Manouchehri House, a historic traditional house-turned boutique hotel in Kashan. [Photo by Tan Yingzi/China Daily]

For Chinese, a far more difficult task than taking care of visa formalities is reassuring families and friends that you are not heading off into a war zone. That reassurance is likely to be framed something like this: "No, I'm unlikely to be caught up in a roadside bombing. I think you're thinking of Iraq. ... No, the Taliban are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not in Iran. ... No, there is no civil war in Iran. You must be thinking of Syria."

Those reassurances notwithstanding, solemn goodbyes, pious invocations and injunctions to be careful were still ringing in my ears as our full China Southern Airlines flight left Urumqi, the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, for Teheran. Our group－three women and three men－would stay in the capital for just a day before heading to Kashan, Yazd, Shiraz and Isfahan on a 10-day trek covering about 2,000 kilometers.

The short stay in the capital was in deference to the advice of other travelers who had warned that lingering in this sprawling metropolis with a population of 8.5 million, comparable to that of some of China's bigger cities, would be a mistake. Similarly, they said, it suffers from severe air pollution, although on that score the day we were there it compared favorably with Beijing.