'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎488] (547/714)

Pack roads
PERSIA
These are accessible to vehicles, but are unworthy of any more
lavish praise.
I have in my previous volume so fully described the features
of the postal or chapar service that I need not here recapitulate
Chapar characteristics, ihe c I ui^xit roads are in no sense of
the term made roads; they are superior caravan tracks;
and although on the flat, gravelly plains they are often as level
as Pall 'Mall, 1 yet they are commonly strewn with stones and
boulders, and in the mountain passes are little more than furrows
or ruts. The chapar routes in Persia are as follows:
Teheran to Khanikin ; Kazvin to Resht
Teheran to Meshed Hamadan to Sinna
Teheran to Sari Hamadan to Khorremabad
Teheran to Tabriz Teheran to Shiraz
Khoi to Sufian Kashan to Yezd and Kerman
Julfa to Tabriz
The remaining highways of Persia may be divided into two
classes : caravan or mule tracks, upon which some, however slight,
labour has at one time or other been spent, and those to
which no labour has ever been devoted at all. Samples of
the former are the mountain road leading from Teheran through
Mazanderan to Meshed-i-Ser on the Caspian, and the execrable
ladder-road from Bushire to Shiraz. To the second class belongs
every other track in Persia that has been more or less worn by the
feet of beasts of burden passing from town to town or village to
village. The distinguishing features of all these pack-roads are
a superabundance of loose, jagged stones, the most impossible
gradients in steep places, an utter disregard of improvements so
elementary that they might be effected for a few pounds, and the
universal decay of bridges, caravanserais, and public works.
So much for the existing routes. Under the auspices of the
Imperial Bank of Persia, an attempt is now being made to supply
New Persia, not merely with a carriageable road and trans-
Shush ter P or ^ service by carts, but with a new highway of entry
road into the country, penetrating as far as the capital, from
the Southern sea. This is the long-projected and now finally
1 Hence, in the dry season, it is possible for wheeled vehicles to travel upon
them in many parts, though, as soon as a mountain pass is reached, the situation
becomes critical. The Shah journeyed almost all the way to Baghdad, on his way
to Kerbela in 1870, in a carriage ; but the road was in the hands of workmen for
months beforehand. In the whole of my chapar rides I did not encounter half a
dozen vehicles.