Iran is the only country in the world with a museum for travelers, and Omidvar brothers are the last generation of such travelers. Arash Noor Aghaie, a tour guide and researcher, said at the memorial ceremony of Abdollah Omidvar, one of the Iranian travelers: “As far as I know Iran is the only country having a traveler’s museum, and the Omidvar brothers had established it.
According to the reporter of Mehr, the memorial service for Abdollah Omidvar, one of the Omidvar brothers, who passed on Tir 24 in Chile, was held last month in the presence of traveling fans and cultural heritage officials, in Saadabad Palace. In this ceremony Arash Noor Aghaie, a tourist guide, said: “At present we are no longer seeing travelers but mostly tourists, around the world. We no longer have travelers, but just tourists. Well, tourism is different from traveling. The Omidvar brothers used to gain knowledge while traveling, but today’s tourists are less concerned about knowledge. Also, the Iranian phrase “A lot of traveling is needed to ripen a man”, no longer applies to today’s tourism. Because, now-a-days tourists want to see more place in a short period, instead of wanting to gain adequate knowledge and experience from a longer trip to one place, for instance. These days, if you ask a tourist if he wants to travel to one country for a week or three countries in this same week, he will choose the latter. For this reason, we say that the Omidvar brothers were the last of the generation of travelers.
He said: “Now-a-days, films are being produced about a trip, but the Omidvar brothers wrote about their journeys and had many films and photos that documented their trip, and we can now use them after many years. Trips ere documents, while many people do not do it.”
Noor Aghaie continued: “We now have a traveler’s museum in Iran, thanks to them. I did research and did not find such a museum in any other country. Naturally Iran should have a traveler’s museum. Because, in the field of archeology, relics from India and Egypt were found in historical travels, made by documented travelers. If one day the history of traveling in Iran is to be studied, we have many documents in this regard.”
Issa Omidvar: “The sports community encouraged us a lot to travel. In the year that we decided to launch on our travel I was mountaineer and the founder of the mountaineering club. I climbed most of the peaks of Iran. In our travels, we traveled to remote places and went through blind spots. I wanted to talk to the simple people of our villages; we had no plans for that. Before our trip, Abdullah and I had become close. We agreed together and initiated a travel plan. It was not just a one-day plan. We did not plan our trip for a day. We did much research beforehand and contacted many institutions. We didn’t expect anyone to help us financially, but we did receive a lot of information. I owe this to the sports community. They were the ones to encourage me to travel.”
He added: We wanted to introduce Iran to the world. For this reason, we used to organize exhibitions about Iran, which were well received. Also another goal of our trip was research. With this goal, we started our journey from East Asia, while many people would start from Paris and Europe if they were to travel.
In this ceremony, the next to speak was Morteza Adibzadeh, director General of Iranian museums. He said: “You were world travelers who carried the message of peace, which the Iranian had wanted for centuries, though many times war was imposed on us. You are a part of collective memory of Iran. Issa Omidvar (born on Dey 2, 1308) and Abdullah Omidvar (born in 1310 and died on Tir 23, 1401) are two brothers, Iranian world travelers, researchers and documentary producers, and one of the first contemporary Iranian world travelers.
The slogan of the Omidvar brothers in their travels was “Everyone different; everyone related.” In May 2014, Yanghoon Kwak, Secretary General of the World Citizen Organization, thanked Issa Omidvar as “the first contemporary Iranian tourist” who brought the message of world peace to the people of the world by creating a global village, and awarded him the fourth world citizenship medal.
In the early autumn of 1954, the brothers started their research trip around the world with two Machels 500 cc motorcycles from their father’s house, towards the eastern border of Iran with Afghanistan. Motorcycles were used at this stage, to be able to get access to remote areas and islands. The Omidvar brothers’ first stage of this journey last for 7 years (until 1340). At this stage, after passing through the countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, they traveled to Tibet and then to Southeast Asia and Australia.
They continued to travel to Alaska, North America, and South America by crossing the Pacific Ocean. Finally, by crossing the Atlantic Ocean they entered Europe. During their short stay in Europe, by publishing their research articles about their travels and interviewing various European media, they could earn the financial resources neede for the second stage of their journey (to Africa). Part of their work was selling research articles to the French automobile company Citroen, in return for which they managed to purchase a two-cylinder van and receive a significant amount of money.
