IRANIAN SPECIAL

LADIES DRESSED IRANIAN STYLE JAN, LORRAINE, MO, JACKIE, JO, KAT, MARY, LUCINDA, LINDA, JANE.

US IN THE SQUARE ESFAHAN

Arrived at the border bright & early Wednesday morning the 14th May after a nice drive along an empty road passing Mount Ararat on our left which is the mountain that Noah landed on in the bible, nobody was quite sure what to expect, leaving Turkish immigration involved the hanging around with passport control that we experienced when we entered but after about 30 minutes we were allowed to pass through the gates into the Iranian side. This turned out to be totally painless with passport checks going very smoothly, the part that took the longest was an official filling out all the forms from English into Farsi, as for the vehicle a cursory glance inside the passenger compartment was all that was required to allow us to continue on our way, a quick stop at the money change bank where £100 gets you so many notes that you can’t fit them into your wallet, £1 = 18900 Rials so after three and a half hours we were on our way much luckier than the coach that was in front of us that they had more or less taken it apart in their search procedure.
The first town we came across was MaKu we hoped to stop here for lunch and also top up with fuel it was while we were driving around the town looking, that a car pulled up alongside bibbing his horn and gesturing for us to follow him, after initially trying to lead us back to the border road he obviously thought we were trying to leave the country, Jacko our driver then used his international sign language which led to the car driver taking us to a nice restaurant, which initially looked closed but after the driver spoke to the owners food was soon arranged, not being able to speak Farsi certainly made life more interesting, the car driver turned out to be a nurse at the local hospital who was just curious about the truck and its contents and after half an hour’s conversation continued on his way, this we were about to find out is the friendly nature of the Iranian people. After lunch the next requirement was fuel, supply can sometimes be limited in Iran, the first garage had a long queue outside of it, the next refused to sell us any and then at the third he said locals only, but after about 15 minutes of us being parked on his forecourt and Jacko bending his ear, he decided to sell us 300 litres of fuel for an inflated nine pence a litre, so all fuelled and provisioned up we continued on through several police checkpoints which are commonplace over here, we were stopped at most purely I think because they were curious about the truck with Dutch number plates on it, finally we made bush camp at about seven o’clock that night .

FIRST IRANIAN BUSH CAMP DRYING THE WASHING FROM TURKEY.

FIREWOOD COLLECTION LUNCH STOP ARRAS VALLEY

The next day we followed the road down through the Arras valley on the border with Azerbaijan we stopped in Jolfa to get supplies and also buy our lunch, this was our first experience of shopping in Iran and surprisingly different to anything else we have seen before, all small shops no department stores and with everything written in Farsi you can’t read or converse, so sign language becomes very important, watching Adey trying to get the shopkeeper to understand he wanted chicken was amusing with the flapping of the arms and clucking sounds as he stood on the pathway !!. My first purchase was trying to buy Jan a cream cake for her birthday and ending up with seven all neatly boxed with a bow. Our biggest problem was getting bread it’s a bit thicker than pitta bread here and they bake constantly because the bread doesn’t keep beyond a couple of hours, as the bread becomes ready locals appear from nowhere to buy it, I was stood patiently waiting for the next batch with one other lady when just before it was taken from the oven several locals arrived and started handing over notes all around me, there was me making eight fingers to tell the baker I required eight loaves which didn’t seem to being having much effect so I got out a 20,000 rial note which sounds a lot but is only worth a pound, passed it across managed to get the baker to give me eight loaves and then ducked down to emerge from the scrum at waist level with these piping hot loaves, much to our groups pleasure as they thought we weren’t going to get any bread for lunch that day.

Another days driving brings us to Kalebayiu this is a village with a fortress on the top of the hill called Babek castle, our campsite according to the notes that Jacko and Jane have should be a quiet little spot, when we arrive we discover a picnic area full of Iranian families and lots of low electric cables that we have to lift over the truck to prevent pulling them all down much to the local police’s amusement. We set up camp and word quickly gets around that some Westerners have arrived and through the night we have a continuous stream of visitors coming to look at us and for those who can speak English chat away asking all sorts of questions, we now know what a goldfish in a bowl feels like with everyone watching our every move but very friendly they all were. The next morning its up bright and early for the walk (as it turns out expedition) up to the fortress, it’s supposed to be a 2 hour walk up some steps to the top but us being the E.O.E trip unknowingly take the more difficult and poorly marked route which involves scrabbling up the side of a cliff face and 1 in 1 muddy slopes, needless to say two & a half hours later we arrive at

TEA AT THE TOP FIONA, JAN, MO

the top with quite a sense of achievement, of course all we have to do now is get back down, luckily we spot from the summit the easier path back down on the other side of the mountain mind you the steps were a killer on the knees coming down getting back to the truck at 1.30 pm staving, not that many people saw the scenery in the afternoon for the closed eyelids, got our second lot of fuel on this trip paying 2.2 pence per litre after lengthy discussions and what seemed like half the village turning up to listen.

We head off for Masuleh a village high up in the mountains that a lot of Iranians visit to get away from the heat, not exactly what we were trying to do we would just love to find some heat but with some nice waterfalls and sleeping in a house instead of a tent it would be a welcome break, we arrived surprise surprise in the rain but humid, off we go and find our accommodation, a room for 8 complete with beds and sit down loo pure luxury we have two days of rain here, so drinking Tea and eating becomes our only interest, we forgo the walk to the waterfalls too many memories of Babak castle I think.

FIRST NIGHT'S MEAL DOUG, JO, JOHN, KAT, MO, ROB, ME, JAN.

OUR ROOM FOR EIGHT

THIS ONES FOR JOHNS FAMILY.

OLD VILLAGE WOMAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOUNG VILLAGE LAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the second night during our meal we have a power cut so get to eat by candlelight very romantic or it would have been if the girls wouldn’t have been sitting on one table and the boys on another, luckily I had my head torch in my pocket for the trek back through the pitch black village paths which have holes and sheer drops all over them.
Leaving Masuleh we head off for Esfahan passing through the suburbs of Tehran which is covered in smog, for this journey we are mainly on dual carriageways and make good progress apart from all the police checkpoints that always want to pull us over and chat, in the end Jacko gets fed up with continuingly being stopped and instead of stopping just waves and smiles back at the policeman who’s trying to flag us down they looked a little bewildered but never bothered to pursue us so we happily continued on our way. We need to top up with fuel and this always involves lengthy negotiations over the price which is never displayed on the side of the road,but finally after about 10 minutes of discussions a figure of 5 pence a litre is agreed and we can continue on our way taking some of the family of flies who were living in the toilets with us. The area between Tehran and Esfahan is desert and we need to make bush camp our first in the desert, when I say desert its not the idyllic sand dunes picture that everybody immediately thinks of, more like a quarry with rocks and hard sand everywhere, but a pleasant little spot off the road we find and settle down for our evening meal being chicken, green beans & potatoes. Sitting there in T shirts no fleeces yes its finally warming up enjoying our meal commenting about how nice this all is, when all of a sudden as if somebody had switched on a fan a dust storm starts up, covering us and our dinners in sand luckily we had all just about finished but worse was yet to come returning to check the tents, you couldn’t see them from where we were because of the dust and darkness, two of them were missing so off we all go searching, finding Mo’s about 30 yards away with everything still inside and luckily intact, but no sign of Pauls completely disappeared just a couple of pegs left in position the wind finally subsided early in the morning so they tell me, I slept through and we were left to wash all the kitchen equipment down before we could leave because sand was everywhere just like when you have sandwiches on the beach !!!
Arriving in Esfahan a clean pleasant city with a nice river running through it we book into a budget hostel clean but basic for our four night stay. Jacko takes the truck away to carry out some repairs at a workshop they used last year, some tyres a bit of welding and a new windscreen should hopefully get us on our way again. We visit the local sights Old bridges,

Mosque’s and shopping Bazaars, Jan takes this opportunity to get the kebab’s revenge and becomes acquainted with the loo’s on an intimate basis. It was while we were sat in the hostel courtyard quite close to the facilities because of Jan’s present well being, that two teachers from a local English school turned up asking us if we would be prepared to go and talk to their students so that they could practise their English, four of us went in the morning and another four for the evening session which each lasted about three hours this was very rewarding for us as well as the Iranians, we got a greater insight about their culture and living conditions than we ever would have got from just visiting the tourist sights.
We leave Esfahan Saturday morning 25th May making for Persepolis the ruins of Darius the Great’s, palace this is much further south

and is now starting to seriously warm up 34 degrees is recorded, another fuel stop on the way our best price so far one pence a litre so in goes another 500 litres, that was cheaper than a pint and a glass of red wine at home. We bush camp just outside the gates ready for an early start the next morning we want to be able to visit the city of Shiraz in the afternoon so time is precious, our guide makes the place come alive and with very few people visiting the site at nine oclock in the morning it makes a pleasant change not to be herded around. Shiraz a name close to Jan’s heart from the red wine grape variety that she has been known to sample on the odd occasion!!!, although they have not produced wine from here for ages, a bustling large city which is difficult to park a 12 metre long truck in but we finally manage to park in a tow away zone thinking there have to have something pretty large to drag away our orange truck and sure enough after 3 hours its still there, we get lunch more kebabs, Jan just has the rice doesn’t want to encourage a hasty return of her previous predicament, we wander through the Bazaars with their spices and colourful clothing this is area is famous for its silk but the only silks we find have made in China stamped on them. We leave Shiraz at 5 oclock and travel for about one & half hours before making bush camp by a small river, some of the group go for a bath in the river luckily we are cooking so make do with a shower later, we are still waiting to see if any nasty river water rashes appear. The next day we head off north east to Yazd a city in the middle of the desert Iran’s oldest continually inhabited city a temperature of 48 degrees is recorded in the afternoon sun, this after a lunch stop in a little one horse town in the middle of nowhere where the restaurant has no food and only some bread and water is available from the little corner shop, from the amount of trucks parked outside it was like the Watford gap services of the Iranian desert, a taste of things to come but relaxing around the hotel in the afternoon its surprising just how manageable this heat is if you don’t have to work, a nice hot cup of tea, Iran’s answer to a nice cold beer is enjoyed on the comfortable carpeted areas in the hotel see below.WALKING THE OLD CITY YAZD

ME SCARED OF SHEEP !!!!!!!

Tomorrow the 28th we leave Yazd heading for Bam the old city that was badly hit by the earthquake back in 2003 we have a couple of bush camps and hope to cross the border into Pakistan on Friday. We are both pleased to have visited Iran and enjoyed the hospitality of the Iranian people who have made us feel very welcome, a friendly country with a wide range of landscapes to enjoy, the most common car here is the old Hillman Hunter made under another name but there are thousands of them mainly white in colour running about the roads of Iran, the other most common mode of transport is the 125cc Honda motorcycles which complete families use as means of transport (families of 4 & more all at once) on the roads, paths and even through the Bazaars nowhere is safe from them, this was our tenth country so far and also the best till now with even more to look forward to hopefully. Our next update will be from Pakistan not sure where & when, will have to see what internet accessibility is like on our arrival in the country.

STILL PERFECTING HER BUSH CAMP SQUAT TECHNIQUE

LAST TURKISH ENTRY

We have now spent just over three weeks in Turkey and have experienced radical changes in both the climate and landscapes, what a place started off from the border with Bulgaria through lush green landscape, very similar to the countryside of England, fertile farming land abounds in all directions, as we moved south the landscape becomes more rocky and tree line with huge greenhouses full of tomatoes filling the protected valley’s near the coast, and then moving on through to western Turkey across the high mountain ranges where the temperatures plummet. We have experienced highs of 28 degrees and full on frosts on the tents first thing in the mornings. Oludniz a resort geared directly at the English holiday maker with full English breakfast advertised by all the bars, not our sort of place but a walk from the campsite over to the ghost village is a real gem, with views over deserted bays and several wild tortoises just roaming over the path that we walk. lots of the group took the opportunity to paraglide from the top of Baba dagi which is taller than Ben Nevis down onto the beach, not something that Jan or I done because I had recently done this in Meribel on ski’s, while Jan is now having second thoughts and intends to do one later on this this trip if the opportunity arises after hearing the tales from the rest of the group. Olympos our next stop is a quiet resort that is built around the ruins of Olympos no building may be built here that is permanent, so all the accommodation is wooden huts (tree houses) if you count 18 inches off the ground as a tree house and not a bush house, very nice though they are about four times the size of our little house on the Prairie that we used to have back at High Road in Trimley mind you these are very nice with en suites and air con, not that it is quite warm enough for the air con just yet. Got my first & last swim in the Mediterranean here, very pleasant while Jan did some painting on the beach her first watercolour for ages. Went up to a place called the Chimaera that night, this is where gases coming out of the hillside spontaneously ignite very impressive, we looked hard for the transco man who was controlling the gas supply but we couldn't find him anywhere they hid him well.






Leaving Olympos we headed off for the Cappadocia area a region where different volcanic eruptions over the years have left rock formations known as Fairy Chimneys and also people have hollowed out the hillside to make homes, and even complete towns in them, we visited a few plus a complete underground city luckily the day we visited this it started to rain so we were better off underground instead of facing the cold damp English climate above. We also took a balloon flight, for both of us a first, and for anyone who knows Jan not one of her first choice things to do but she did manage after a hesitant start in which she spent two minutes clambering in, it was a bit of a climb the basket held 21 people, she panicked and jumped straight out clearing the basket in one leap because she felt to hemmed in, I’m pleased to say we were still on the ground at this point, after a little encouragement from the rest of us she re-boarded and our flight got under way very nice we got to a height of 1500 metres and the view was spectacular.

It was at this campsite that we bumped into the Oddessy Overland group they had left London two weeks after us and are heading for Darwin on a more northly route instead of going through Iran & Pakistan, the good news was the weather had been as bad for them as it was for us on the way down, we all went out for a Turkish night and just to help with the cultural interaction between the different countries I took the opportunity to introduce them to my famous Trimley break dancing technique as seen at the Orwell Ladies netball disco in years past, fortunately my head stood up to it and it was well received by all (Charlotte you would have been proud).
After this three night stop it was time to head off for three nights of bush camps one being at the top of Nemrut Dagi about 2000 metres high and with an approach road with a one in two incline and shear drops on the corners, needless to say camping at the top was fresh (freezing) but with getting up at four oclock the next morning and walking the last 200 metres to the summit to see the sunrise was a truly tiring experience but well worth it, of course only one of us actually got up and done it and your be very surprised to hear that it was me, and I’m still recovering !!!

BUSH CAMP TOP OF NERMUT DAGI

It was at the first of these three bushcamps that our head of navigation & communications (Jan) misplaced/lost her glasses which we hope will turn up on the truck somewhere in the future. From Nemrut Dagi we headed off for Dogibizuit a town only 30 km from the Iranian border this should have entailed a pleasant ferry crossing across a lake the unfortunate thing being that when we got there it wasn’t running, so it meant a three hour back track around the lake our first detour on the journey so far, not bad for an exploratory overland trip. It was on the last day of these bush camps that after a toilet stop our head of communications discovered she had left her phone in the loo after carefully removing it from her jeans to prevent losing it down the squat toilets, that one of our group had the misfortune of doing earlier in the trip, we were travelling up a narrow gorge road at the time and so Jacko had to turn round which he managed ,and luckily it was still there on our return so as preventing a major overhaul of the communications dept. This last road took us within a 100 miles of the Syrian & Iraq borders and we passed through several army checkpoints along the way I’m pleased to say we didn’t come under attack from any scuds or friendly fire from the Americans. Dogibizuit was our last stop in Turkey this allowed the ladies to go out and get there clothing ready for Iran as they have to be covered up for the duration of our time in Iran only the face and hands are allowed to be exposed, quite a morning rummaging amongst the bazaars until they all got kitted out. Dogibizuit altitude is actually higher than what we were at when we were up Nemrut Dagi which would explain why on our last morning in Turkey we woke up to find the tent covered in a thick layer of ice we will be pleased to get into Iran and hopefully some warmth.

HAIL STONES OUR LAST MORNING IN TURKEY.

To sum Turkey up we were surprised at the development going on across the country there certainly appears to be money available especially at the petrol stations where fuel is more expensive than in England about £1.30 a litre and 90% of the fuel stations are brand new, with facilities to match any 3 star hotel (very important when your an overland traveller). The good old Sherpa truck is a real big hit out here must be the lack of rain they don’t rust away so quickly & keeps all those mechanics in work repairing them, & what with income tax at 43% I don't think Turkey is on our short list of places to live. Well that just about covers our three weeks in Turkey we are looking forward to Iran and our next blog update.

Quick update due to lack of internet in Iran which we are now one week into, this blog update comes to you a little late but better late than never Iran going really well border crossing good, weather good, people very very friendly but will update you in next blog the Iranian special.