TEHRAN – Kordestan province will be hosting tens of Iranian travel experts, tour operators, and nature lovers during a major conference dedicated to ecotourism.

“It will be the first ecotourism conference, which exclusively concentrates on western provinces of the country,” IRNA quoted Kordestan’s tourism chief as saying on Thursday.

Organized by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, the three-day event starts on May 8 in Marivan’s Uramanat (a UNESCO-registered cultural landscape), Mansour Mehrzad said.

Among the highlights will be birdwatching excursions as well as professional meetings and educational workshops focusing on UNESCO-designated villages, the official stated. 

Over the past couple of years, western Iranian provinces have joined hands to expand tourism by bringing together local officials, hoteliers, travel agents, and tour operators from the provinces of Lorestan, Ilam, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh-Boyerahmad, Kermanshah, Kordestan, Hamedan, Zanjan, and East Azarbaijan, amongst others.

One of the potentially-significand travel destinations in the west wing is the Uramanat cultural landscape, which was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list last year.

Stretched on the slopes of Sarvabad county at the heart of the Zagros Mountains, and shared between the provinces of Kordestan and Kermanshah in western Iran, the scenic landscape embraces hundreds of villages, 106,000 hectares of land, and 303,000 hectares of surrounding properties.

It boasts dense and step-like rows of houses in a way that the roof of each house forms the yard of the upper one, a feature that adds to its charm and attractiveness.

Archaeological findings dating back about 40,000 years, caves and rock shelters, ancient paths and ways along the valleys, motifs and inscriptions, cemeteries, mounds, castles, settlements, and other historical evidence attest to the continuity of life in the Uramanat region from the Paleolithic to this time.

According to the UN body, Uramanat is an exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition of the semi-nomadic agropastoral way of life of the Hawrami people, a Kurdish tribe that has resided in the Zagros Mountains for millennia. This outstanding cultural tradition is manifested in the ancestral practices of transhumance, the mode of seasonal living in Havars, steep-slope terraced agriculture, soil and water management, traditional knowledge for planning and constructing steeply terraced villages, and rich diversity of intangible heritage, all reflecting a harmonious co-existence with nature.

The Islamic Republic expects to reap a bonanza from its numerous tourist spots such as bazaars, museums, mosques, bridges, bathhouses, madrasas, mausoleums, churches, towers, and mansions, of which 26 are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

AFM