Iran

Iran. Oh Iran, this is where the adventure begins! In fact, even before crossing the border, the adventure begins!

So we meet up with three other cars in our convoy for Iran, having had two drop out at the last minute due to various issues. The border to exit Turkey is reasonably straight forward, drivers and cars go one way and passengers the other way. Except that there are hundreds of minibuses pushing their way in. At one point, tired of the mess, I stand in front of a minibus while our four cars huddle into the space they need to be. The minibus driver isn’t impressed. He honks his horn. He shouts. He rev’s his engine and pushes me a little… A quick thump on his bonnet and he stops advancing. Danger averted… or so I think.

As we get to the next gate, the minibus tries to cut again. This time, he drives onto the side where he shouldn’t be, and then tries to push in front of me. I’m Italian. You don’t push in front of an Italian, and the inevitable happens. Our vehicles touch. Lightly at first, but I’m still not going to let him pass. First gear, a little gas and I push his minibus. He pushes back. We both honk and shout in our respective languages until an Iranian guard crosses the border into Turkey, shouts at him and makes him reverse back into his place. I inspect the damage, bluebird is pretty much unscathed, while his minibus door doesn’t seem to close too well… oops :p Luckily, I’m now behind a BIG metal gate safely in Iran while he’s in Turkey… hehehe…

Next the mess of the Iranian border. Wow. What a mess. Tens of people, purporting to be customs, border, etc and whatnot try to take your documents. These are fixers. They take your documents, hand them over for you and then ask you for money. No money, no documents back. I refuse to hand anything to anyone out of uniform, and have to physically body-block doors and counters to stop minibus drivers cutting in. They all shout, I smile a big grin and go “Italiano, Juventus, Hello!” which generally confuses them enough to give me a few seconds of respite. Eventually our guide, Ali turns up. He’s nice enough, but once he gets threatened by the fixers (apparently they wanted to beat him up) he gets a little scared and wants to get out fast. Only problem is that one team doesn’t have a carnet, and has lost their passports to a fixer who will do an on-the-border carnet for 200USD… but they aren’t sure who the fixer is beyond being chubby. Oops.

Six hours later, an argument with a photocopy dude, and a disinfectant bath for bluebird later, we get out. Oof, that was painful. I’m NEVER coming to Iran on a British passport again. Next time, Italian. We meet a team with a 2CV… not being from the UK, US or Canada, they get through in an hour or so.

Finally on the road, the fixer from the other team chases us – he wants money for… well, not sure what. For being associated with the other team? We drive off, and ignore him. After a few hours a team needs to stop for petrol… we have an almost full tank (seven-eighths on the gauge) but decide to top anyhow. Ali mentions the pump has an out of service sign, but the attendant fills up our car anyhow… then charges us for TWENTY LITRES of fuel. Now, it may only be nine dollars or so, but our tiny micra has a 35 litre tank…. so there’s no way he put 20 litres in the tank that was almost full.

More arguments, shouting and whatnot. Eventually we pay just to leave the thing. Fuming, we decide not to allow any Iranian pump to put petrol in our cars – all petrol from that point gets sold to our 20l jerry car, we pay for 20l of fuel and then transfer to the car’s tank. That gets some odd looks but makes us feel better.

After a massive drive, we reach Tehran, having lost the other teams. When we get to the hotel, one team is already there. We check in (hotel is pretty horrible. In fact, it was nasty) at 5am. At 6am I get called by team 3… with Ali we go find them and rescue them. At 6am I get called by team 4, and helpfully Greg goes with Ali to rescue them. By the time they are found it’s 7am and they’ve checked into another hotel. This seems to cause issues for Ali as it’s not the hotel on our Ministry approved route. This then comes back to haunt us. As an footnote, if in Iran without cash – ATM services no not work due to the embargo, but more reputable hotels have cash out services… So you do a bank transfer to a person’s account in the UK or USA, and the hotel hands you the cash minus a fee (10%-15%). The other team did this in their nicer hotel as they didn’t have any money in Iran.

We explore Tehran that day, pretty shattered. In our sleep-deprived state, we don’t really appreciate the city. It feels chaotic, smelly, dirty and generally unpleasant. Open air sewers in places were the positive – behind a toilet we saw the pipes just spewing raw sewage onto the ground. A stream of feces snaking it’s way to the nearest sewer 30m away.  Garbage lined the streets, and a helpful local told us that the mosques were only used as toilets. I’m not religious, but the whole thing seemed very odd. Elena was constantly stressed as her veil kept falling. Generally, not a pleasant day.

The day after, we drive to Mashad, which was odd as we never planned to goto Mashad. That said, the agency we booked with got a hotel in Mashad approved by the ministry, so we didn’t have a choice. That meant driving a totally different road from our plan, and missing the Damavand  volcano. Grrr…

The positive? We met locals that were extremely friendly! The owner of a petrol station came out, offered us coffee and a seat in an a/c’ed room while our cars were refueled. He asked to take a picture, and when I printed it for him and handed it over, he started crying. He asked if he could get one with his son in law, which we happily obliged. His son in law spoke perfect French, so we had a chat, and got invited to dinner at their house which due to time constraints and the pre-approved route BS we couldn’t accept. As a consolation, they offered us two watermelons which we gladly accepted.

At the next pit stop, we got offered free car washes, more food and drinks. Other than the government people, Iranians are wonderfully friendly people! Our guide brings us to a local falafel joint… I’m not a fan of falafel, but this was amazing! With cheese, mushrooms and meat, doused in sauces and garnishes…  yumm…. Even had a brain sandwich here…

So, why other than government people?

This is where it gets ugly.

The person organizing our convoy turned nasty when the people who got lost and couldn’t find the hotel didn’t want to pay for the hotel they didn’t use. They got even nastier when the people who cancelled weren’t there and couldn’t pay for their hotel/codes. I got tasked with covering the costs for everyone, which wasn’t fun. I offered to pay the authorization codes, but not the hotel as these hadn’t been paid. The agent (Reza) at this point threatened the other team and me to send the boys around, block us at the border and tell the secret service we were spies. He then asked our guide to take our passports and blackmail us. Charming. At this point I needed clarity, so at 2am I spoke to the receptionist. I asked if the people who cancelled were being charges to the agency… they weren’t, those rooms had been cancelled. Interesting. .

So we hatched a plan. We would leave at 5am with the other team, and get to the border at 8-9am before anyone would be awake and could cause us problems. The only issue was Greg and Priya’s team needed to goto the embassy, so would be late. We decide to leave some money with Greg for the guide’s taxi to the border so he can follow us, and wish them luck.

After 3 hours of bad sleep, we wake up and get ready to leave. Only the hotel is refusing to return our passports. WTF?! Threatening to call the embassy does not help. They wake up Ali (poor him, caught in the middle without any fault) and he gives us our passports. The delays make us reach 8am, at which point we leave.  On the road to the border, we get stopped by multiple police checkpoints (having never been stopped in Iran before). Each one seems to be just trying to delay us. Maybe it’s our paranoia at this point.

We make it to the border before our guide as his car broke down, and leave Iran just as he arrives. Another random fixer that did nothing for us asks for $60 and gets ugly when we refuse. We drive over the border, where he can’t follow. I’m now pretty annoyed with the Iranian fixers who follow you around while you do your paperwork then ask for money so ignore him entirely.

I later get a call from Ali, he’s in the police station with the fixer. Great. Eventually, we see Greg and Priya at the border – they saw Ali on the road, so he got out of the police it seems. Hope there aren’t any issues there…

In summary, Iran is an amazing, beautiful country, with amazing people… but like anywhere else, there’s the one that can spoil it for everyone.

Next challenge, entering Turkmenistan, a country as guarded as North Korea… but with the challenge that in our convoy of seven, we are the only ones with the correct paperwork. Thanks to the Visa Machine, everyone else has the wrong paperwork. Two have the wrong entry port, and three both the wrong entry and wrong exit. Additionally the cover sheet with the signature looks photoshopped, badly. Oh well, that’s all for another update!

I’ll upload pictures of Iran once I’m back in the UK – used my pentax camera and need a RAW converter.