After having crossed several mountain passes above 2 km of altitude throughout the last few days, we finally reached Iranian border yesterday afternoon. Frozen, but with a good morale.
The gps device can tell you something about the distances here: Turn in 813 km. Map of Turkey unfortunately stayed on the table at one of the first petrol stations pass Istanbul, so we had to rely on the gps map for our journey through eastern Turkey. Passing Maku, the first Iranian town after the border, one can see a sign "Tehran 845 km." After seeing that, Carmen and I started loughing just as Martin at Iveco Cefin service at Sofia did when exploring the truck.
But let's go back to the journey. Considering the temperatures here, which only occasionally rise above zero, and cinsidering the distances, it's of no surprise that the main actors during the last days have been the cruise control, engaged almost all the time, Webasto heater, running 24 hours per day, and Styrodur insulation which is helping the heater properly do the job. Closed circuit pipes for hot water proved an excellent decision.This time they are not used for sparing not-yet-hot water between the heater and the valve, but for continuous warm water circulation through the pump. Outside it's already everything frozen. Otherwise well working truck was having plenty of difficulties starting at -6ºC yesterday morning so I had to help "him" with the brake-disc cleaner.
People are very friendly at every corner. We couldn't believe, for instance, that the shop-keeper at a certain petrol station came to us when loading water to the tanks and brought us 5 lira out of 15 we had paid for grocery – he discovered he had charged us too much.
More kindness at Iranian border-post. We crossed the Turkish post in 15 minutes, the Iranian took us 3 hours. The main cause for this was the absence of "Usluania", my home country, in the computer. Customs officers, excepting the boss, were extremely friendly. The border-post Bazargan very well organized.
Since we got to Iran almost with no fuel (running on Bulgarian customs fuel bought at 0,83 eur, we only took 50 litres of diesel at Turkish price of 1,48 per litre), only 40 litres in jerry cans, the main task was to find some fuel in late evening (here we are 3h30 ahead of GMT). In Maku, where the morning photo was taken, could we get only 150 litres (for 2,3 eur). We can get 200 more in Marand, after Tabriz there will be no more limits.
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