AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On the dusty edge of Saravan, in Baluchestan's palm-rich south-east, the Tas o Kapel Local Museum is one of Iran's most quietly remarkable small attractions. It is not a grand stone institution but a private labour of love: a single room's worth of Baluchi life, gathered by a village enthusiast and sheltered under a roof made of date palm. The result is part ethnographic museum, part architectural curiosity, and a genuine window into the crafts and everyday objects of the Baluch.↗↗
Known by the longer name "Dezak Ganjin Daran" and set in the village of Dezak near Saravan, it is described as the first private and local museum in Sistan and Baluchestan province, founded by Abdullah Sepahi, who began collecting objects in 1983 and has amassed more than five thousand items.↗↗
A museum built from a date garden
The museum sits inside Sepahi's own garden—locally called "Abdullah's garden"—and the building itself is part of the experience. Visitors are led along a narrow corridor whose walls are fenced with the ribs and fronds of date palms, entering through a small old carved wooden door. Inside, the structure rises in the rounded, semi-circular form the Baluch call a kambi, with walls of palm-leaf wood lashed together by ropes woven from the daz desert shrub and a ceiling of daz matting, lined with plastic to keep out the rain.