It has been a challenge updating the site while travelling through Iran, mainly because of need of VPN and not spending enough time at an internet cafe to write stories on end. Apologies for not feeding your wish to follow us, we hope to get into the groove again.
We have arrived in the UAE and are living a deluxe life, in an apartment in Dubai for a week before joining my colleagues from October Gallery in Abu Dhabi for Abu Dhabi Art from 1-10 November. But we didn’t arrive here on a whim and a prayer.
We spent two days (!) in the ports of Bandar Abbas and Sharjah. After a delightful morning on day 125 (18th of October) in Firuzabad, the capital of the Qashqa’i tribe, visiting the palace of Ardashir I, we went on our way to Bandar Abbas, the main port in the south of Iran. We passed oil fields in the night with fires coming out of the ground and the sky lit up, through mountains, passing from Gerash to Lar discovering ‘holiday homes’ looking like qanats (water storage places) and learning about their free availability to anyone who needs a place for a night or two. The night spent at a fuel station next to our favourite road sharers: (international) long-distance truckers. We had however, not experienced the heat the south of Iran lives in and so during the night we had to put on the aircon for a few hours to make it feasible to sleep and not become soaking wet. I had never thought I would yield for this practice being quite environmentally conscious, but was so grateful we had the air conditioning of the car repaired in Tehran.
On Sunday we arrived in Bandar Abbas, straight to the port to get information on how to organise our crossing to the UAE by ferry. Unfortunately not a straight forward process (what is ever straight forward in Iran?) such as from the UK to The Netherlands or from Italy to Greece as we had already experienced. So no internet booking and you show up on time with your print out, drive your car on the boat and enjoy the journey in a cabin or chair in the communal space. No, it meant spending a whole day walking 6633 (!) steps, i.e. 5.5 km (pedometer on Saeed’s phone confirmed;)) between offices in port to obtain signatures, make photocopies and distribute them and pay fees left, right and centre. Our whole Monday from 9h till departure at 21h was spent in port. Plus getting frustrated, calming down again, feeling powerless in understanding the ‘system’ (no system is also a system), and running around from pillar to post without pee nor lunch break as deadlines needed to be kept to make sure you would get on the ferry that evening. We were grateful for having visited the port authorities already on Sunday to obtain some information and meet people who offered their assistance for the next day. We also went to the shipping company, initially to purchase our tickets, but we delayed this till after the car was done on Monday, as we would not be guaranteed the day of departure for the car and then would have spent already the money for our personal tickets. You see, the car was dealt with separately from us as goods/cargo, and not as part of us and so a price to pay separately for the car from our tickets.
On Monday we learned how the port authorities and the shipping company are (not) working together. The people from the shipping company Valfajr, the only shipping company (so no competition), were very helpful and came to our rescue to make sure we would make the ferry for that evening.
Strange things occurred, such as the ticket price for the car from Iran to UAE being $500 (!) but for the return it will be $250, half the price. Saeed tried his best to explain our previous experiences and the prices charged and went into a discussion, but to no avail. We did receive much collaboration in the end though after having told our story of travelling by car from the UK over the past 126 days and wishing to have a good experience. That Monday however, Saeed was the main ‘runner around’ due to speaking the language. He did an amazing job, getting the job done and making sure we would leave with the car, while I was giving our diary a written update.
On a normal day, Valfajr may ship one car once a week max, this day our car would be in the company of a UAE car and eight (!) rally cars from… The Netherlands! I am not sure if this was a blessing or a curse in the end, we do feel that due to this group, everything took a lot longer than if we would have been on our own. Lovely people however, who were rallying from Amsterdam to Salaleh in Oman; we shared the time waiting together in ports while their leader and Saeed were doing the running around to get things sorted.
After a whole day of running around, the restaurant in the passenger terminal wasn’t open due to having run out of food at lunch time, so we had a delicious fish kebab just outside the port, a good way to say goodbye for now to Iran.
On board it turned out the crew had been made aware of our story of travels and our experiences and it might have been due to that, we were upgraded to a private room with blankets, sheets and pillow to spend the night on the sofas instead of in the main lounge. Thank you Valfajr!
Arrival the next morning was welcomed by driving the car of board first and then go back on board again for a passport check we in the end didn’t receive. The cars first for narcotics check and delivery of Carnet de Passage (CDP). All passengers were taken by bus to the arrival terminal where passports were checked (again). We then were taken back to the cars to complete the first step of many to ensure the release of the car, part of which the CDP needed to be filled in. This took a lot of time as we came after the rally people, so a lot of waiting around. And then the story of yesterday repeated itself: going from office to office obtaining photocopies and forms and paying fees left, right and centre (still not clear why there was an extra $120 agency fee added!). And waiting… In the end we had to even pay an overtime fee of AED135 (approx £23.50) as (certain) people in customs only work till 14h! We had collected the last, most required piece of paper, the Vehicle Gate Pass, at 14h45 and went back to say goodbye to Haidar and Hajar of the UAE car, whom we had befriended, and to the Dutch people. The Dutch people in the mean time, had been invited to share two enormous platters of ‘rice with meat’ with the customs people, a treat they receive once a month and which they share with whomever is around. As we had not had anything to eat till then, we were grateful for them mentioning this feast to us and to the customs officers for sharing it, and so we had a delicious lunch while saying goodbye to our fellow ferry car passengers and were on our way in … Sharjah. What a welcome to the United Arab Emirates!
