Turkey & Iran
Outward Journey

This article was pubished in Jersey Life, vol 6, no 42, March 1970
and in Jersey Life, vol 6, no 43, May 1970

All this time we had been setting our sights on the Bosphorus – the dividing line between Europe and Asia, and, we felt, the passport to warmth, mystery and the sun. Istanbul is situated on both sides of the Bosphorus, the main part of the city being on the European side. We spent some time in Istanbul, looking over the Blue Mosque, one of the main tourist attractions, and the Topkapi Museum, which was fascinating. When we eventually drove on we had no difficulty in finding our way to the ferry to take us to the other side, as we simply followed signs pointing to ‘Feri Bot’ which seemed to be fairly self-explanatory. The ferries run at frequent intervals and the journey across takes about a quarter of an hour, so it was not long before we had landed in Asia, with a little over 2,000 miles behind us, and the feeling that our journey was well under way and our adventures beginning.

Having negotiated our way through the chaotic traffic conditions of Istanbul, narrowly missing pedestrians by the score, all apparently bent on suicide, and crossed the Bosphorus into Asia, we shed a few winter clothes, revelling in the warm sun. We also invested in our first extravagance on our meagre currency allowance – a Coca Cola for Peter and a Seven-Up for me. Our new-found warmth was, however, only too short-lived.

We had by this time been on the road six days, and being ahead of our schedule, had unfortunately missed any mail from home, which was a disappointment. We still had a certain amount of fresh milk, the weather having been chilly it kept fresh for a surprising length of time. We also had butter, bacon, and eggs, all brought from home, and most of it snatched from the deep-freeze at the eleventh hour before our departure, so we were feeding quite well still. We had had a little water-cooled box installed in the van, for some unknown reason we christened Mathilda. In this we kept all perishable foods, and all that Mathilda required was a cup of water poured over her once a day and she did the rest. If, in an excess of zeal, we gave her too much to drink, she retaliated by making a large puddle on the floor. Whether, in fact, Mathilda was worth her keep I am not sure – she certainly proved quite useless when we eventually hit the tropics. In these early days the cold weather was probably on our side without further help.

AA in Ankara

Our next objective was Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and once again we had to cope with appalling traffic conditions. However, as we were crawling through the traffic, a most welcome sight drew alongside us, in the shape of a motor cyclist, tough and bearded, with what appeared to be his entire worldly possessions strapped on the back, and the very familiar AA badge on the front. He was the first overlander we had come across and we carried on a long, and animated conversation at each traffic stop. He was heading for Karachi, and we hoped to find him on the road again before our routes parted, but I fear his pace was a lot faster than ours, and that was the last we saw of him. We often wondered how he fared on the appalling roads we were to encounter later on. We felt vastly elated by this brief contact with a fellow overlander.

Throughout Turkey we met with nothing but kindness, from having a Bank opened up especially for us on a Saturday afternoon, and, as if this was not enough being presented with a packet of cigarettes by the Manager, to endless glasses of their delicious ‘green’ tea. One young chap assisted us to find a Bank in one town, and on being offered a drink of lime juice by us, seized the whole bottle with delighted cries of ‘Visky! Visky’! We beat a hasty retreat before he found out what he had been landed with.

Soon after Ankara we diverged from the AA route, which directed us in a loop along the coast of the Black Sea, before dropping South again. We worked out that we could save a good 300 miles by cutting through the middle of Turkey, joining up with the AA route just before Erzurum. Subsequently, discussing both routes with others who had taken the Northern route, we found that we had all suffered intense cold, fairly perilous mountain roads with variable surfaces, and steep hairpin bends, carrying us up to, we reckoned, anything from 10 to 12000 feet. So in fact, our route paid us hands down. Both routes were kept surprisingly clear of snow, but at the sides of the road the snow was banked up to six feet or more, and the surrounding countryside was a vast expanse of snow. As this was March, we wondered what it would have been like in the middle of winter.

Bears in the Mountains

We slept our first night in the mountain down a side road, and I slept very little, partly due to the cold, and partly because Peter had rather foolishly mentioned as I was settling down for the night that there were probably bears prowling around, and hungry ones at that. In fact, as we learnt later, there was little to fear from bears in the mountains, but a quite considerable danger from attacks by the wild mountain tribes, the Kurds, who appear from nowhere, and make off with all your worldly goods, probably causing bodily harm if you put up any resistance. We heard of one party who had encountered these people, and had had to surrender every article of clothing they possessed. One had apparently been lucky enough to be left with a pair of underpants, but they must have presented an interesting sight as they entered the next town to restock their wardrobes .

After this we put up at small petrol stations at night, where there was always one man on duty all night, and a roaring fire in the back room. Although we had no common tongue, Peter got on very well with them in a curious sign language, and we picked up quite a good vocabulary, which stood us in good stead on the homeward trip. They offered us glasses of Turkish tea, which is delicious, and the comfort of their fire. In return, we made cups of Nescafé for them and offered them a taste of Western music from Peter’s tape-recorder. They obviously did not appreciate this, but one extrovert very soon realised that one could record on it, and insisted on singing endless songs into the microphone, which, when played back, were greeted with roars of applause from his friends who had come in to enjoy the party. We now have a curious selection of ‘pops’ on one tape-all equally tuneless to our ears.

Bitter Weather

We were waking each morning to find the windows of the van completely iced up, and out of self-defence were on the road between 3 and 4 a.m. On the third night, higher up than ever, we were again involved in a good party in a petrol station, where they were feeding us on a very potent aniseed drink which, while nearly blowing the tops off our heads and rendering us speechless for a while, proved extremely warming as it went down. By 9 o’clock the windows of the van were iced up, and we considered driving through the night to combat the cold, but as Peter was taken off fox shooting by our friends, and did not return until midnight, we ended up on the concrete floor of their room in our sleeping bags, by the side of the coke stove. As far as I am concerned, death from coke fumes was infinitely preferable to death from exposure. In the morning, not only were the van windows a sheet of ice, and icicles hanging from the roof, but our 3 gallon water tanks were frozen solid, so we had to set off without even the comfort of our cup of coffee. We left them a note saying ‘Teşekur’, which we had learned was the Turkish for ‘Thank-you’, and a packet of Dunhill cigarettes which they had enjoyed the night before. It seemed a poor return for all their kindness, but the best we could do.

From then on we started to drop down, to our relief, heading for Iran, but we were more than sorry to be saying ‘Good-bye’ to the friendly and hospitable Turks.

Our entry into Persia was not very encouraging, apart from a spectacular view of Mount Ararat just before the border. The customs officials were slow and discourteous. While I was completing the last of the formalities, the official attending to me in a very disinterested fashion suddenly turned round, seized a fairly harmless looking individual with whom he had been carrying on a conversation while dealing with my papers, kicked him hard on the backside twice, shook him vigorously and then gave him a last kick on the shin, before returning unconcernedly to my passport. I hoped it would not be my turn next.

We were now travelling along the plains of Persia, though with snow-capped mountains all round us, but feeling much warmer. We were heading through some 1,800 miles of Persia, our route taking us via Tabriz, where we had our first meal in a restaurant – kebabs with rice, and very white butter which we learned was made from sheep’s milk – on to Teheran, Yadz (famous for its carpet manufacture), through Kerman and into Pakistan at the border near Zahedan.

Petrol shortage

Throughout Persia we found a great lack of petrol stations, and had to be careful that our spare tanks were always recharged at each fill-up . On one occasion, having filled the tank from our spare supply, we realised some ten miles further on, that we had forgotten to replace the petrol tank cap. A return to the scene of the crime proved fruitless, so we improvised a cover from tinfoil, tying it on with string. That night we put up at a Volkswagen service garage, where they supplied us with glasses of tea, and a new petrol cap, to our surprise and delight. The sad sequel to this incident is that the following night, putting up at a country police-post, I inadvertently backed the van into their lamp-post, crushing and bending the new petrol cap – but luckily doing no damage to their post. From then on we were back on tinfoil covers for the tank.

The countryside was now becoming more Eastern looking, and the familiar sight, hitherto, of donkeys as beasts of burden, was now replaced by camels, sometimes three or four in a line, roped together. Many of the women, both in the country and the towns, wore the yashmak – a shapeless, usually black, garment stretching from head to toe, with gauze across the eyes – in other words you can see but not be seen. Finding our own way through towns was becoming tricky as, if there were signs at all, they were in Arabic lettering. We were forced to learn the Arabic numerals after having once been diddled at a petrol station, and thereafter made a point of telling them what we owed them, before they could overcharge us.

For our night stops throughout most of Persia we put up at police posts, usually on the outskirts of a small town. The towns themselves were merely a collection of mud huts as we travelled further East, and the police posts had a French Foreign Legion flavour to them, always the same pattern – a completely walled-in fortress, with a courtyard in the centre where we were allowed to park the van for the night, and with dungeons which served as rather insanitary and evil-smelling lavatories, and to which I always insisted Peter escort me, as, in spite of a powerful torch, I was never sure what I would meet down there, or that I might not fall down a deep pit, never to surface again. We learned that the police posts were known as Gendarmeries, though, in fact, if any one spoke any language other than his common tongue, it was nearly always a smattering of German, rather than French, which surprised us.

We stopped for a short while in Esfahan. This is a place where one should spend not less than a week as it is packed with interest. Regrettably, we had not the time, but what little we saw of it we found fascinating. By now our ‘home products’, i.e. fresh milk, butter, and bread had run out, so we started our tinned butter, instant dried milk, and were eating the Persian equivalent of bread – rather like the Indian chapatti, but square, and known in Persia as ‘narn’. We knew, as we drove out of Esfahan that we were more or less at the end of civilisation, and were on the last stretches of what could be termed reasonable roads, so we were preparing ourselves for the rough riding ahead of us, and whatever the desert might have in store for us. We had given the van a thorough check-up, we had ample food, and as much water as we could carry, and our spare petrol tanks were full. We felt we could look the vultures in the eye and laugh at them .

Once out of Esfahan, heading for the desert, we encountered strong winds, warm, but enough to slow us up considerably, laden, as we were with everything including the kitchen sink. We were now on entirely cheap grades of petrol, super being unavailable. This was variable, but on the whole the van did not respond well to it, and we found, in fact, that our most economical running was on a mixture of super and regular, and our most economical speed, 40 m.p.h.

Shortly we were on what are termed ‘First Class Dust Roads’, but we were soon saying at frequent intervals ‘God help anyone travelling on a lower grade dust road’. They were, in fact, made up of loose granite chippings laid on what had become a corrugated surface, which jolted, rattled, and skidded us on our way, till, by the end of the day we felt as if we had been tied to a pneumatic drill. Still intent on reaching our destination in the shortest time, we plugged doggedly on, changing drivers at frequent intervals and driving long hours, but with a poor mileage to show for our efforts at the end of the day. Sometimes the surface reduced our speed to 15 m.p.h., or less, at others we found that we rode the corrugations better taking it faster and riding on the surface, though the latter method could prove hazardous due to sudden pot-holes which we were going too fast to avoid, and also sometimes resulting in skids which shot us straight off the road.

By the end of the first day the interior of the van was shrouded in dust. It had covered the tins of food, our clothing, bedding, and ourselves, and had managed to seep into every corner. The water bottles had slopped their contents everywhere, resulting in wet mud on the floor, and Mathilda had taken umbrage at being soused with water from the tank above her, and had added her bit to the general chaos. In a fit of zeal we set to and spring-cleaned, but as each dusty day succeeded another, and we were obviously doomed for a week or so, the enthusiasm wore off, and we resigned ourselves to perpetual dust until such time as we reached better conditions, and it became more worthwhile to clean up.

I think we both expected the desert to resemble the Sahara – loose sand into which we would sink ankle deep. In fact, it was a barren expanse of wasteland, with only loose surface sand and gravel, a browny-grey colour, and stretching completely flat as far as the eye could see. The only vegetation was the odd cactus and occasional piece of scrub. We expected to find rattlesnakes and scorpions under every stone, but, in fact, saw nothing of any note. Not that I was looking for them, but Peter was a little disappointed at the lack of wild life.

One Sunny Morning

We had by now been on the road two weeks, and had had little social life, apart from each other’s company, which luckily we always managed to enjoy. One morning, however, we woke to sun and warmth, threw away our winter clothes and the remnants of the last packet of porridge oats, when a Triumph Station Waggon drove past us where we were parked by the side of the road. As it passed, we spotted ‘N.Z.’ on its rear, and waved frantically. We were greeted by a young New Zealand couple, travelling homewards. He turned out to be a geologist and they were combining business with pleasure and collecting specimens as they went along. After a chat and a cup of coffee they went on their way being faster travellers than we were.

It soon became apparent, though, that it was to be a case of the tortoise and the hare, because although they covered the ground faster than we did, we drove longer hours, and, in our slow, but determined fashion caught them up at frequent intervals during the next few days, usually replacing shock absorbers, which they seemed to get through at a most alarming rate, or mending yet another puncture. At one point we rounded a corner to be met with the delightful sight of Ann Carter winding up what appeared to be half a mile of Andrex, while her husband, Bob, was chasing apples and carrots up and down the road. The boot of their car had opened as they hit a pot-hole, hurling their possessions to the four winds.

We spent three very pleasant evenings camping with them in the desert, they in their tent and we in the Dormobile. By the light of their pressure lamp we swapped pre-dinner aperitifs, and had our dinner, before returning to our respective abodes for the night.