First steps in Iran

Every time I hitchhike to a new country, I am a bit afraid. How is it going to work? Is it going to be safe? Are we going to have troubles with cops?

Iran, though, was something like a black hole.

I had no idea what to expect. The only thing I knew was that it was going to be very different from any other countries I knew. Tarof, the fake hospitality one is supposed to refuse, and language written without vowels was just the beginning. On the internet I had found stories about incredibly hospitable people, stories about perverts and stories about misunderstandings since hitchhiking was a largely unknown concept. Also, it seemed that foreigners were officially only allowed to stay in hotels, which we were not going to do because it would make our journey meaningless.

 

And then there was the patriarchal system in the country. Most of the nice stories about Iran had been written by guys. What if it is much less cool for girls? I was wondering whether I could get into troubles for talking to men - and how much they would be willing to talk with me. I was sure that if I couldn't speak with anybody who happens to be a guy, and if Vojta had to do all the talking, It would be very annoying.

Black hole

When we were approaching the border, I was full of worries. Vojta, though, was only focused on the stories about hospitable people and could not wait to be in Iran.

In Kars, the cold Turkish city, it was already spring (it means that it was warmer than -10°C at night). On a Turkish Facebook page for travellers, we found Deniz, a guy who was willing to lend us his flat in the last large city before the border. He had to be at work, didn't speak English and communicated with us through Google Translate, but invited us anyway. (Turkish hospitality surprised me again.) So when we met him, I had the most complex conversation in Turkish in my life.

When Deniz left for work, I learned how to pin my headscarf to the small cap Turkish muslims wear underneath. (It's called "bone" and buying it with a dictionary had been quite a challenge.) Even though I knew Iranian girls usually wore it very symbolically, I made sure to cover all my hair. I thought that the fewer hair I would show, the fewer cops and perverts I would attract.

I also wrote a general message - that we were going to Iran - on a hosting website. I had done the same in Turkey and in Georgia - in Turkey a couple of people had invited us to visit them and one of them really had been available when we accepted. In Georgia nobody had reacted.

I couldn't be more surprised this time. Within 2 hours, I received several invitations (very detailed and written in a very good English) from people all around the country.

The black hole wasn't that much black anymore.

Cabs and cookies

The next day, I had horrible cold, so I started travelling towards the Dogubayazit-Bazargan border crossing with a running nose. We easily hitched a ride to Dogubayazit and then we got stuck. Just a pedestrian - probably Iranian - was trying to persuade us he would pay for our taxi. After an hour or so, a minibus appeared (with the Iranian guy inside) and the driver convinced us to hop in for free ("We are Kurds!", he added).

We passed a long line of waiting trucks and the bus stopped at a crowded gate with armed soldiers. The place didn't look very friendly. I put my scarf on my head while a soldier with a gun was telling us something, and we passed through the gate. The soldiers made us open our bags and show them the apples and bread on the top.

At the passport control, the official asked us where we were from, stamped our passports, gave us a chocolate cookie and let us in Iran. So far so good.

In front of the exit, another official with papers said something to me, and as soon as he saw Vojta five steps behind me he started totally ignoring me and addressed him instead. I wasn't sure whether I should be angry, or happy that I didn't have to deal with more officials.

We left the customs and I remembered some of the tough experiences of hitchhikers I had heard of. A guy had been forced to take a taxi at the border and then another taxi driver had stolen his backpack. My cousin and his friend had been hitchhiking in front of some border guards at gunpoint...

We made our way through parked cabs and then walked to the town on the Iranian side.

That was it.

No taxi drivers shouting at us and no cops telling us we couldn't walk or hitchhike in there.

We are very happy at this intersection

In the border town of Bazargan (it sounds like a name of an orc city but it's quite a nice town), we met several guys who wanted to shake hands with Vojta. They were very curious where we were from and wanted to take selfies with us. (We didn't know yet that this was going to happen all over Iran.) We had to cross the whole town and start hitchhiking at the very end, in order to avoid cabs.

We were remembering all the things we had learned at Hitchwiki about Iran. We didn't have any sign with a name of a town (Hitchwiki says it is meaningless). We knew we should just wave at cars since the thumb sign, used in the west, is rude in here. We had read we should let Vojta do all the waving since I might be mistaken for a prostitute or inspire perverts to stop for us. We also knew we had to find whether the driver who would accept us wouldn't be just taroffing, agreeing just out of politeness. And we had a sheet with a short text explaining in Farsi what we wanted.

(At least we hoped so. Our friends let their friend translate something similar for them a couple of years ago, and their mischievous translator put the sentence "We are agents of Mosad" on their paper instead. So we hoped that our translator Elham, a friend's friend living in Czechia, had been more merciful to us.)

Our hitchhiking sheet (after more than a month of use and a driver putting a banana on it)

A car pulled over next to us before we even started hitchhiking.

There was a guy who could speak a bit English and a lady with a tattoo and a scarf covering way less hair than mine. They were wondering if we needed something and agreed to take us to the next town. The driver seemed pretty confused when we told him we were travelling without money. He kept telling us it was impossible and offering us to exchange Dollars. Explaining the concept of hitchhiking to him was rather fruitless. When the couple was leaving us in the middle of another town, the driver looked as confused as at the beginning.

We started walking to the end of the town again, and realized that rumors about Iranian traffic were true. It was even more chaotic than in Georgia. Cars were everywhere, ignoring all road signals, one-ways, lines on the road, pedestrians, traffic lights and the laws of physics. So we were trudging through the wet snow and mud next to the street because walking along the street seemed too suicidal.

In a couple of minutes, a guy with a freshly damaged car stopped and addressed us in a very good English with an American accent. (He then told us he had only learned it from movies and news.) We even managed to explain hitchhiking to him and he drove us to the end of the town.

So far, it seemed that we didn't even need to wave at cars in order to hitchhike in Iran. Walking along the road and looking strange was good enough.

The crew of our next car (we had actually waved at this one and we had stopped a couple of unmarked cabs before) could also speak English. It was getting dark and when we wanted to get off at a crossroads on a city bypass to camp near the road, they didn't really want to let us. First, they wanted to leave us at the Red Crescent office, then at a Police station and eventually they offered to drive me to hospital because of my running nose.

"It is very dangerous here! Come with us to the city center."
The mere idea of crossing yet another town on foot that day was making me sick.
"Why is it dangerous? Because of people, or because of dogs?"
"Because of...dogs."
"We are not afraid of dogs, no problem."
"But it is very dangerous here."

With a lot of effort, I eventually managed to persuade them that we would keep hitchhiking to Tabriz and if we wouldn't get a ride, we would walk to the Police station ourselves. Only when I told them "we are very happy to be at this intersection", they reluctantly agreed.

When they left, we ran away and hid our tent in the dark fields out of fear that they would come back to check if we found a ride.

After the first day, it seemed that the difficult thing about hitchhiking in Iran is not that drivers would not be helpful enough, but that they are sometimes even too helpful. And we had been speaking English the whole day. I was wondering how it would work when we would undergo all the negotiation in Farsi.

By the way, this is the text of our magical hitchhiking sheet. I'm leaving it here for the future generations, feel free to use it. (And I'm forever grateful to Elham, our savior.) Nobody has ever punched us after showing the paper to them, so I suppose the translation is good and there is nothing about Mosad agents written in there:

Hello,

we are travelling from Europe by hitchhiking only. We don't use any paid transport (we don't use buses or taxis). Would you please give us a ride a part of the way where you are going, even though we cannot pay you? If so, we would be grateful. If it doesn't suit you, it doesn't matter – we will find another car.

Thank you.

سلام،

ما از ازوپا به صورت رایگان در حال سفر هستیم. برای جا بجایی هزینه پرداخت نمی کنیم ( از اتوبوس و تاکسی استفاده نمی کنیم) . آیا شما می توانید ما را در مسیرتان تا جایی برسانید ؟ حتی اگر نتوانیم هزینه آن را پرداخت کنیم؟ اگر بله بسیار از شما ممنون خواهیم شد و اگر نه، مهم نیست ، وسیله دیگری را پیدا می کنیم.

ممنون از شما. 

First camp in Iranian fields