Parand is not a place most people would call romantic. It sits in the flat country south-west of Tehran, a new-town sprawl of apartment blocks, factories and warehouses, a few kilometres from the international airport, and the main reason to stop is the railway. The Trans-Iranian Railway, built in the 1930s under Reza Shah, runs through this region, and it was a serious feat of engineering in its day, linking the Caspian Sea in the north with the Persian Gulf in the south across more than a thousand kilometres.
The route is famous for what lies elsewhere along it. It crosses the Alborz and the Zagros ranges through some of the most difficult terrain in the Middle East, with hundreds of bridges and tunnels, spirals, viaducts and cuttings, many designed by foreign engineers from Germany, Austria, Italy and other countries. The whole line was listed as a World Heritage site in 2021. Down here on the plain, the interest is quieter: you are looking at the line where it was relatively easy to build, and you can think about the mountains that come later.
Practically, this is an urban ride, and it should be planned that way. The roads around Parand and Robat Karim are wide and fast, shared with heavy goods vehicles, airport traffic and commuters, with little scenery and a fair amount of dust. Early morning, before the heat and the traffic build, is the best time, and Friday, the Iranian weekend, is quieter than other days. If you want to get out to the countryside, the Qom road to the south and the old road to Saveh give you broader landscapes and more distance between the buildings.
Fuel is not a problem here, because the area is full of stations, and Robat Karim, about ten kilometres away, has shops and food. You will not find tourist cafes, but you will find sandwich shops, bakeries and tea stalls, and people generally will be curious about a foreign rider. Keep your documents with you, ride defensively, and treat the plain as a place to get through rather than a destination.