When we arrived, there was a little kiosk to exit Turkey from before we could try and enter. So, as all good Brits do, we're formed a queue. Lovely. Until the hoards of Turkish/Iranians descended and they started pushing and grappling to get in front. They were climbing the barriers and getting rowdy. We didn't like this so created a human shield of men to try and usher the women through. Then the big boys came. Security guards came and started shouting at the locals and gesturing towards their guns and generally flexing their muscles. The locals stopped until the guards had gone and then went about their pushing in a quieter and subtler way. But thankfully, the human barrier worked and we all got out of Turkey!
Now we were stuck in no mans land. Waiting to get our visas stamped and approved. We were there for quite a few hours. Because we couldn't bring anything in with us, we only had a stopwatch to keep us entertained. This was brilliant for timing how long people spent in the toilet and trying to get the time to stop exactly on 1 second.
Anyway we eventually got through onto Iranian soil and then the fun really started. Money changers flocked to us. They were all offering the best rate and promised they could change any currency for us. So a finance fuelled frenzy ensued and eventually we thought we had decent deal.
As the clocks moved forwards 1 1/2 hours, we were running out of time to find somewhere to camp so we drove for an hour or so and found a dry river bed.
The place was teaming with wildlife and locusts everywhere. In the morning, we were packing our tent away and found a scorpion under it!
We had a very funny experience at a pharmacy when, struggling to get understood, one of our group just shouted "no, we don't need a doctor we just all have terrible diarrhoea!" So after we had our rehydration sachets, we left quickly! Standing there was a journalist writing a report on sightings of a large orange truck in the area. So if you read any reports in Iranian newspapers with quotes from Mr Alex from Southampton, England (geography wasn't great but football teams wasn't bad!) you know who it is!
More driving and we got to Babek Castle. We camped at the bottom and hiked the 3 1/2 hours up to it. The terrain was steep and we had to scramble up to the top. The added dynamic for Gill was that she had to do it in her fancy dress! The views would have been brilliant but we were shrouded in cloud so couldn't see too much. But what we saw, was pretty good! More driving and we are off to Masuleh for a few days.
Iranian insight #1
We are time travellers! We have actually stepped back in time. Not the same way that the Isle of Wight is 20 years behind the mainland, but because as we stepped foot on Iranian soil, we entered the year 1392. In fact it was the 5/5/1392. All because as they are Muslims, they don't believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came to earth to die for us, so they use a different calendar! How interesting!
Written on 30/7/13 (8/5/1392)
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