Photos of Iran and some Turkey photos and story!

More photos from Iran, this time not on facebook. Also there are more photos on facebook from the last time I got to upload them. They are here and here.


Isfahan

Imam Square during the day.

At night just before the evening prayers.

More fountain action.

Looking toward the mosque.

Si-o-se Pol.

Hamedan

One of the oldest cities in the world! Didn't see much though.

The central square (which is round) looking up one of the streets. 

A small village out of Hamedan where we stopped for petrol.

The road north to Zanjan.

Not much of Zanjan 

This car needs a wash.

Some of the traffic chaos from out of the hotel window. When four or five cars gathered from the road on the left they would all push out as a group to get across this other busy road. Meanwhile there are people just walking or riding anywhere they like through the middle of it. Most of the people on bikes carrying small children.

Road to Tabriz and Camping after the Earthquake.

A broken bridge on the way to Tabriz

Riding through tunnels and valleys like this for hours that day, fun! The longest tunnel was about 800m. I didn't stop for too many photos as there were military near most tunnels.

Stars from the campsite.

More stars over some radio installation. But lets never tell Iran I took photos of that, whatever it is.

Baked beans for dinner.

Campsite view in the morning.

Turkey

After the usual rip offs from money changers (they wanted 24000Rial to the $, the market rate is 19000 everywhere else) we went up to the crazy Iranian side of the border. I think we got mafia help as some guy came up and said his job is just to help tourists cross. He ran off with all the paperwork and we were out of there quite quickly but only 50lira down ($25). On the way out of one room there was a lot of people blocking the door and I was squeezing through and a guy behind kept pushing me, I told him to stop pushing but he kept doing it. Kept saying he was mafia and then followed us around the rest of the way out. Well... Glad to be out of Iran then. 

On the Turkish side everything went much better. There was a lot of confusion because I insisted on changing from my Australian passport to my UK passport. This saved $40US in visa fees but the police were confused, and then the customs office was confused ("You are british citizen? But Australian Bike?"). I did get in to Turkey however and this should be the last visa I need on the trip (unless I stray outside the Schengen Area). We had to walk back and forth between a couple of offices to get the visa and insurance but it was an easy process compared to recent crossings.

I'm now in my 11th country, after completing my 16th border crossing! Hopefully the worst borders are all behind me now!

Mt Ararat. This photo is about 3500m of it. You can see it from a long way away.

Our camp site for the night. It was VERY windy, and because it was Ramadan this area was used at sunset for all the families to celebrate the evening feast. Little did we know this went on till around midnight, but the wind was so noisy until then anyway. The next morning we find there's a better camp site up the hill filled with overlander travellers, mostly French and German though.

The mountains east of the camp site. Somewhere up in there is Noah's Ark apparently. It's marked in the GPS!

Family taking their cows for a walk in the morning.

Some of the castles built into the mountains above the better camp site.

A river I stood in to cool down my feet for a while.

One of the valleys the road to Ezurum goes through. The road surface was a bit iffy though, lots of tar which had a sticky top layer but was still liquid underneath. The bike did not like riding in a straight line on that.

Your new wallpaper. You're welcome. Northwest Iran and Northeast Turkey are big sunflower growing regions.

We're in Ezurum to stay in a hotel and charge and clean everything, then it's off to the Black Sea coast to camp and save more money. Turkey happens to be quite expensive. This room is $50/night, petrol is $2.30/L (In Iran it was 35c/L), and meals are around $5-10. 

We got through Iran quite cheaply at about $800 each for 3 weeks. I had prepared for it to be more than double that!

Over here in Turkey things are much better though, if slightly more expensive.