Mount Damavand is the highest peak in the Middle East and the tallest volcano in Asia. A near-perfect cone, it rises 5,609 metres above the Alborz range about 66 kilometres northeast of Tehran, standing so alone that on a clear day its snow-capped summit floats over the capital's skyline. Damavand is dormant but not dead: sulphurous steam still seeps from fumaroles around the summit crater, mineral hot springs bubble up on its lower slopes, and its last eruption was some seven thousand years ago. For Iranians the mountain is far more than geology. It is the country's oldest symbol — the peak where the Shahnameh chains the tyrant Zahhak beneath the rock — and it appears everywhere from classical poetry to the back of the 10,000 rial banknote as a sign of endurance and national identity.
Climbing Damavand asks for no technical skill, only the endurance to handle its altitude, and each summer thousands of mountaineers take it on, most by the southern Polur route through a chain of staged camps. The walk begins on green lower meadows, crosses long slopes of loose scree, and near the top becomes a windswept, lunar world sharp with the smell of sulphur. Those who set out before dawn reach the summit as the sun breaks over a sea of cloud, with the Iranian plateau spread to the horizon far below. The safe window is short, roughly July to September, and it is the altitude rather than the difficulty that turns people back. You do not have to climb to feel the mountain, though: from the meadows of Lar National Park or the village of Polur, the symmetrical cone simply fills the sky.