( pre-1935 known as Persia )

January 1924

Throughout January, Meher Baba fasted , but broke it on Jan. 20th. The following day, Vladimir I. Lenin died, the Communist Russian leader. ( see Historic Timeline below )

Later the same month, Baba resumed fasting even thou his mother was very upset with his physical appearance and scolded him.

On the 29th January, some of the men mandali went to the Persian Consulate in Bombay with their passports. Elsewhere, after some deliberations, Baba decided to go to Persia via Bandar Abbas instead of going to Baghdad, Iraq.

Baba determined that 8 men were to go with him.

January 1924 Historical Timeline :

3rd January : British archaeologist Howard Carter and his work team discovered the stone sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in his tomb near Luxor in Egypt.

6th January : Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk survived a bomb attack, but his wife Latife Uşşaki was injured.^[6] The assailant visited Atatürk's home and asked to see him, then threw a bomb when he appeared.

21st January : Lenin dies : Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924.

22nd January : British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin resigned following a vote of no confidence the previous day. Ramsay MacDonald was summoned by King George V to Buckingham Palace to form a government and became the first Labour Party Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO SEE THEIR NAMES.

MEHER BABA          ADI K. IRANI        GUSTADJI HANSOTIA  "BAIDUL" JAFRABADI    PILAMAI IRANI   

BEHRAMJI H.IRANI   "MASAJI"  IRANI    "NERVOUS" IRANI     "PADRI" DRIVER   HORMUSJI VAJIFDAR

3.                               1st Trip to Persia

February 1924

On 12th February, a birthday feast was held for Baba at his premises, ( according to the Parsi calendar ) with lots of food. This coincided with the Perfect Master Upasni Maharaj coming out of his bamboo cage, ending a very long confinement period.

They boarded the ship S.S. Varela on 22nd February at 7:30am and departed Bombay harbour at 9:30am.

The men mandali that accompanied Meher Baba were :

Adi K. Irani, Beheramji H. Irani, Rustom B.'Baidul' Jafrabadi, Gustadji N. Hansotia, Rustom G.'Masaji' Irani, Khodadad F. 'Nervous' Irani, Faredoon 'Padri' Driver, Hormusji Vajifdar.

The other men that were left behind were told to wait at their homes until their return.

Mehera and her mother Daulat returned to their house in Poona.

RD  p.297

LM  p.600

February 1924 Historical Timeline :

3rd : Woodrow Wilson, who had served as President of the United States from 1913 to 1921, died at the age of 67 in his home at 2340 S Street NW in Washington, D.C., at 11:15 in the morning.

4th : Indian freedom fighter Mohandas K. Gandhi, known for his campaign of passive resistance in pursuing the independence of India from the British Empire, was released from incarceration in Ahmedabad after serving less than two years of his six-year prison sentence for sedition. He is recovering from a serious illness.

12th : The George Gershwin musical composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at the Aeolian Hall in New York City.

https://www.meherbabatravels.com/ship-travels/varela/

1st March , 1924

When the ship arrived in Bushire on the 1st, a launch took the passengers to the dock and very agile porters took their belongings and placed them on mules to and then taken to Mr. Gilam Husain Lodi's house. A very cold front has set in prior to their arrival in Bushire. Keeping warm was crucial, the whole atmosphere was very wet and gloomy and not comfortable.

Both Baba and Vajifdar were suffering from nausea. Water had been purchased and brought to the house, but it had maggots in it and was also cloudy white. They decided to go inland to Shiraz, the home of the Perfect Master and poet Hafiz *( b.1325 - d.1390 ) and hired a truck to transport them there for 400 rupees.

The next day, 2nd March, Padri also got severe fever, Baba decided to cancel that trip and take another ship the S.S. Baroja back to Karachi. It was agreed that Baidul and Beheramji were to get down at Bandar Abba on the way, so they could go to their respective homes in Persia, and the rest onto Karachi.

The S.S. Baroja was very basic, a combined passenger and cargo ship.

RD  p.300

LM  p.601

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez

March 1924 Historical Timeline :

1st : The Nixon Nitration Works disaster, an explosion of ammonium nitrate, killed at least 18 people, destroyed several miles of New Jersey factories, and demolished the town of Nixon, New Jersey.

March 3 - 6th, 1924

The ship departed for Bandar Abbas, the passengers comprised of many Arabs, who were not civilized to Western standards, by killing animals by the score for their meals and relieving themselves anywhere. The men were quite shocked by their behaviour.

They arrived a couple of days later. After the 2 men left Baba  and went ashore, the ship stayed a couple of hours and then went to the small port of Li(e)ngeh, then onto the island of Ha(e)ngam.

RD  p.303

March 1924 Historical Timeline :

3rd : The Turkish National Assembly formally ended the Ottoman Caliphate that had operated for 407 years, voting "almost unanimously" to abolish the office, and ordered that Abdulmejid II and his harem were to be deported by March 15.

4th : Aidan de Brune became the first person to walk all the way around Australia, returning to Melbourne from whence he had departed on September 20, 1921.

* A 7.1 magnitude earthquake, with an epicenter at Orotina in Costa Rica,killing 70 people.

5th : Hussein bin Ali, King of the Hejaz (now Saudi Arabia) and Sharif of Mecca, was proclaimed the Caliph of all Muslims by Muslim leaders in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Transjordania (now Jordan). The response throughout the Muslim world was mostly negative.

Lengeh / Bandar Lengeh, Iran - nowadays