Last frontier before EU

Written by Pat and Helen

Always get to a border fresh, in plenty of time for formalities and with a clear plan of what you are going to do when you have crossed the border.

THE END but the small matter of Europe to re-cross

We knew of a friendly campsite in Dogubayazit and so we met the third criterion but not the others. We'd chosen not to stay in Maku as it was so uninviting and fled to the border before the car-bound enthusiastic money changer could twig that we'd hightailed. So it was that we found ourselves rocking up to the border at gone 6 and following a long day from Tabriz.

We shunned the facilitator who offered to assist us to clear customs for $10 and so got into a laborious trail around several unnamed and frequently unmanned offices. To be fair, one of the offices I would classify as unmanned did in fact have a man but he was asleep at his post. Rousing someone on the feeble pretext of wanting him to do his job is not always the best policy. Never a truer word spoken. When his colleague stirred him into life, he became the biggest pain in the butt, sending me to a couple of other offices on pointless missions only to be sent back to have him finally stamp the carnet. Turkey has got to be easier than this!

I often end up as the sounding board when things are getting a little frustrating. I was sat on a kerb, travel weary and watched the bike. Pat was like one of those weather people that pops out of one door and back in the next, each time he passed he would mutter about the latest hassle and pop back in another door. In particular there was a lot of muttering about computers. Apparently our exit had to be registered on their computer. Fine and dandy but no-one seemed to tell us where to go to do the computer thing, just senselessly repeated ‘Computer, computer'. I entertained myself people watching, coach loads of Iranians seemed to be heading for Turkey, I wonder are these people visiting relatives, on their jollies, escaping, or just nipping over the border on a drinking binge.

How wrong could I be about Turkey? Again shunning the expediter who dogged me at the entry kiosk, I flailed around uselessly. Having managed to get the passports stamped, which involved getting a couple of stickers from a ‘bank' which resembled a train ticket window but had less useful information, all customs officers instantly vanished leaving me with a big carnet headache. In fact the carnet can be something of a hindrance. When the system works well, there is absolutely no problem; stamp, stamp and your gone. If one can enter a country without using the carnet, leaving is not a big worry as there is no documentary evidence that the bike was in the country so you can't possibly owe any duties. I thought we might as well chance it and so we packed up and headed for the exit gate only to meet the first alert officer in Turkey. He asked me if I'd been cleared on the computer and pointed at a block 10 yards before his barrier. There was no way I could say yes as he'd just seen me ride past it. We went back to the computer office to find it ... deserted. I rather arrogantly started beeping the horn to try and get some kind of reaction from somewhere. Pat by now was not as his most patient. Nothing. I went back to the efficient one who pointed towards a portakabin off the side of the road. Sure enough, inside were a group of blokes putting the kettle on. With a sadly resigned shrug, one of them got out of his seat and followed me to his kiosk. He punched up the registration into his terminal and came up with an “invalid”. Bugger. So we went back up the hill to the main block clutching a sketch of where the office was.

Asian thistles and mausoleum

I was sitting once again on a bit of shade on a kerb. I watched as a row of Iranian women in chadors and headscarves sat on a step, and all sparked up. I joined them in their moment of expression of freedom and unwrapped my head. I saw them smile out of the corner of my eye. We shared a moment of freedom. The headscarf had been a frustration to me. It had taken me over a week to work out how to tie it so that it didn't shuffle about, and every 2 seconds fiddling with to readjust it to cover those offensive escapee hairs. It cuts down your peripheral vision so that checking for traffic to cross the road becomes a trail, and it is no surprise to me that many Iranian women walk out in front of cars they haven't seen. (bearing in mind our recent accident in Pakistan, I had spend most of Iran on edge as pedestrians crossed roads testing Allah's protection) Having to put the thing on even if you are nipping 10m down your hotel corridor, or if the hotelier brings you towels drove me mad. Not to mention the extra heat that the damn thing creates. (Now if all the blokes had to dress up like Ayatollahs then I wouldn't mind so much, but the men of course get away with t-shirts and short sleeved shirts) You would think I would have no reticence about it's removal, but now it came to the point that I could go bare headed, it felt weird, still surrounded by Iranians, it felt risque. Instantly I regretted my rash behaviour, as I became aware that the scarf did a good job of disguising the mess the helmet makes of my hair and stops it blowing in my eyes.

I rattled the appropriate door a couple of times but there was no-one inside. I checked around and knocked on a few doors to wave my carnet at the occupants. Eventually I hit gold and the man from the customs office reluctantly led me to the locked office and opened the door. He entered the registration and got ... “invalid”. Seems the youth in the entry kiosk had entered the registration as
G798 0EA instead of G798 OEA - see, it's not that obvious, is it? Now my man had to find the hacker who could reset the process. The clock had been ticking and dusk was starting to settle. How long would all this go on? Would we get to Doggy in reasonable time to get the tent set up? At least everything was now in motion. We cleared all the hurdles in quick succession and found ourselves out no the road in about 10 minutes. Remarkable.

Part 2 >>

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