A new year is upon us, and regular readers (ah, if only there were such a thing...) will be fascinated to know that I am starting to use a new bathroom page-a-day calendar. This year's is about unusual buildings and places around the world, and it is already throwing up some interesting stuff.
Take today's, for example. Who knew there was such a thing as a yakhchal? Turns out, a yakhchal is a kind of strange-looking construction, once common in Persia/Iran, which miraculously keeps ice frozen long into the hot desert summer. Technically, it is a kind of evaporative cooler, consisting of a dome- or cone-shaped structure above ground, made from a thick impermeable heat-resistant mix of sand, clay, egg whites, lime, goat hair and ash, with a much larger underground storage chamber. The design somehow filters cool air downwards and warm air up and out, although the whole process is actually way more complex than that.
Anyway, there you go. Yakhchal. Who knew?
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