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.

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.