NOWSHAHR & CHALUS

The 375 km drive from Rasht (capital of Guilan) to Sari (capital of Mazandaran) can be done comfortably in a day. If you don't want chelo-kebab in Chalus, you can buy bread and tinned cherries en route and picnic, as many people do, on the humid coastal plain, while watching horses grazing nearby and cumulus lowering so near your head that Ascension, trailing clouds of glory, seems a simple matter of stepping upwards.
The port of Nowshahr, at sea level in the province of Mazandaran, is so small that you can walk it through in about ten minutes. The town has enlarged during the last few years to engulf what used to be a popular beach for paddling, but there is little shipping business as yet, so the town relies on internal tourism for its livelihood. Here, there are more trees than Chalus, and there is a grand new mosque, the Masjid-e Jam'e', but it isn't of any architectural interest.

Since transport is no problem, even late at night, you can pick and choose between the hotels, restaurants and other facilities in either town. The best hotel is in Nowshahr, but the restaurants are better in Chalus. However, there is a unique place to stay in the tiny coastal village of Namak Abrud, 12 km west of Chalus. The Hotel Enghelab Khazar, originally built as the Hyatt Regency, offers al most unimaginable luxury by Iranian standards. Anyone staying there would hardly need to leave the gates of this upmarket holiday complex with its top-class restaurants, exclusive boutiques, marina, golf-course, riding lessons and other leisure activities, not to mention its transparent elevator and other novel features.

Chalus is a small resort town only 5 km west of Nowshahr, now virtually a suburb of its larger neighbor, is 200 km to the north of Tehran in an altitude of 20 m above sea level. Tehranis consider Chalus the nearest seaside resort providing them with forest and greenery as well.
It can be reached via Karaj on a good twisting asphalt road. There are two towns with airport facility in the region: Ramsar, 80 km to the east, and the nearby Nowshahr. For the foreign tourists its contrast is surprising. Its streets are lined with palm trees and the atmosphere is very relaxed, but there is very little to do. There is also a beautiful mountain road with deep gorges, an artificial lake and the possibility of excursions in the Alam Kuh, the highest mountain complex in the region. Here, we don't recommend you to think of the coast which, apart from being rather disappointing is not of an easy access. There is a quite nice and genuine rustic hinterland, which you will enjoy visiting if you don't hesitate to leave the coastal road and take one of the tracks leading to small villages with an attractive rural population. Men, women, and children are just as surprised by the frequently indiscreet behavior of foreign tourists visiting their remote area as the latter are by all this rustic charm which is not included in the classical itineraries.
The chance discovery of certain objects in the eastern part of Kalar Dasht and the nearby hills (south west of Chalus) proves that in the old, pre-historic times, part the area had enjoyed prosperity and had been inhabited by a people having their own particular civilization. Apart from earthenware, statues and bronze tools and implements discovered in this ancient region during construction works and subsequent excavations in 1929, another collection (dating back to the 10th century BC) including three golden vessels and a gold knife-blade, was discovered which is called the Golden Collection of Kalar Dasht and is now being kept in Tehran's National Museum of Iran.