Hotel View in ZahedanWe left around lunchtime from Zahedan under army escort. We didn’t really get to see much of the town as we weren’t even allowed to leave the hotel. From what we did see, there wasn’t much going for it so we were happy enough to hit the road again. After about 50km, we had left the lawless Sistan Province, ending our two day army escort. It was funny enough at times but we were glad to finally see the back of them.
We decided to make the very long trip the whole way to the port town of Bandar Abbas, situated on the Persian Gulf and where our car ferry to the United Arab Emirates departs from. We had gotten word from the shipping company through some very broken English, that there was a ferry departing the next day at 9 in the morning so it was essential we made it to Bandar in one go.
Luckily enough, Iran has very good roads so we were able to average about 100km/h. We had one quick stop in Bam to go through the petrol ordeal again. Somehow a young soldier with a machine gun always seems to get involved. Bam once quite a popular tourist destination but was almost entirely wiped out by a massive earthquake in 2003. As it was getting dark, we didn’t hang around long and pushed on towards Bandar Abbas, finally arriving at 3am and absolutely ravenous. After a quick kebab we began the ordeal of trying to find a hotel when everything other than the odd burger joint was shut. After an hour of searching and with no luck, we decided to just have a kip in the car until we headed to the port in the morning.
Fast Food Joint, Bandar Abbas4 lads in a Hummer with about 20 mosquitos became unbearable to the point where Fintan and Chuck decied it would be better to sleep on the street. At this point we didn’t realize but it was a massive holiday period in Iran and there were hundreds of people camping on the beach so Fintan and Chuck just got involved! The only problem was that they had no idea how to assemble the tent, so Fintan just went ahead and used it as a duvet to protect himself from the mosquitoes. Chuck covered himself up in a sleeping bag and was constantly awoken by an old snoring Iranian woman and a pack of wild feral cats! This was up there with some of our worst sleeping arrangements on CrazyJourney so far!
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