 70 years ago.

But the Omidvar brothers from Iran were no gung-ho adventurers, merely gate-crashing hidden tribal and indigenous communities around the world. They were also no elitists.

They were courageous research adventurers and their motto was “all different – all relative”.

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A 2015 Iranian Press TV channel documentary about the Omidvar brothers.

Today their exploits and treasured artefacts are kept alive in the fascinating Omidvar Brothers Museum, housed in a restored coach gatehouse near the Green Palace in the Pahlavi era Sa’ad Abad forest complex in North Tehran.

– Partner –

I encountered younger brother Issa Omidvar, now 88, at an amusing public talk he gave at the museum last month, and I took the opportunity to interview him. His elder brother, Abdullah, 90, lives with his wife in Chile where they started a business.

Their adventures and survival were of special interest to me, as in 1972-74 I had spent a year travelling across Africa in two stages from Cape Town to Algiers, driving across the Sahara Desert in the process – chicken feed compared with the brother’s two global odysseys totalling a decade, 1954-1964.

The Pacific Media Centre’s Del Abcede and director Professor David Robie with Issa Omidvar (centre) in Tehran last month. Image: Zahra Ebrahimzadeh/PMC

Travelling east from Tehran via the country’s second city of Mashhad, the brothers first passed through Afghanistan, then Pakistan, India, south-east Asia and Australia, eventually crossing the Pacific to Rapanui and heading north through Alaska and Canada into the Arctic.

After a huge sweep through North and South America, they rounded off their first seven-year journey in Antarctica.

Following a short break back home in Iran, the brothers set off again on a second exploration trip in a Citroën 2CV across Africa, including the Congo and the pygmy country of the Ituri jungle. They filmed their exploits along the way.

One of the Omidvar motorbikes and the Citroen 2CV used in the brothers’ expeditions. Image: David Robie/PMC

As Guardian travel writer Kevin Rushby wrote in 2013, “they created a visual record that is now a milestone in film history, a documentary record of a vanished world: peoples, cultures and even entire countries that no longer exist.”

According to Issa at his public Tehran talk, “We had the opportunity of visiting, and holding talks with most presidents, prime ministers, kings and cultural personalities of the world.”

The Omidvar brothers’ book cover.

However, many of the communities that they described in their remarkable book, Omidvar Brothers: In Search of the World’s Most Primitive Tribes, and showed in their various documentaries, no longer live as they once did, untouched in remote locations.

The Omidvar mission – they started off on their motor bikes in 1954 with the equivalent of merely $90 each in their pockets – was about scientific research and documentary making.

In the book preface Nikfarjam, then international affairs director of Aryan International Tourism Magazine, wrote that the Omidvar brothers were “the greatest explorers, adventurers and seekers of knowledge in 10 years of scientific expedition … searching [for] the most primitive tribal people in unknown lands of our planet earth who had never had contact with the outsider before …

“The live stories … will take the reader … to the most severe climatic and various geographical conditions living with unknown savage tribes.

“In fact, [this] scientific research has been so adventurous and exciting that hardly anyone can believe all are true and serious.”

But true they are.

A sandstorm on the way to Mecca. Image: Omidvar Brothers Museum/PMC

The Iranian Organisation of Cultural Patrimony added in their foreword: “The fruits of their exploration are … a great photographic and documentary films, hunting equipment and household utensils from diverse primitive tribes.

“With such a treasure, unique of its kind, the Omidvar Brothers Museum illustrates the wealth, complexity and diversity of human culture … and of human organisation that succumbed, victims of the world’s explosive development.”

Kiwi Matariki makes a comment on the brothers’ message board at the Tehran museum. Image: David Robie/PMC

Browsing through the illustrated book in Farsi (an English language edition also exists), I came across these sample passages:

Kabul
“The first capital we visited was Kabul, a city with few main streets. There were few vehicles, which was a blessing, but there were lots of bicycles on the streets. Even prominent and well-known people used bicycles … One day we were surprised to see the chancellor of Kabul University riding an old bicycle.”

Jalalabad
“We passed through Jalalabad towards the border of Pakistan. To our delight we discovered a wedding party with riflemen and prepared to photograph … Unknown to us … was that this tribe didn’t like to have photos taken, especially of their ceremonies. When they saw us their cheerful shouts immediately changed to a cry of death and they began hurling hundreds of rocks at us.”

Sri Lanka (then Ceylon)
“It is said that Adam and Eve were expelled from Heaven and began their earthly life in Ceylon. We boarded the ship called Safinet al Arab … She was 43 years old and in considerable disrepair with a capacity of 1100 people, mostly pilgrims for Mecca … on the third day one of the Muslim passengers died, creating chaos. The authorities had no choice but to bury the body at sea. From that moment we feared that a similar fate might befall us.”

Hyderabad
“The Kite War is as significant for the people of Hyderabad in India as horse racing is for the British, bullfighting for the Spanish and football for the Brazilians … Common people and nobles alike participate in the kite competitions, betting enormous amounts of money.”

Lucknow
“When we arrived it was a national holiday – the Colour Festival … We were settled at the university dormitory and sleeping when at dawn we awoke with a loud noise. The students pounded on the door and looked as if they had escaped from Hell. Each with a bucketful of water colours and after rubbing some colour on our forehead, they threw each other in a colourful pond.”

Himalayas
“In order the climb the Himalayas, we had to pass through dangerous, swampy forests to reach the slopes pf the mountains. We had not seen such a dreadful forest … Such a threat becomes a hundredfold at night. The roars of wild animals, especially tigers, made us shake with fear … We touched our legs and found a small creature, a leech. We turned on our flashlight and saw a great number of leeches sucking our blood.”

Amazon
“We were nearing the horrifying tribe of Jivaros. We reached a settlement of huts made of wild sugarcane leaves and bamboo around a clearing. All the men and women with painted bodies were standing by their huts waiting for us. Although they had seen other white people, it was interesting for them to see us – maybe at that moment they were measuring our heads to be shrunken!”

A Jivaros shrunken head on display in the Omidvar Brothers Museum. Image: David Robie/PMC

In my interview with Issa Omidvar, he stressed the critical importance of the value of international travel as a contribution to “global understanding and peace”.

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David Robie talks to Issa Omidvar about the brothers’ research travel philosophy. Video: Del Abcede/Café Pacific

A map of the Omidvar exploration journeys. Image: Omidvar Brothers book

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: A bolder and greener government

Bryce Edwards — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 07:07:16 +0000

Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: A bolder and greener government

[caption id="attachment_13635" align="alignright" width="150"] Dr Bryce Edwards.[/caption] The Labour-led government is looking bolder, smarter, and greener than it did a week ago. Its announcement of the ban on new gas and oil exploration in the seas around New Zealand has been viewed as a defining moment for the new government. But critics insist the policy is either intrinsically flawed, or doesn’t do enough. [caption id="attachment_16195" align="alignleft" width="400"] Sedco Rig off Port Taranaki, New Plymouth with Paritutu Rock and Mt Taranaki in the background. Image courtesy of Oil and Gas New Zealand.[/caption] Richard Harman has an excellent analysis of the new policy, saying “It may turn out to be a defining moment for Ardern’s Government; a bold rebranding that turns Labour a greener shade of red” – see: Defining moment for Ardern. As Jacinda Ardern put it to Harman, “We are bold… That will be a defining feature for us… We will be willing to take bold action, to take action, to take risks on the big stuff.” Harman compares the policy to when Labour was last in government. At that time Ardern was working for Associate Minister of Energy, Harry Dynhoven, who “presided over an aggressive Government policy which saw it chase big international players, dangling tax incentives and reduced royalties in an attempt to kick-start interest in areas like the Great South Basin.” Labour is now very much targeting the youth vote, which takes climate change very seriously. Harman says the latest announcement “was a relatively cheap policy to implement as it cemented in its youth vote base and paid its dues to the Greens.” And he points out that the exploration ban comes on the heels of the “Government Policy Statement on transport and ending of large-scale irrigation subsidies”. The exploration ban is applauded by conservative commentator Martin van Beynen, who says “it demonstrates this Government is prepared to make uncomfortable changes we all know need to happen” – see: Government’s oil move atones for our environmental sins. He argues that such boldness, based on principle, will be respected by the public even if it is painful, because “the electorate can be surprisingly forgiving on points of principle”. According to van Beynen, if this policy is successful it might well push the Government to go even bolder: “The stance also has the benefit of not appearing as a major cost item on Grant Robertson’s coming budget. With an important environmental notch on its belt, the Government might feel emboldened to deal more bravely with income inequality and poverty next. This will involve some real pain and might force the Government to throw off the shackles of the budgetary rules regarding spending as proportion of GDP.” This article by van Beynen, like many others, emphasises Ardern’s claim that climate change is her generation’s nuclear free moment. Nadine Higgins says the decision is a “line in the sand” that will be challenging to many people, because this is a rare case of real “leadership” rather than the usual “reflectorship” that Labour and other parties typically practice, whereby they do what is popular rather than what is right – see: Jacinda’s ‘nuclear-free moment’ puts Government one step ahead of the public. Higgins says, “There have been many reforms that went against the tide of public opinion at the time but were later lauded as a seminal moment in history that happened not a minute too soon… In the decades to come, I envisage us looking back on this week’s decision about oil and gas through a similar lens.” Similarly, an editorial in the Wanganui Chronicle says that, although there is plenty of criticism of the new policy, “it may be that we look back on this ban the way we look back at our nuclear free stance, or being first to give women the vote, or the 1981 Springbok tour protests. Divisive at the time but we ripped the scab off and they’re now a source of pride” – see: Ripping the scab off oil exploration. Is the policy really such a big deal? Although the articles by Richard Harman and Martin van Beynen emphasise the boldness of the new oil and gas ban, they also make some very good points about its shortcomings. Harman suggests the Government might have simply made a virtue out of reality, as offshore exploration applications appear to have dried up anyhow: “the offshore petroleum exploration industry in New Zealand has been in the doldrums now for the past two years and that it may well have turned out that even if the Government had offered up blocks of ocean for exploration, there may have been no takers.” He quotes a recent industry report: “Interest in New Zealand’s annual oil and gas block offers remains at an all-time low, declining from a peak of 15 new exploration permits awarded in 2014, to just one in each of the past two rounds.” And van Beynen points out how slowly the change will occur, and that under the Government’s policy there might yet be a boom in offshore oil extraction: “The oil change was a bit like the last National Government announcing it was raising the age of superannuation to 67 in a year so far away that it was academic for most people. Radical change to the oil industry, it is not. About 30 existing exploration permits will continue until at least 2030 and viable oil and gas finds made under those permits could mean production for years after that. We could still have a massive oil industry off the coast of Canterbury and Southland and more onshore wells in Taranaki.” Will the policy have any real impact? The oil and gas extraction industry claims the change will do nothing for climate change, saying the problem can only be tackled at the “demand side” rather than the “supply side”. If New Zealand stops producing oil and gas, this will not necessarily reduce its use – but instead just lead to importing more energy. This is also a point made by Hamish Rutherford: “This will feel good for environmental activists, but unless there are more significant moves to dampen demand, all this will do will be to grant more geopolitical power to countries in the Middle East and of the likes of Venezuela, holder of the world’s largest oil reserves” – see: A knock for the regions, but exploration end won’t curb NZ oil demand. Rutherford says the ban will have “little or no impact on motorists or fliers. Until the Government takes steps to tax users of fossil fuels, the impact on the climate will be limited.” He argues that the policy “seems moderate”. It is for this reason the National Party has been using the term “virtue signaling” about the ban, which is defined by an editorial in The Press as used to “refer to pious but empty gestures by the Left” – see: The virtues and vices of oil. The newspaper also criticises National for opposing the policy, even though The Press agrees the ban may have little impact: “a position must sometimes be taken because it is the right one. A moral example can be set. In this case, it is an example that has left the Opposition confused about whether to call it an empty gesture or wholesale destruction of a regional economy. It cannot be both.” National has also argued the ban could be counter-productive, with Judith Collins alleging that it will actually lead to more coal being burnt, which is worse for the environment. For a discussion of this, see Dan Satherley’s Ending oil and gas extraction – what scientists think. Another criticism that is gaining more resonance is about what the Government failed to do in announcing the new policy. According to Jo Moir, “It’s understood some in the Government executive are frustrated the announcement wasn’t made in the region most affected and that there was no clear strategy for explaining what comes next” – see: Shane Jones looked a little green, and it wasn’t with envy. Having no transition plan for either the regions or for energy use seems unforgivable to Moir: “if you decide to mess around with one, you sure as hell need a good plan for the other. And that’s where the Government got it wrong this week – the messaging about why New Zealand needs to do its bit domestically by moving away from oil and gas exploration was fine, but the explanation of what it was being replaced with was non-existent.” Moir adds: “Wanting to lead the way on the next big technology is one thing, but having a plan is another… a situation not too dissimilar to being told we’re moving you out of your house but we don’t have another one for you to move into.” Political analyst John Armstrong also has concerns about the “failure of the Government to address a crucial aspect of the ban on offshore exploration”, explaining that “Ardern and her Administration were too busy basking in the glow of self-satisfaction when preaching to the converted” – see: More than a touch of irony if Andrew Little becomes Jacinda Ardern’s Mr Fixit. Nonetheless, Armstrong says “Ardern deserves credit for sticking to her principles and delivering something of real substance in the struggle to cut greenhouse gas emissions. She also deserves praise for managing to forge an agreement with Labour’s partners in government which produced compromise on all sides and a meaningful end result.” Finally, to see satire about oil and gas exploration and drilling, see my blog post, Cartoons about the environment and mining.]]>