Mini World Adventure Part 11

 We arrived at the Indian border in the early evening too late to cross (it closes at sunset and opens again at sunrise) and watched the closing of the border. Is a real ceremony with crowds filling stands each side,shouting and jeering at each other.It was very tense, I felt if someone had fired a toy pistol, war could have broken out. Both sides have the tallest possible soldier and go through a gate closing, when the gates are slammed shut and the flags lowered, whilst the soldiers goose step like some kind of Monty Python sketch!

The same happened the next morning and as soon as it was complete we crossed into Pakistan and headed for Lahore airport to send our film back to the UK. I am still not sure if it ever made it as we asked a stranger to take it, I’m not sure I would do the same. 

It was about 1000 miles across Pakistan and the closer we got to Iran the more nervous we got.They have a very strange way of driving at night, when they see a vehicle coming towards them, they turn out the headlamps, this is very unnerving, when they are almost upon you they turn them on full, almost blinding you, I am still unsure why they do this but it certainly put us off driving at night. 
The road to up Quetta was not too bad, apart from when a truck breaks down, and they do quite often they leave them in the road like mobile roundabout, so you have the spectacle of gearboxes and rear axles being remove as you drive around them. 

So we used the same tactic as you can see above.

The trucks are fantastic; almost all old Bedford’s that have been to use a modern word ‘Pimped’ with polished chrome multitudes of coloured lights and paintings, it must decrease the load they are able to carry considerably. Some of the paintings are fantastic either, fantasy landscapes or pictures of the President in full military uniform,some are on the rear of fuel tankers,(who very interestingly were taking fuel to Iran as the war was affecting supplies) and normal freight trucks, one thing I always found amusing was that the area of these freight trucks consisted of several boards that slotted into the side panels,
even though they had a picture they were still numbers so as the Presidents hat wasn’t where his medals should be?

As we approached the border we had an unexpected shock,

sand had been blown across the roads and we became stuck in several of these drifts, memories of the Sahara came flooding back. 

The towns and villages here consisted of streets with open shop front down each side, as well as the normal bakers, food shops, car parts many were selling guns for the Taliban rebels who at the time were fighting the Russians. It felt a dangerous place to be with many Afghans wearing their Salwar Kameez (long dress-like) with a Lungee (turban)

The road eventually ran out and it was dirt track for the final 50 or so miles until we reached the border.

We were very used to Border crossings by now, Iran was our 20th country, and knew the technique, ensure you have absolutely every possible piece of paperwork to hand, never get impatient, be prepared to have to ‘pay’ or have ‘gifts’ (usually cigarettes but none of us smoked), look like you have all the time in the world and don’t take any photos. 
Well we knew we had an issue, our health certificates for various diseases were out of date and we did not like the idea of having injections in India or Pakistan, so we went to the bank to change our money into Iranian and whilst one of us kept the chap busy ‘borrowed’ a date stamp and forged the paperwork. We crossed out of Pakistan but Iran would not make it easy, you have to remember they were at war and we were three westerners driving two brightly coloured cars with what looked like ‘Stop Police’ (in fact it was STOP POLIO) written down the side. They noticed our forgery straight away, but after a couple of packets of fags eventually let us in.

We were met by a very strange sight, an old coach being loaded with sheep,

when the inside was full they were pushing them into place where the cases are normally kept! 
So we drove off down the dirt road only to be confronted by trucks coming straight at us, no one had told us they drive on the right hand side of the road! 
For some reason we stopped on a desert stretch of road and out of nowhere an elderly gentleman turned up, (I cannot remember how he told us as we didn’t speak Iranian and I don’t think he spoke English) but he said he had a headache,

so we gave him some aspirins telling him to take two now and two tonight, as we drove off I looked in the mirror and saw him push all the tablets in at once. 
Finding food here was very difficult, our staple diet was the unleavened bread the Taftan or Lav-ash and a jar of marmite we still had in our supplies.

In the towns and cities there were lots of flags and posters of the Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and soldiers with machine guns. 

Above we are driving up the main street in Tehran and it surprised me to see snow in the distance