After Turkish traffic royally messed up our schedule we had no option to drive all the way from Ankara to the Iranian border; a drive which according to google would take 17 hours so its a good thing we found ourselves in a 5 star hotel last night.  The luxury quickly shut down when they locked up the free beer and fed us frozen fish fingers when we asked for hot food.

 

Since we had a long day ahead of us  we woke up early to find the shower was cold and breakfast wasn't included we beat a hastey retreat to Iran. The traffic out of Ankara was a lot quiter than that out of Istanbul, the main difference being the lack of a 100km long traffic jam. We flew along the open roads through the Turkish countryside, and knocked a few hours off our estimated time of arrival -  the GPS must have been drinking on the job, and was mistaking countryside for a playground and dropping the speed limit to 19mph. After passing numerous police speed checks, we concluded the GPS lady was in fact plastered.

 

As we left the tourists behind and headed further into the mountains, the roads got worse and less people spoke English - the adventure was on! We took shifts of driving for a few hours each, stopping only to get petrol and food. Living entirely on crisps and biscuits.

That wasn't the only time we stopped, we also stopped when the police told us to at security check points - which happened more often once we were well and truly in the mountains. The first time the policeman-officer waved us over to the side of the road, and approached the passenger side expecting to find the driver. He didn't find the driver, but he did find me miming driving with an invisible steering wheel. He laughed and indicated to drive on. Fourth Lesson: policemen love a good game of charades. The next time it happened the officer was fine form and forgot about us. After a few confused minutes we decided to sneak off, with the assumption theyd shoot us if it was all that important. Looking in the rear view mirror I saw no flashing lights or bullets so we kept on going.

 

As we ate up the miles on poor roads the rattling from the car got worse so we ignored it - If shaking broke it, surely more shaking would fix it again. The sun was setting when we came across a rally team, instantly recognizable by the massive sign they had stolen from the launch. When we pulled up at the next lights we found out they also had to get to the Iranian border by the morning, so we formed our first convoy of the rally with two Swiss brothers and a third Swiss non-brother stuffed in a Suzuki swift. Just when we thought our drive  was getting extreme, they told us how they have been driving pretty much non-stop for three days after spending days finding a new engine for another team's car. After a long couple of hundred miles in the dark being flashed at by oncoming vehicles - which also seems to be a rule of Turkish road, if you see another car at night you must do your very best to blind them - we reached the town at the Turkish border, found a collection of rally cars at a shop, and followed them to the campsite. After fourteen hours on the road, I tied the exhaust back onto the car and am now going to sleep because in a couple of hours we need to wake up and get into Iran.