Part 5: Leaving Iran
So now the fun begins, Jos says to Stefan. Although we both have quite a bit of travel experience under our belt, the Stan-countries have stayed an enigma until now. It’s a bit unnerving, as things could (and indeed will) get a bit out of the ordinary here, and not in that warm-fuzzy-feeling-good-way we experienced in Iran. However, that is where we still are, crawling slowly behind trucks in first gear, towards the first border: Turkmenistan.
The roads curl over mountains and things slowed down dramatically. The roads smell like burnt brakes and tires, as the trucks have great difficulties to drive over this road: it is a dozens of kilometers long stretch of going up and down. We decided to take the border crossing near the Iranian town of Bajgiran, as this would lead us straight through a mountain pass on the quickest route to Ashgabat, the Turkmenian capitol.
Around 4:30 pm we arrived at the border, being optimistic that we would still be able to cross (we often had some difficulties to figure out at what time a border crossing would officially close). Imagine our disappointment when we saw the closed barrier at the gate: that doesn’t look too confidence inspiring, Stefan said. Nope, indeed. Jos walked into the customs building. Although it seemed that no one was there, he found a sleeping customs agent in a small room in one of the back-offices. After waking him up, he immediately pointed to the shoes Jos were wearing, which had to be (of course) taken off before he would talk to us. In his best sign language, the sleepy customs official pointed out that the border crossing was closed, and it may (or may not) open tomorrow at eight: Bollocks. Jos walked out again in order to consult with Stefan, which is when another customs agent arrived to seed some more doubt about the activeness of that particular border crossing.
Closed borders
After a brief exchange, the best we understood was that the border crossing was permanently closed since some undefined problems that occurred last week. Apparently it is considered normal that the Turkmen border just closes from one day to the other. Ok, that’s not going to work, Jos said to Stefan, and we decided to try our luck at the next border crossing at Loftabad, about 140 kilometers east of our position. That is a four hour drive, the second customs official stated, and, when driven in one of Iran’s finest vehicles, that would probably be accurate. Disappointed that there would be no Ashgabat for us today, we left off east. We drove back a substantial part of the road we had come from and took the first exit, leading us back to the beautiful road to Loftabad.
Although slow and sometimes downright dangerous to drive, this must have been one of the most impressive landscapes we have seen thus far, especially in the late evening sunlight: a flying camera-drone would have been able to shoot some very dreamy shots here, Stefan said. Even though we were able to drive the stretch in under two-and-a-half hours (instead of the expected four) yet everything was completely dark when we arrived in the small border village of Loftabad.
Camping between two countries
However, even though most lights were off and the border clearly closed, one door was still open. I’ll have a quick look, Jos said, and he went off to see what our options were. This didn’t look good, the hundreds of trucks parked on the other side of the gate gave the impression that this was more a truck-driver convention than a border crossing for passenger cars. Imagine our surprise when we found three British Mongol Rally teams just parked on the other side of the gate.
The seven rallyers had been there for three hours, and even though they were allowed to exit Iran, the Turkmen side of the border was already enjoying their well-deserved bottle of vodka. Hence, this would be a night in no-man’s land for them, which seemed like a fine idea to us as well. After negotiating the idea with Mohammed, and Iranian border police officer, we were able to pack our tent, food and most importantly, our last bottle of smuggled vodka to the other side of the fence and set up camp next to the others. We had one of our delicious cans of tuna fish in olive oil before we decided to open up our bottle of vodka. However, Mohammed, good police officer as he was, was keeping an eye on us, in order to see what those weird westerners were up to in his territory of responsibility.
When he arrived for the second time on his motorbike to check things we hid the bottle of vodka behind a chair and Jos walked towards Mohammed. After giving him some gummi bears and offering him a cigarette, we decided to take some pictures together in order to draw his attention somewhere else, which worked perfectly. After he left again we shared our vodka and adventures with the Brits before going to sleep what was going to be our last night in Iran. The next morning we were woken up by the roaring sound all the trucks standing around us, waiting to get across the border. We packed up our camp and were anxious to see what came next: now the party begins.
