Tour Guide, Sanandaj, Iran
| 2 mins read
Makhunik is a village in Doreh Rural District, in the Central District of Sarbisheh County, South Khorasan Province, Iran along the border of Afghanistan (in half an hour you will get to Afghanistan).
Originally, the Makhuniks are Afghans (and they are Sunni) who migrated there about 400 ago and they were isolated and didn't have many communications with other people until one century back. There might be some reasons for that lack of communication; one could be a difficult way to get there; at winter, the roads were blocked off by snow.
They are short, but, not as short as a dwarf; probably they used to be shorter due to malnutrition and their houses are small and you will have the feeling its dwarfs village.
There are a lot of stories about them; the locals did not drink tea until 50 years back, they don't eat meat, they believe TV is satanic (we were invited to the home of the man in the photo and they didn't have TV!) You name it! Highly likely they are not true; it's just they have been isolated from the other parts of the world. And yet, it is really off the beaten track.
As for my own experience, it was a fantastic discovery; it wasn't easy to find the way. We came across a Makhunik in a city around that county and he showed us the way, told us to come over and he and his family treated us with wonderful hospitality. By the way, I couldn't understand him well, I mean their language was a bit difficult to understand, but, he talked about religion more than anything else and of course poverty of the village. In the end, all the children of the village ran behind our car while cheering; it seemed we came from another planet (it was three years back).
All the photos are from that trip and the aged man is the one who invited us to his home.