Writing the blog post from two days ago in the morning, with the thoughts on returning home at the end, left us in a bit of a low mood after breakfast. Thus, packing took extra long this morning. Not a big deal, though. We had only 130 km to go to the border.

Near lunch time we hit the border town of Maku. We filled up one last time with the obscenely cheap fuel and sat down along the main road through that narrow valley for lunch. It is always good to tackle a border with all primary functions tended to. Just as we were doing some last minutes preparations (I forgot to take proof of my German bike insurance which is valid and required in Turkey) Iran decided to give us a very Iranian parting gift. A guy jumped out of a taxi, shoved a melon and some bananas into my unsuspecting hands and jumped back into the taxi with a “welcome to Iran!”. Now we had bananas and a melon to declare as well – and another amazing memory of Irani hospitality.

We reached the border shortly thereafter. By the looks of it, it is only ever used by thousands of trucks or pedestrians. There is a lane for passenger vehicle crossing, but all booths are abandoned and no one was to be seen. It was relatively easy after all. Dodge the hawkers, find an official and then get led to the equivalent desk in the pedestrian terminal through back doors. Maybe 45 minutes later we stood in front of the two gates that separate Iran from Turkey with all the required stamps. Iran opened its gate for us and we called over to the Turkish guys …

… and waited. A long while. The Turkish border guards who saw us after one minute played manly man games with the Iranians and us. They left us hanging for about 20 minutes before pushing the the button that would open the gate. What a great start. Smile and wave …

We had to work around a similar way on the Turkish side. Passport immigration police guy was only available in the passenger terminal, so through some more back doors we went and met Mr. Grumpy Number two. I will never understand why some guys feel the need to underline their authority with outward rudeness. It did not get better when he saw our German passports. “Deutsche? …” sneer … then he only stamped one passport and got really annoyed when I remarked that I would like to get an entry stamp, too. Smile and wave …

Luckily customs guy did not know what to do, really, so our workaround regarding the insurance remained untested. I helped him with the carnet and off we went, into thick storm clouds on the horizon. We put our full rain gear on, ducked down and headed into the Kurdish town of Doĝubayazit. This grey border town had nothing to offer, neither phone shop nor ATM in sight, so we pushed on northwards along the border.

Our first sight in Turkey was the former Armenian capital of Ani. To get there, all roads lead through Kars, the regional center. En route there, I felt the strong need to answer nature’s call and we stopped on the first pass. Right then a van pulled over and four soldier type guys came out. One was a sergeant and had this way about asking what we were up to that showed suspicion hidden behind mere curiosity. We moved along.

The rain started for real beyond the pass, with lightning and thunder hitting left and right. It was cold, too, and just kept on getting colder as we got closer to Kars. The last pass went over 2300m, we were soaked and shivering by this point. Looking around there were still patches of snow on the ground…no wonder it was cold! We had done another 200 km on the Turkish side by then and stopped at a petrol station maybe 5km before the longed after hotel. The guys there took pity on us and shouted us a hot çay (tea). That got us the rest of the way through freezing rain without frostbite.

The hotel was cheap, which was the best to say about it, really. To make up for it, we went out that night to a really nice restaurant. What a treat – tablecloth, fresh bread and really good not-kebab food. Just what we needed to get the spirits back up again!