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Sunday
12th July
Trottie much better, but Pam ill again, so
we decide to hang on another
day. Spent most of it reading and playing cards.
Monday
13th July
Pam still ill, so we decide to take her in
to the doc. He reckons
she’s just had dysentery, and gives her a few pills. Then in
the afternoon we noticed that one of the push-rod tubes on the VW was
bent (hit by a stone) and seeping oil, so we went into town to a spares
shop one of the nearby garage’s salesmen showed us and bought
another.
Rather a luxurious supper, as the American
in the caravan next door
gave us a couple of tins of peaches, of which we ate one.
Tuesday
14th July
Took the VW into the garage at 8:00, and
hung around the campsite until
it was ready, at c 4:00. They’d had to take the engine out
twice, as our original part was the wrong one. The bill still came to
less than £5, however! Set off immediately, giving a lift to
Jean, a French boy hitching around by himself. Went about 100 miles,
then camped on a deserted hillside.
Wednesday
15th July
Got woken up by an insect, the shape of a
grasshopper but about 4-5
inches long. It started charging at us in our sleeping bags, which was
very brave of it. Did about 320 miles (roads fairly bad) and then
stopped to camp by a garage. This was mainly for Trottie’s
sake, as she does not feel safe out in the country, though hopefully
this will pass.
Thursday
16th July
One long hard day’s motoring. Did
c 400 miles to Agri, which
is near the Iranian border. Driving on past the town, after doing a bit
of shopping, to look for a campsite, we came across a lonely military
outpost of c 6 soldiers, and obtained their delighted permission to
camp by their hut. They were very helpful, lending us a couple of
Turkish army blankets, and were suitably impressed when I showed them
my English army blanket, which of course was much nicer.
Friday
17th July
Another long day’s driving, again
about 400 miles, into Iran.
Right near the border we passed close to a really magnificent
snow-covered mountain which was about where Mount Ararat should have
been, so we supposed that was it – there was really no
mistaking it. Apparently there are the ruins of a boat appearing out of
a glacier at about 15,000 feet, which of course everyone says is the
Ark. The trouble is, 15,000 feet is way above the level of the flood
historians reckon to have been the Great Flood. As a further puzzle,
two similar boats have been found at roughly the same height in the
Swiss Alps.
Iran was very much like a lot of Turkey as
far as landscape went. It
took us about 2 hours to get through the border, after which we were
pleased to find that the road was an excellent one, up to English
standards, and very fast. So we decided to ignore the overall 6o kph
speed limit.
Stopped fairly soon after the border to buy
bread, and it suddenly
struck us that none of us knew any of the Farsi alphabet. However, the
first storekeeper we approached knew a little French, so we got by. We
worked out the numbers from the road signs, which were in English as
well as Farsi, and so we got the coinage pretty well taped.
We reached Tabriz, and after a little
exploration decided to camp in an
Agricultural Research Station, which had at the end of its large
grounds a reservoir with bathing huts and a nice wood. Nobody seemed to
mind us being there. We bumped into an English-speaking Iranian, who
gave us the leftovers of his lunch, luxuries like butter and cheese.
Saturday
18th July
Got up early and made the 400 odd kilometres
to Tehran. There is only
one official campsite there, which was full of hippies and quite a
laugh. The traffic in the city was awful, even worse than Istanbul, and
neither Mike nor I (who seem to get lumbered with the city driving)
enjoyed it much. Ate out (kebabs) and then turned in after a quick
smoke.
Sunday
19th July
Had a nice lazy day. Nipped into town to go
to the Post Office and then
the Afghanistan Embassy for visas. Spent the afternoon lazing around
and swimming. Learnt how to eat cheaply in Iran – soup and
bread.
Half the bread is torn up and mashed into the soup, then you eat your
soup-mash with the other half of your bread!
Monday
20th July
Went again to the Post Office, picked up our
Afghanistan visas and then
headed on out of town. There were no signposts, and the only way to
find the road was to keep asking people. This led to us taking the
wrong road, for there are two to Mashad. One goes north of the
mountains along the Caspian sea, and is (we later discovered) a good
road
but was marked as bad on our map. The other goes south of the mountains
along the edge of the Great Salt desert, is marked good but is, we
discovered, atrocious. The macadam melts in the heat and is then formed
by the wind into wavelets across the road at about 9” pitch
and 2-3” high. This alternates with sand dunes, which makes
driving quite hazardous.
We stopped at a small hotel, and eventually
arranged to sleep on the
roof for about 1/6d a head. There were some beds up there, but for our
half-price we had to sleep “on the ground on the
roof”. We didn’t get much sleep, though, as it was
very windy.
Tuesday
21st July
Had hoped to make an early start, but we all
overslept. Eventually set
off about 6:30, averaging about 15-20 mph much of the way. The road was
even worse, and we were very worried in the afternoon to hear horrible
noises coming from the front when we tried to steer. Luckily we were
approaching Sabzevar, which was quite a large town, and there we
stopped to have a look at the van. The front torsion leaves were
protruding from the front axle and fouling the nearside front wheel. We
weren’t altogether sure how to fix it, but we found a garage
with a small VW sign, and they just took a hammer and banged the leaves
back in! They also noticed one of our shock-absorbers had gone and so
quickly banged on another. Then came the hassle.
The bill came to the equivalent of
£7 - £4 for
labour and £3 for the parts. Seeing as the job only took
½ hour we reckoned the former a bit excessive. We also did
not have that much money on us, and the banks were shut until the
following day. They demanded we leave the van as surety, which we
didn’t want to do. So we offered the bloke we doing most of
the talking with (who spoke a little English) £7 Stirling as
surety. He agreed but then said that he would do this privately, as the
garage owner would not approve. I reckoned this was off, and asked for
a receipt. He started scribbling on a bit of notebook, so I told him I
wanted it on official paper. He said he had none, so I asked to speak
to the owner. I was told he had gone to bed, whereupon I walked out
into the street and pointed him out down the road having a cup of tea.
I eventually got my receipt!
Spent the night a mile or two out of town,
in the desert.
Wednesday
22nd July
Made the bank in Sabzevar as soon as it was
open and changed some
money. Meanwhile, the others went to find an English-speaking police
officer to ask him what the labour charge should be. I was in the
garage when the police rang through, and the owner went noticeably more
sulky, so I guessed what the phone call was about. Anyway, they dropped
the price to £5.
Another hard day’s drive, to
within maybe 30 miles short of
the Afghan border, and camped out in the desert again. Getting tired of
only warm heavily-purified (chlorinated) water to drink.
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