Days: 550 (27 December 2015)

Total distance travelled: 138,845.00 kilometres (86,239.14 miles)

To find ourselves walking in the footsteps of Shapelle (that would be Shappelle Corby, a convicted Australian drug mule) was never part of the plan.

The same anxiety felt as she’d approached Indonesian customs… is that what we were feeling now?

Do we simply toss our contraband?

Should we ingest it?

If we did, would these winding mountain roads even allow us to keep it down?

People say you should live without regrets, but would this hasty purchase prove our undoing?

Or would it even matter?

After all, it was just a couple of hundred grams… of salami!

Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Iran (okay, so were weren’t there yet, but we were well and truly on our way), where alongside pornography and alcohol, pork products are illegal.

As for our contraband, well it did its job famously as lunch.

By now already several hours into a proposed twenty four hour journey from capital to capital, the occasional taste of said salami (as it repeated on us) meant we could enjoy our last taste of pork for a few hours longer.

In polishing off two bottles of a delicious Armenian red between us the previous night, we’d done our best to make sure that alcohol would not be sorely missed either.

A full day might sound like a long bus ride, but for us, having already completed other trips of forty hours and even two spanning four days, this really was small fry in the grand scheme of things.

Besides, little could be worse than those hard pieces of wood that pass for beds in Turkey!

With the mercury hovering around the zero degree mark (centigrade), we’d made the several kilometre walk from our Yerevan hostel to the Kilikia ABTOBOK3AɅ (bus station).

I’d joked as a coach had passed us along the way that it was probably our set of wheels for the journey to come. Turns out I was right.

This was no bad thing, as the coach looked modern, and if the signage on the door was correct, offered Wi-Fi, movies and USB connectivity.

We had to sit around for a bit, as boarding wasn’t until 10am for our departure a half hour later, and before we could get to that point, our passports were checked to ensure we had our Visas for Iran (without which I don’t believe we’d have been able to depart).

It turns out that the professed services aboard the coach didn’t actually exist (there were TV’s built into the seats in front, but they were never powered up), but we were issued with little food parcels, complete with fruit drinks advertising the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (we were by now on the cusp of 2016)… talk about fresh!

The juice didn’t appear to have fermented, meaning we were denied one final swill of booze, and aside from bad roads and the ridiculously hot temperature setting for the on board heating, very little exciting took place as we began our journey south.

A lengthy and emotional farewell distracted us for a few minutes as countless hugs were shared and tears shed, but once this posse were aboard, for some reason the bus refused to depart.

Not prepared to look this gift horse in the mouth, the group (we assume they were at the very least residents of Armenia) quickly made their way onto the bus to continue their farewells anew.

Eventually the bus was ready, however we still couldn’t depart, not until this group could be extricated from the vehicle!

Armenia’s border with Iran is only reached via a narrow corridor, bordered on either side by un-friendly territory (Azerbaijan) and friendly territory (a region of Azerbaijan that wishes to be a part of Armenia), so our heading was primarily south, south-west.

This meant we were heading right back into the Caucasus, and as such the scenery was quite stunning.

It was one of the more stunning road trips of our eighteen months of travel, but we did realise that its beauty was a much a product of the time of year in which we found ourselves, the scattering of winter snows adding a softness to the rugged terrain.

The winding roads were not treating Sarah’s stomach too well, so it was a welcome relief when the bus turned off the mountain highway and came to a halt.

This rest stop presented us with the chance to purchase supplies from a posse of stalls (we’d already stocked up in Yerevan) and use the restrooms, although this almost proved a disaster as the stench within pushed Sarah’s bowels close to the brink of disaster!

Intriguingly, the only other building at this seemingly remote stop, was a strip club, although I’d be sceptical that the quality of women they could lure to work here would match those pictured on the banner it wore (it was closed when we were there, so I was unable to completely research this theory).

The further and higher we travelled, the thicker the snows became, the patches of brown becoming carpets of solid snow.

Yet despite the apparent cold out, we were slowly roasting within, the thermostat on board still fixed at a ridiculously high temperature!

Despite the brief danger those toilets had presented, the short breaks seemed to have served Sarah’s stomach well, and despite neither the condition nor nature changing, she was able to drift off to sleep which would hopefully keep further ill feelings in check… for now at least!

As such, I returned to my observational duties, ready to record the beautiful mountains through which we passed so she could enjoy the vista she missed through photo (although with the window reflection, this wasn’t always easy).

The scenery certainly didn’t get any worse.

By late afternoon we’d reached an area similar to Cappadocia with its natural stone chimneys, and it was also time for a scheduled dinner stop.

For us it was just great to get some fresh air and cool our bodies a little and hope that the temperature on board may lower as well, with the engines now off and the doors open.

It was about this time that we disposed of our contraband in a discreet manner (by stuffing into our bellies with some bread and cheese), again utilised the bathroom facilities, before settling back in to the bus as the day grew late.

Soon the sun set and my views were lost, and a few hours later we finally reached the remote (at least it certainly felt remote) Armenian border post.

For reasons unknown to us, what followed was easily the longest departure we’ve ever experienced from any country, and this is without there appearing to be any issues with any particular passengers on board our bus!

There was some brief excitement and a moment of concern for myself, as their body scanner began to malfunction, seemingly beeping at random, then not beeping at all as the same people (myself among them) were re-screened, this time with no alarm.

By now we were in a queue to have our passports given their exit stamps, and it was here that for some inexplicable reason things ground to a halt.

Somewhere in the vicinity of an hour later we were finally through, and given that our passports were handed over and back in less than five minutes (this is despite an issue with their passport scanner), we were none the wiser as to why we’d had to wait so long.

Still, we were now out of Armenia, in between international boundaries and ahead lay the Islamic Republic of Iran, for years the source of much hate propaganda in the west and as we’d recently discovered, now likely to cost us significantly should we ever wish to visit the United States in the future (the recently pass bill H.R. 158, the ominous sounding Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, means that any individual that has visited Iran, now needs to apply for a Visa and cannot use the Visa waiver option. Iraq, Syria and the Sudan are also on the list of no, no countries, yet inexplicably, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the source of most of the 9/11 terrorists, are not).

By now all of the women aboard the bus, Sarah included had donned a headscarf as per Iranian law, and a few minutes later we were all abandoning the bus to face Iranian immigration.

A desert camo clad soldier checked our passports for our visas before we even made it as far as the processing building, but with all in order we were soon all queued and waiting to be checked.

Having spent the last hour and a half trying to leave Armenia, and the hours before that sweating away on board the bus, I’m sure we looked a sight, but we were soon met with a warm smile and clear English with the words “Welcome to Iran!”

Our visas were double checked in the system, a process that took a couple of minutes, and all of a sudden the tell-tale sound of a stamp was heard, and just like that I was in Iran (then minutes later it was we).

Things got a whole lot less exciting after that point, as another hour and a half was spent waiting for our bus to reappear, although it wasn’t time that was completely wasted.

I exchanged the last of our Armenian Dram into Iranian Rials, then Sarah went and made our first purchase in the former Persian Empire… a packet of Salt and Vinegar chips (crisps).

Yes, that familiar taste from home was to be our first meal in Iran.

Eventually the bus did make an appearance, we caught as much sleep as we could in hot conditions (again despite snow dotting the landscape outside), and nine hours later we were pulling into the bus station in Tehran…

 

Notes:

* The 24 hour (or more) bus from Yerevan to Tehran cost 25,000.00 Dram per person.

* We’d arranged our Visas for Iran in advance (by all accounts, 2 week Visas on arrival can only be acquired if you fly into the country) with collection in Istanbul, a process that had begun on November 16 with the aid of an online agency (you need pre-approval from the Iranian MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)) at a cost of €100.00 each. This will likely form the basis of a separate post.