A few hours after going to sleep in a half-assed attempt of a tent, we woke up and set off for the Iranian border with the full convoy - Iran changed its visa policy and now requires British tourists to have a guide before they can enter the country, to save money 10 teams are sharing the one guide. When we started approaching the border we passed a queue of trucks a mile long - it seems they were all uber keen and arrived during the night before the border opened, or an indication of what was to come..

 

The Turkish side of the border was easier than it had been getting into the country, without three mysterious stamps to collect - it was as simple as showing one man all the documents and getting one stamp. After which they separated the vehicle owners (me) and the passengers (Chris), for the next hour I didn't see Chris so I can only tell my side of the story - feel free  to assume there was a cavity search for the passengers if you like.

 

The drivers were told to move our cars into the next pen, which was no-mans-land between Turkey and Iran. As it was international land we came to the decision to open a casino, unfortunately a man interrupted the planning process by taking our passports into his shed - re-visit lesson three, all important border s*&$ happens in sheds. While he flipped through each page of each passport we stood in the sun and waited patiently.

 

Having been warned that the border guards love making people unpack everything in their car we had reorganised the boot yesterday evening. It seems this was a wasted effort, as the uniformed man opened the boot and tested the firmness of Chris' bag. After mulling it over for a second he must have decided it was too soft for a decent night's sleep, so moved on to the next car. As we waited for Iranian shed-man (no relation to Turkish shed-man) the drivers, who didn't get through in the first batch, sat in the shade. There was a couple of Brits and a whole bunch of Aussies. As Australians don't need a guide for their visas most weren't part of our convoy, apart from one team who seemed to have joined for the s&%$s and giggles. The two other Brits were in Nissan Micra and a Daihatsu Terious, and the Australian team were in a Yaris.

 

After an hour shed-man had read every line on our passports, and decided his morning needed some finger painting - so he proceeded to take fingerprints for the first few people before giving up, I hear there is very little room for finger painting creativity on Iranian forms.

We were then released to freely explore Iran, well after 8 hours of sitting in the car park we were. 8 hours of boredom is best summarised in bullet points:

• The sun is hot and 30000 applications of sun cream is not enough to prevent the transition to tomato.

• Watermelons are delicious, and cheaper than buying your water and melon separately.

• Iranian black market currency dealers are actually quite friendly.

• The price variations between camping chairs can be related to how broken they are after a week of use.

• Carnet de passages (document required to temporarily import a car into some countries) take a really long time to organise for a massive convoy.

 

After hours of waiting we got our carnet, only to find out our whole convoy had been put on one document - if any vehicle failed to leave the country we would all be held accountable. After a few more hours of arguing about the carnet and the cost we ended up with two papers between the 10 cars... No man left behind will apply for the next 5 days.

 

At 7pm, a full 12 hours after arriving, we left the border and began our adventure in Iran. After night fell, and with 60km left till our planned campsite, the convoy was tested - Po (a MK1 Flat Punto) decided to die on a hill in a random Iranian village. As luck would have it the convoy contained an Australian mechanic and a Swedish helicopter engineer, both jumped out opened the bonnet and had diagnosed the problem in a few minutes. However within those few minutes a pair of Iranians showed up to "help", their help consisted of telling the two guys they were wrong and tearing apart bits of the engine. An hour later they arrived at the decision that it was the distributor - something that is apparently important. Having already been aware of this we thanked them for their help and waved goodbye. Since Po was out for the count the decision was made to tow it to the campsite and leave it till tomorrow. After a few hours, the slowest precession of British cars with hazard lights flashing arrived at the campsite, or more arrived at the lawn of a 5 star hotel at 2 a.m.