Crossing Into Iran

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…