I made it to Iran!

Driving up and down the “mountain” to go to the Avala Tower in Belgrade is done on a small winding road in a beautiful dense forest.

At first I planed to sleep att the parking lot next to the tower but since there was a party going on at that parking lot with 4 cars I thought it might be a good idea to sleep somewhere else. On my way down I found a spot in the forest that seemed to be a good place to stay in.

Unfortunately tho so did the party that moved to the exact same spot not long after me. Well I stayed and they eventually left.
When I built this van I had hitchhikers in mind and that’s why there is a top bunk installed. So as I was heading for the Bulgarian border I saw a hitchhiker and stopped to pick him up, his name was Miki and he was Hungarian. His plan was to go to Sofia, Bulgaria so my itinerary was perfect since it was my next stop. After we spent 2h45min with the rest of European automotive travelers we finally cleared it in to Bulgaria,

but that was after what seemed like the intire que collectively “lost their shit” and started honking ther horns for about 15 min. I thought it was hilarius, not everyone else did.

Well now we’re in Bulgaria and Miki has heard all about my traveling plans and now informs me that he is following me 2000km to the Turkey-Irani border to travel Turkey for a while.
I found the highest building in Sofia and headed east towards Ankara.

I was a bit behind schedule so I floored it, meaning I drove 130km/h according to the speedlimit.

At the Turkish border it was the same all over again with a lot of the same cars as at the previous border, and people honking and general madness with one big difference, I was sent to separate building for an extended search of the van! My thoughts were “ahhh how long is this gonna take? Will I have to take EVERYTHING out for inspection?” and of course there were a que of about 10 cars in front of us and no one had any idea what going on.

There was people in front of me who where moving “contraband” from the car in front of me to a car that had not been told to go to extra inspection.
I had already had my car checked by 2 different Turkish officials and a 3rd one told me to go to this extended inspection. After a long wait and registered the car for the inspection I got a bit annoyed that the lady checking the cars skipped mine and looked at the cars behind me. Eventually it was my turn and the extended inspection included one step in to the van and opening ONE cabinet door. That’s it? That’s what I’ve been waiting 45min for? Apparently so. In hindsight I could have skipped the extra inspection beccaus there was no interaction between the staff so they didn’t know I was ordered to go there.
Well well we were finally through and I hoped we would make it to Istanbul, but I had to accept that even I have to sleep sometimes. So next to a roadside diner some where in Easter Turkey I pulled over for the night. When I woke up it was Friday morning and I hade 1800km to go before Saturday lunch. In Turkey that is not necessarily an easy task if you also want you car to stay in one pice. I opted for the several pice chois and cept on driving east. Soon enough we got stuck in Istanbul rush hour traffic and it took ages to pass Istanbul,

but we did pass and I found my next building on the bucket list in Ankara.

It is now 7pm on the Friday evening and I have 1180 km to go to the border that I want to reach by Saturday lunch so it wasn’t anything to wait for but drive and hope I make it in time to cross the border. We reach Erzurum in eastern Turkey at 7am after 1.5h of sleep and I let Miki off to continue his hitchhiking. I realize that I am not that late after all and I awarded myself with van made breakfast in the Turkish mountains a few hours later.

It felt so good knowing that I was on the home stretch and that at least I would make it to the border in time. Now there was just the question if I would make it through.

At 1:05 pm I arrive at the border on the Turkish side, and it’s empty (well there was the mandatory 8km long line of trucks) not a singel car in front of me so I was let in to the border zone and drove up to the exit point and parked the car to go inside to get my passport stamped. There was still no cars in front of me but a few people walking across the border (not uncommon in this part of the world). When I got in to the building there was a “que” of about 20 people in front of me so I walked up and stode next to them and more people started showing up and everybody knew everybody and were like “hi are you here!? What are you doing her!? This is my wife! Where have you been!?” that’s me paraphrasing what they said since I don’t speek there language. By now the que hadn’t moved an inch since I arrived 20 min ago, when it finally did, no one was friends with any body and shit hit the fan! EVERYBODY was screaming at each other (well I wasn’t screaming) about who was going first in to the cattle fenced like corridor, another 20 min passes and people are starting to climb over the 2m high fence to get there stamp first, one got told off and no one else daired to try. Another 10 min passes with everyone screming and the que not moving, about now one of the officials walks up to this mob ans sais twice “stop it! You have to stand in a line” (me paraphrasing again) and then leaves, obviously this did absolutely nothing to the angry crowd. I probably didn’t help either, I was in the middle of this word war being pushed back and forth and a man in my age who stod behind me and trying to get past me was screaming at me in Turkish (I assume) and refused to switch to English so I answered him as calm as I could in Swedish that I was there befor him and he had to await his turn, somehow this only seemed to make him go from angry to furious. It eventually became my turn and I got my stamps and was ready to leave when the border guard told me that since I came with a car I had to go back out of the building the same way I came in. I looked at the angry crowd and back at the guard and said “how?” he didn’t look at me and repeated “go back” . So I did what some of the other people had done and jumped the cattle like fence, but in the opposite direction. I was now allowed in to the Irani border zone where Ismail the fixer helped me with the paperwork. And already at 4:56pm I was in Iran. So it took me 4h to pass an basically empty border. Although not a personal record it’s still impressive.
During all the comotion on the Turkish side I was probably the only one who had a good time and a smile on his face.
This was one of the most memorable border crossings ever, so far only topped by the Turkmenistan entry procedure.
I AM IN IRAN!

The vacation can start!

So far I’ve made it to Tabriz and found a free camping in the middle(ish) of the city and done absolutely nothing, well not really true I’ve mounted a mirror in the “bathroom” , had lunch with a nice Irani family living in Hamburg, had afternoon tea with a German father and his son and then we where invited to dinner with another Irani family.

Tomorrow it’s time to go to one of the world’s oldest bazaars, here in Tibriz.