D-Day 13.04. and X-ing to Iran

Published on April 24 2014

Truck needs to be delivered at the port before 12h, boat leaves at 21h…lots of time to kill. Luckily met Ashley, the man that drives from Dubai back to the UK on a Ducati racebike in 1 week !!! Hanging out with him the afternoon back in Dubai getting the last city glimpses on hour long taxidrives… what a place… cant really fathom what all these young international hipsters get out of this fake town…

Boarding and shuttle across the Gulf goes all pretty smooth, can even sleep in the truck on the lower deck. Early morning comes with hundreds of anchored ships outside of Bandar Abbas of the National Iranian shipping line that since the financial embargo can hardly do any international business anymore. Was told it was the biggest shipping line in Asia,,,,thousands of people out of a job…

waiting to enter the ferry

The world has changed….rusty, falling apart harbor installations, 3 story buildings at max, loads of old trucks and cars and even more small motorbikes. Nothing like 8 hours ago…

Ashley is in his Leather suit, I warn him its going to take some time but he is eager to hit the road….

After some very friendly interrogations of our intentions and well wishing we immigrate…without the vehicles ….and then mayham starts. If you ever want to see real bureaucracy at work come here…

1st step we need to go into town to the shipping agency to get some papers and pay some money…luckily I know where the building is… back in the harbor we try to see what next and end up in the nets of a slimy agent that wants to make a quick buck on us…the responsible official is in bed with him it seems…But first he needs to get a signature of the BIG boss…oh what a scene …Asheley and myself thought ourselves in a movie…

Big desk across the large room; guy in typical Iranian attire, shirt without tie, stubble, vicious stare, hands with big silver rings and jade inlays carefully exposed on the desktop.

Sofas arranged in front of the desk where men sit with straight backs and devout expressions awaiting their turn for a signature. We are arranged on the sofas as well supposedly as being foreigners helping the process… When our guy gets his turn he was not expecting the scolding he got… Off he went with his tail between the legs waddling back out the door, I figured he got told off on trying to make money on us…. The BIG boss orders one of his underlings to help us through the process…. Thank You, Iran takes care of its visitors as much as it can!

I am not going to bore you with want we went through despite being helped… The amount of stamps and signatures to be processed is ridiculous and even the officials excuse themselves with a shrug and friendly smile “its Iran”.

Ashley swelters away in his leather suit and just trods along, luckily we find a water fountain as we did not drink nor eat all day… By 18.00h in the evening we finally made it out of the port… Ashley hits the throttle to cool down and get some km under his wheels… I hope he makes it unhurt back to the UK!

I cant be bothered to stay in Bandar Abbas again, its too hot and I want to get into the mountains so head along the main highway direction Sirjan as well. It’s full of trucks but snakes through spectacular scenery.

By 20h I find a spot in the dark off road near some shepherds housings and crash exhausted….