I was awoken with a start at 04:00 hrs., the time we were due to move on again. We had a cuppa while “the bear”, our fat slob of a driver, crooned derogatory songs about the Ayatollah as we re-boarded the coach for the five hour run to the Turkish border with Iran. We were fairly quickly passport-stamped out of Turkey in the crude Customs building and I changed my remaining 3,500 Turkish Lira with “the bear” for 2,500 Iranian Rials.
We then crossed to the “Welcome to Iran” side of the border post under the shadow of Mount Ararat, a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in the extreme east of Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian Highland with an elevation of 5,137 m (16,854 ft); Little Ararat's elevation is 3,896 m (12,782 ft). A Persian legend refers to the Ararat as the cradle of the human race and it is believed to have been the resting place of Noah’s Ark. How we wished that our cameras were not tied up in our bags on the roof of the coach.
Pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini glared at us from amongst the Allah signs ☫ and monuments as we went through Passport Control fairly quickly. Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, also known in the Western world as Ayatollah Khomeini, was an Iranian revolutionary, politician, and cleric. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the overthrow of the last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the end of the 2,500 year old Persian monarchy. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's supreme leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death. He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei on 4 June 1989.
Then on to Currency Control, after another passport check by an officious youngster with a sneering, superior look. Here we had to declare on a form exactly how much foreign currency (not Iranian) we had. This caused much confusion and our Iranian friends (the women, who had been wearing jeans and T-shirts on the coach, were now in chādor, a full-length swathe of black cloth designed to cloak everything but your face from view) soon set too on one of their drawn-out yabbering arguments with the Currency Officer.
The idea was that the amount of foreign currency in your possession on entering the country would be checked on leaving Iran and you had to have official documentation of any exchanges to explain any shortfall. This was to prevent you from changing money on the black market where the exchange rate was hugely better than the state official rate.
Eventually we passed on, individually, into an ominous trap, a booth that was shut behind each of us in turn, while we were frisked. I did not know if I was allowed to possess any Iranian cash so it was with some misgivings that I was ushered into the little wooden cubicle by a uniformed seedy-looking character with a twitch in one eye. A thorough body strip search ensued to try and find any smuggled currency, and I was relieved when he ignored my Iranian Rials and, after I had refused to “donate” to him one of my British £5 notes, he waved me on out of the trap and into Iran.
It seemed to be sunnier on this side of the border and we gathered by the coach to wait . . . and wait. Evidently Iranian Border Officials in their funny looking over-sized peaked caps had searched the bus and discovered an extra Iranian passport under the mattress of the drivers bed at the rear of the coach. It was probably the property of the villainous “bear” or his dour faced co-driver, but we had to wait for several hours.
In the meantime, George, Jan and I had a meal in the border restaurant in the company of the U.S./Iranian student (he had an American wife). Meat and rice cost 350 Rials (£1=130 Rials) which was expensive by the standards that we had become accustomed to. Eventually we re-boarded the coach with a new addition, a German speaking Iranian, who although cordial enough to us in person, seemed to be stirring up trouble by moaning incessantly to the other passengers about how the English could get an Iranian visa but he could not get one for Britain.
We were delayed for a further couple of hours at Iranian Customs, where our bags were given only a cursory check, but we were glad to get them down from the coach to retrieve cameras, warm clothing, etc. for the journey to come. The baggage was retied to the roof and away we went after spending over 8 hours at the border.
The change was immediately apparent, all the women were covered and veiled in black, the housing was all low, single-storied and square, and Ayatollah Khomeini posters and war pictures mingled with religious slogans on every wall, and inside every building. Five hours later we made our first stop at Tabriz, the most populated city in north-western Iran, one of the historical capitals of Iran and the present capital of East Azerbaijan province.
It was now dark and all our Iranian friends (and the dodgy German-speaking bloke) got off after shaking our hands. We moved on, following an illuminated religious float, passed a round-about festooned with Ayatollah Khomeini pictures and slogans, a feature of every town that we passed through.
Soon we caught up with a full blown (religious?) demonstration march. An advanced party held up illuminated fluorescent tubes and beat on a drum as the following crowd, hands linked, chanted and waved silvered wooden swords. The coach edged tentatively through the press and we peered furtively between drawn curtains as we pulled on to the wrong side of the road and roared away.
We stopped further up the road whilst the driver and co-driver engaged in shady goings-on by a back alley, and the mob re-passed us. We then pulled out of Tabriz unmolested. Earlier in the evening the coach had been stopped at an Army checkpoint and our passports inspected. “Khomeini Guards schlecht (bad)”, muttered the German speaker. This did not help our peace of mind! We went on to a better night’s sleep on the coach, better prepared now with warmer garb against the cold.
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