Tehran

Above: Iranian Motorway Services 1983

Tuesday 11th October 1983

In the morning we arrived in Tehran, a place along with Mashed, where the Lonely Planet guide books said was “best to avoid if you want to stay out of trouble”. Tehran or Teheran is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province and Mashhad, also spelled Mashad or Meshad, is the second-most-populous city in Iran, the capital of Khorasan-e Razavi Province and a hot bed of religious fervour, it’s name meaning the place of martyrdom.

We had been led to believe that the coach was going to continue to Zahedan on the border with Pakistan, but we were unceremoniously dumped in the coach park on the outskirts of Tehran. The “bear” grunted and gave us 1,000 Iranian Rials each for the onward fare and left us to our own devices. We joined an Iranian bloke from the bus in a taxi to the Kharzany Coach Terminal. This was a huge circular affair with shops around it’s central core and the desks of various bus co-operatives around the outside.

It was thronging with army and black-clad squatting women who stared at us but didn’t interfere. A couple of Iranians took up with us, one who had studied in Bombay and could speak good English, and led us around the bus companies asking for Zahedan buses. The few that were there were all full so the Bombay student advised us to get a coach to Kerman, which was in the right direction, and he booked us on one at 14:00 hrs. It was now only 09:00 hrs. and our next task was to change some money and there was only one bank authorised to do it.

We looked for a taxi and another English-speaking local took up with us, told us which bus to take and paid our fare! The overcrowded bus ploughed slowly through the hooting chaos of traffic and eventually we gained Khomeini Square where a huge Allah monument was over-shadowed by a huge office block, every window of which was filled with an identical picture of the Ayatollah Khomeini. We pushed along the crowded pavements, where street vendors sold car spares and electrical components (from deconstructed transistor radios), and found the bank.

After a long, drawn-out form filling procedure, we all changed up some money (me a £20 Traveller’s Cheque) and left to find a restaurant for lunch. We wandered down the Amir Kabir street where all the budget hotels used to be, and home of the Amir-Kabir Great Houseware Bazaar. A guy who had been a student in Torquay in England, until the new regime stopped his dad sending money out of Iran to support him, directed us to a café in a side alley.

He joined us as we gorged on 2 hamburgers and the ubiquitous Pepsi Cola and he told us that everybody hated the Khomeini Regime. He was selling car parts and accessories as well as changing money on the black market “to save enough money to get out of this fucking country”! His previous attempt to sneak across the Pakistan border had resulted in capture and 15 days imprisonment.

On the streets we were the only apparent tourists and everyone was very friendly, calling and waving and trying to speak English to us. We got a taxi back to the coach terminal, driven by a one-armed (his left) cabbie through the mad streets of the capital. We were passed by a 125cc motorbike carrying four passengers! Back at the terminal we were soon loaded on the Kerman coach and at about 14:30 hrs. we drove out of Tehran. Tehran to Kerman cost us 790 Iranian Rials, then 440 Iranian Rials from Kerman to Zahedan, and finally 500 Iranian Rials from Zahedan to the Pakistan border. £1 = 130 Iranian Rials.

We stopped for about 15 minutes in the holy city of Qom, which is considered holy in Shi'a Islam and the home of Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1964–65, before his exile from Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini led his opposition to the Pahlavi dynasty from Qom. After the Islamic revolution in 1979, Khomeini spent time in the city before and after moving to Tehran. We thought it prudent to stay out of sight in the enclosed bus yard.

The bus continued, with rough desert scrub and rugged hills on either side of the road, and dusk slowly came. Jan sat in front of me and George and the Iranian commando next to him contorted into a series of weird and wonderful postures as he tried to sleep. We were now feeling a bit depressed as the stress and mental unease of travelling through Iran (although little had happened to justify our fears) was beginning to get us down.

On the outskirts, just out of Isfahan (which is a city in Iran that is located 406 kilometres (252 miles) south of Tehran, and is the capital of Isfahan Province), we stopped for chai. The restaurant was full of military guys and one especially evil-looking one came over to stare at us. As we sipped our tea he broke into a broad grin and started to talk to me. “I love English”, he confided to me, but this seemed to be his entire English vocabulary. He beamed and I gained that his name was Achmed and he was going to Yazd, which was the next main town. When his bus came, he left with a shake of our hands and a smile.

This break cheered me up and when the couple next to us gave us a pomegranate and some cakes we were as happy as larks! We dozed happily through until dawn.