Michael Spies

What a day!
We arrived at the border at 09 and got through to the other side at 29:30 in the evening with nerves frayed.
I have never seen such chaos!
When we arrived there were already 50 Iranian taxis waiting, covered with ice from the night they had spent in their cars. We lined up nicely, as europeans would do with reasonable space between the vehicles only to discover that locals would come shooting past the queue to jump into the gaps. Then 100 Kurds, Iranians, and turks would race forward by foot literally trying to pull the guy out of his car, all screaming at once. He would then lock his doors and just sit there. Then someone would scream that the que was moving (1 meter) In an absolute stampede they would run to their cars and in a drag race type scenario race forward into every gap they would find, and even opening a third queue which didn't exist. Then the Army would arrive with an armoured vehicle with machine gun on the roof , to chase them back to the back of the queue. And then the whole story would repeat again. ALL DAY LONG.
In between I got into a discussion with an Iranian student about what is going on in Iran (I shall not go into detail here) . After we had been waiting for 5 hours with only about 50 meters of progress, this same guy went to the border post with me to translate to the guards. They said that due to issues on the other side it seemed that cars were being "taken apart" today and that we would probably have to sleep here. They recommended going to another border.

Then after 6 hours of waiting, suddenly the Turkish border boss came to us telling us to drive past the queue. He was going to help us to get through. No one knows why!
Having passed the Turkish side (1 hour) with several computer break downs and me having to pay a fine of , hold tight, €0,25 for having not paid highway tax when entering turkey, we passed on to the Iranian side. And this is where real chaos started. 10 military border guards stormed into our car ripping open everything looking for alcohol. Worse still, three guys climbed onto the roof walking over my solar modules as if it were a terrace, ripping at our boxes.
Then in a chaos of people running to-and-fro screaming, our carnet de passage, visas, passports, insurance, were stamped, carried from A to B, and then to C and then back to A with us not understanding one word.
AND THEN WE WERE SUDDENLY THROUGH!
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