Turkey to Iran

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The wait, ohhh the horror and the wait.

Now lying in bed in Dorbygzat I was now only 40 or so km's from the Iranian border. My mind wandering in all sorts of directions, I couldnt believe that after all the waiting, planning and dreaming I was finally going to get to Iran.

Just had to hope that the Turkish border guards let me out of Turkey, inspite of my visa being 5 days expired.....
(the reassuring words of the Erzerum police "it will only cost ten us dollars as a punishment" were ringing hollow in their intention).

Saddled up and started the ride to the border.

Great countryside. I really enjoy riding through moutain ranges. On the left side Mount Ararat rose to 4500m (I think) abover sea level. While not too high the mountain is actually very large in area. Its tentrils streatching out and reaching at least 15kms in all directions. On the right more snowcapped granite mountains stretched. The weather wasnt too cold, which was good, but the legs were feeling rather soft and weakly, which was not good.

But got there eventually.

Got into another middle east queue. Which is pretty much a seudo rugby scrum. Being polite westerners we hung at the back for a while. Started talking to an iranain guy callled Ferriboz (coolest name ever). He had been living in Holland for about 10 years and was a very astute businessman. He was returning to Iran (Shiraz) to start antoher business. He got in contact with a friend of his in tabriz (the city where we were heading) and arranged for his mate to "recieve" us. i had never been recieved, but really did like the sound of it.

After about half an hour we had inch wormed our way to the front. By now I was pretty much sh-tting myself abou the expired visa. All sorts of extreemly bad scenarios were playing in my head- massive fines, a return trip to erzerum (arghhhhhhhhh), a trip to ankara, a full body cavity search. All were running through my head as I gave the listfull looking guard my passport. He having already stamped Spider's I looked longingly at the exit stamp and willed him to slam it down on my passport. It might have been my Jedi mind powers of he just mught have been the most lacsidical guard on the planet, beacuse he took a split second look at my turkey visa and stamped me out!

Ahhh the relief.

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relief!

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