In Iran I was immediately approached by someone who spoke English and told me where to park the bike and where the immigration office was and so on. The luggage check, where some people really had problems with was easy. The guy pointed at my luggage roll and asked what was in there. "Cloths" I answered. "Only clothes?". "No, sandals and gloves as well" and the he was satisfied. The guy who spoke English turned out to be from the tourist office and supplied me with a good free map. I could also change money with him. His rate wasn't that good (got the current rate from the Germans) so I didn't change any money with him. The rest of the border formalities were so easy that I was through it all in no time. I looked over my shoulders if no one was waving me back but it all was OK. I drove to the next town Maku and went in a bank to change money. This bank didn't change money but the neighbouring bank did. But it turned out to be just closed. For lunch break I thought and I left town.
Later on I realised it was Thursday today (a Saturday to the Islamic countries) so the banks wouldn't open after lunch or tomorrow as well. With only petrol in the tank for 100 km. and no local currency at all I returned back to Maku and changed only USD 20 on the black market against a very poor rate as they new exactly what my problem was. But at least I could get some petrol now during the weekend. The petrol station just outside Maku was selling diesel only but there was another station 60 kms ahead. I could make that but there turned out to be no station at all.
According to the map the next (and nearest) petrol station was another 35 kms. further down the road. My tank was almost empty when I got there and... they had only diesel as well. But fortunately there was another station inside the town, which sold petrol.
Trying to glue the broken GPS-holder |
An hour later I found out that the bracket of GPS-holder was broken everywhere as its plastic couldn't stand the fuel so I had to put a strap around it to hold the GPS. In Urmiye I had a diner for USD 0.75 and spend the night at a rough camp. Following the secondary roads down along the Turkish and Iraqi border I crossed through small villages and drove along nice winding roads through a mountainous area. In Bone I wanted to buy some cheese and after having succeeded to make myself understood and got the cheese outside there where about 40 people standing around the motorbike. Small bikes and pickups were blocking the road completely. Not that anyone cared, in fact the police officers were looking at the bike as well. Everybody looked how I stowed away the cheese and started the engine. Before I could leave they had to move away several bikes but then I could go.
Outside Bane the roads was turning from tarmac into gravel and stayed that way, so I drove off road for over 40 kms. which was great. Just before Sute I was stopped at a military checkpoint and had to show my passport. They really didn't now what to do with it, as for my personal data they actually looked at my American visa, so I had to wait as they phoned from their office building. A pickup stopped and one of those guys could speak English and knew they had to check my Iranian visa and as it was still valid everything was OK. So I wanted to leave but had to stay. What for? Finally an officer was coming down the hill on a small motorbike and wanted to see my passport and the soldier was explaining and showing my Iranian visa and showed everything he had learned a couple of minutes ago (and impressed his boss with it?). But I could continue. I didn't see the village of Sute and decided to park along a dry riverbed, nicely outside sight of the road. Sitting here less than 5 minutes 4 guys came walking down the hill straight towards me and started to talk with me, offering me some melons and finally invited me in their home, which I accepted.
The road to Esfahan |
Later that night some more people showed up and they appeared to be Kurds and were particularly interested in the maps of the Kurdish areas in Turkey and Iraq. I slept on a mattress on the floor really well.
The next morning after breakfast I wanted to leave (could stay longer if I wanted) so I got dressed but couldn't find my socks. It appeared that they were freshly washed that night. My intentions were to drive south to Senendec but my hosts told me yesterday night that it was another 200 kms. off road and in this way I would never get through Iran so I returned to the main road and drove down to Esfahan the next day.
In Esfahan I was driving against a one-way road when I saw police officers standing ahead, so I pretended to be lost and asked them for directions. Ooh easy, just keep following the road you're on now.
The hotel had a bed available and as I was taking the stuff off my bike another Dutch couple on a motorbike showed up. Manus and Yumi were just coming from Bam and were on the way back home. We took a room together and as they had been in Esfahan before they knew exactly where the best restaurants were and also a place where you could get milkshakes.
I liked Esfahan, the city was relaxed but mainly because the hotel had a nice courtyard where you were away from the Iranian world. It was nice sitting down there and read a book, write your diary or chat with other travellers as there was a real interesting group of people staying there and without a lot of locals come to stare at you. I know this is also a consequence of travelling but therefore its so great if you can escape it for a while. So days passed by while doing nothing and I only went into the city to get some food or drinks. One morning we were sitting in the courtyard when an English teacher came to us and asked if her female students could interview us. The interview (not with a particular person but to us as group) started very formal with questions they already wrote down before but soon we had more like a conversation where we were asking questions as well.
They had quite an ideal view of the west but hopefully we gave them a more realistic view. We asked them about their situation as women in Iran and they were quite honest in it and weren't too happy about it. The whole conversation got quite formal when their teacher showed up to have a look how things were going but they told their opinions as soon she left. After 2 hours they had to leave as they had only permission (from the hotel owner) to interview us for 1 hour and they already had exceeded it.
Overlanders motorbike parking in Esfahan |
After 3 days doing nothing I decided to explore Esfahan and saw some bridges, bazaars and the Imam square with the big mosques. It was nice but not something special except for the big mosque, which had a superb acoustic when you were standing in the middle.
31 august I had to extend my visa as I had only a 7 days visa, so we (together with the Dutch couple) went to the police station but they didn't issue visa-extensions there anymore. We had to take a taxi. A police officer went outside with us, hold a taxi and told the driver where we had to go to and... paid the taxi trip already! The visa-extension procedure was very simple and went smooth. Within 30 minutes we were all outside again with the requested number of days. I asked for (and got) 7 more days.
My extended stay in Esfahan gave me the opportunity to get my emails organised on my palmtop again and write the travel reports. Now I just have to send them and even in Iran they got Internet access as well. It's not cheap but it was in the hotel, so close at hand. However I already found out that the standard windows application which I need to transfer files between the palmtop and the Internet PC is not installed on the PC by default.
Fortunately the hotel owner had a problem with a Farsi (Persian) character set on this PC and he asked if I could help him. I gave it a try but he needed a special Farsi character set. But this was the perfect opportunity for me to install the application I needed as I had his Windows CDROM now and made a copy on floppy disk of this application. So finally I was able to send my reports. Days later I found out that I left that floppy disk in his PC so I had to find that application again somewhere but now I knew what I exactly needed.
Egyptican art in Persepolis? |
The next day I drove all the way to Bam, over 600 km. through a boring desert. Nothing but stones and sand and hardly any mountains to see. So the throttle opened up to 140 km/h as the road was perfect asphalt and almost deserted. After Kerman it was getting warmer as I slowly descended and when approaching Bam it was as hot as a desert is supposed to be. Bam is famous because of its old city, including a castle, completely made out of mud. An impressive sight when I entered through the gate and oversaw the city from its surrounding wall. The castle was restored together with the main bazaar and some other city highlights but most of the 'ordinary' houses were still a ruin. From several places I sat down and enjoyed the view for a long time, mostly at the castle wall as it was the highest part of the city. The rest of the day I spend cleaning my alu-pannier as my liquid soap bottle had started leaking.
The city of Bam completely made out of mud |
"Oops Martin, this was not a really clever thing to do" I thought, but continued walking to my bike. I wanted to get away ASAP. but just now I couldn't find my key in any pockets. One police officer came to me and asked me to come back to the office. I thought that possibly I forgot to take out the key and maybe they took it out so I returned. One officer started to shout at my in Farsi and I replied to him that he had to start talking English otherwise I would leave. He continued in Farsi so I turned around and left. Back at the bike I saw the key on the ground (fell out of my pocket) and drove away as fast as possible.
They weren't following me but they could use their radio as I was going to the border (and they knew this) and had to pass a lot of checkpoints. But I passed all checkpoints without any problems. At the third (military) checkpoint I drove on when they started talking about an escort, saying that I didn't need an escort. Later, in Pakistan I found out that everybody had similar stories about the escorts between Bam and Zahedan and that I was quite lucky to wait only for 45 minutes, some people waited more than 5 hours at different checkpoints.