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Recommendations and Comments for other travellers

Glossop to
Canberra...

...and back
again

Not being able to find any information about shipping routes between Dubai and India, this option of getting into India while avoiding Pakistan was looking less inviting. If I left Iran for Dubai, and found that this shipping route was non-existent, I'd have to visa-up for Iran again, and transit Pakistan anyway. So, instead of wasting time and money, I decided to do the latter and forget Dubai.

So a Pakistan visa was thrown into the passport, well away from the Indian one - I hate arguments in my pocket.

I had one problem though. My "Traffic Permit for Foreign Vehicles" (which has your allowed route through Iran) listed me as leaving Iran via Bandar-e-Abbas, which is the seaport for Dubai. Having left Tehran, I called into Esfahan, the next major town south, to have my Permit changed.

"Sorry sir. You'll have to go to Bandar-e-Abbas to have it changed."

So, similar to the start of my journey (Glossop to Dover via Anglesey), the next leg, "Esfahan to the Pakistan border via Bandar-e-Abbas" was going to make no directional sense. The blue dot on the map shows the border crossing to Pakistan.

Along with bus lanes, Iran was also the first to invent Cola. Believe me: Coca-Cola copied the idea from this Iranian fizzy drink.

You can come and tile my bathroom anytime.

Never mind. It was only in the mid-40's. I was only in an air-conditionless truck. One of my rear wheel bearings was only beginning to sound like a concrete mixer. And the humidity was only going to touch 100% for a couple of hundred kilometres in the coastal region. What the heck. Can't take a joke, shouldn't have joined.

As it turned out, I had the best night of all my time in Iran down on the Persian Gulf coast. Calling into the Traffic Office, I was dispatched to the port with one of their English-speaking staff, where it was decreed that I shouldn't have been given the "Traffic Permit for Foreign Vehicles" form in the first place, and that I was free to roam Iran at will. The GodFather himself stamped my form, scribing a complete dictionary to this effect on its reverse.

We then went to celebrate this missive. It's just a pity that this place is dryer than the Sure Deodorant development laboratory.

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Weeks 8 and 9 (continued)