After sur­viv­ing the ban­dit coun­try that sup­posedly is north­ern Bal­uchistan (Quetta to Taf­tan) without any incid­ent we arrived at the Pakistani-Iranian bor­der in our shiny new pink bus. I guess that the ban­dits thought that no self-respecting trav­el­ler would stoop so low and hide behind bright pink.

The Pakistani part of the bor­der was a breeze. Even though I had over­stayed my visa by a day the immig­ra­tion officer didn’t even bat an eye­lid and stamped me out of the coun­try. As soon as the Ira­nian bor­der opened (there is a 1,5 hour time dif­fer­ence) Joe and I crossed over, being allowed to jump the huge queue that was wait­ing already.

We had heard that for­eign­ers needed a police escort when trav­el­ling between the bor­der and Zahedan and sure enough we were told to wait for our body­guard. In the mean­time another for­eigner had arrived. Hus­sein, an Aus­tralian, who had fled Afgh­anistan alone at the age of 13, was vis­it­ing fam­ily for the first time after 10 years of liv­ing in Oz.

After about an hour and a half our escort turned up. A guy, much smal­ler than me, who looked to be around 18 and was not wear­ing any weapons, not even a pocket knife. Then we found out that because of our escort our jour­ney to Zahedan would take twice as long, so the price for a taxi would be a whop­ping 300.000 Rials and no amount of hag­gling could lower the price.

After a few minutes drive Hus­sein star­ted film­ing the coun­tryside for a bit. Unfor­tu­nately we were near­ing a check­point and, even worse, he was spot­ted. We were stopped and Hus­sein, his lug­gage and the ofend­ing cam­corder were taken apart in the con­trol room. Because of the Hussein-incident there are no images accom­pa­ny­ing this post. Call me para­noid, but I didn’t really want to risk my cam­era or my free­dom, not on a 7 day visa. While we waited we got treated to our first glimpse of Ira­nian driv­ing madness.

I think that as soon as your feet can reach the gas pedal you are deemed old and mature enough to drive a vehicle in Iran. Every­body tried get­ting through that check­point first, which res­ul­ted in a massive traffic jam. Half the road was covered with big spikes to chan­nel the vehicles. One driver had enough of wait­ing for his turn and rather blew up one of his tires on the spikes than wait a little bit longer.As soon as cars and trucks were past the check­point they acceller­ated as fast as pos­sible around the corner with squeel­ing tires, their load in the back, mostly sheep, almost fall­ing out.

Even­tu­ally it turned out that Hus­sein had to go to headquar­ters to be fur­ther inter­rog­ated, so we con­tin­ued on to Zahedan. I#m sure his being of Afghan des­cent didn’t help one bit. There were another couple check­points on the road and our body­guard was changed. In Zahedan we were dropped at a police sta­tion and told to wait again. Even going to a shop we were ‘guarded’, against who though I have no idea.

After an hour a police car arrived and we were off to the bus sta­tion, or so we thought. At every pre­cinct we were handed over to another police car and a police­man even escor­ted us into the sta­tion and helped us buy the tick­ets. I was off to Yazd and Joe to Teheran to meet up with his parents.

In the end we paid the taxi driver only 100.000 Rials each. Even that kind of blew m mea­gre budget of 60 EUR (there are no VISA or Mas­ter­Card ATMs in Iran and cash advance doesn’t work either) for the whole 7 days in Iran already, which is why I’m sit­ting now, at 4 am, in front of my hotel writ­ing this into my note­book instead of sleep­ing in a bed inside. I don’t want to pay for this nights acco­mod­a­tion as well, hav­ing had to spend almost 20 EUR in just the first day. It’ll be an excit­ing and very cheap 6 more days.

EDIT: I have just heard that the bor­der at Taf­tan has been closed com­pletely, so if you are try­ing to cross con­firm this before start­ing your journey…