Iran's oldest story chains a prisoner under the summit of Mount Damavand, a near-perfect volcanic cone of 5,609 metres over the Alborz range north of Tehran and the highest peak in the Middle East. In the Shahnameh, the national epic, the hero Fereydun defeats a tyrant called Zahhak, a king with serpents growing out of his shoulders. He cannot kill him, so he binds him in a cave beneath this summit until the end of the world. That made the mountain a symbol of tyranny overcome, and it has been the country's picture of itself ever since. The geology says something is down there too. Damavand last erupted around 5,300 BCE, which makes it dormant rather than dead. The same heat comes back out at the foot as the mineral springs of Larijan, bottled and sold across Iran.
From the summer pastures of Lar National Park the whole cone stands above a plain of grazing flocks, snow cap and all, and you have not climbed a step. On clear mornings from late autumn to early spring, after fresh snow and before the haze, it floats over the Tehran skyline. You can also walk to the top of it without a rope. The classic line starts at the village of Polur and takes three or four days through staged camps, green meadow at Goosfand Sara giving way to endless scree. Mule trains still haul gear and water up from that meadow to the camp at Bargah-e Sevom, 4,220 metres, every day of the summer. Summit day begins around two in the morning, and what turns people back is the altitude rather than the ground. In the July-to-September window you come over the rim as the sun does, onto an unbroken floor of cloud with the plateau far underneath. The last stretch you walk in air that smells of sulphur. The crater at the top is crusted yellow and vents warm gas, and that is the cave the epic picked for its prisoner.