Iranian guides!!!
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2010
1
19
33
Trip End
Ongoing
Shiraz, Fārs Province, Iran
Friday, September 17, 2010
How strange as we were walking up to the entrance the family that we had struggled to have a conversation with yesterday all appeared, they all recognized me, again we didn’t really say much due to the language barrier but it’s a small world hey!!
After we all got boiled we left Persepolis to go find our bush camp, we arrived at some sort of archeology site which Ali then informed us that uktooz had previously tried to stay here but had got thrown off (should have learned their lesson really…), so we setup camp, we were quite close to the road which is worrying as we always try and get as far away from site as possible?
As dinner was being cooked some officials turned up, first just one police car but by after dinner a few more had arrived, the Iranian guides were trying to convince them to let us stay……..but they were not having much luck!! Ali just ignored them and hoped they would eventually get fed up and disappears, by this time some of the army had also arrived, there were big flash lights and lots of men in uniform….how exciting!!
At about 9.30 Ali told us to all hide in our tents in the hope that they could see we had all gone to bed, that didn’t work either about 10mins later Danny boy was shouting pack up we are moving!!! The officials were walking around with their torches, Max got a bit shirty with one of them so we were all trying to tell him to calm down as we didn’t want him carted off.
They had said that they wanted us to move because it was unsafe for us to stay there, apparently there were tigers, ha ha!! Yeah right….they wanted to us move to the camp site back at the Persepolis site where we were earlier that day.
JC turned the truck around and put he big lights on so that helped us, its weird packing up in the dark because you can’t see if you left anything behind. Once on the bus the Iranian guides did apologies and say there was nothing they could do…..hummm not so sure on that one!! Ata told us we should sing a song so I broke out with "Oh sit down" (one of our many truck songs), mainly to shut him up talking and to get him to sit down, everyone else joined in whilst we were police escorted to the camp ground. We all waved to the police when they left us, they all smiled, guess they only doing their job…..what an evening!!
Ali went and brought us all cold drinks and we sent up tents at this camping ground, well was just some space on the side of the road really…hardly a camping ground!!
Its so strange we have to say goodbye to Tango and its remaining passengers this morning, its really weird we have spent 7 weeks together and you feel like you really know these people, you spend 24/7 with them and you feel like you have known them for years. There were 20 of us leaving today, all going to Shiraz to stay in a hotel before we all take our flights etc in the next few days.
Going to miss Trav and the Irish, the family has been broken up, only for a short while I know!!
In our taxi was Peaches, me and Bambi, woooo we had a crazy taxi driver, it was about 9.00am in the morning and he stuff on some old English dance music for us so we were having a little boogie. Also I learn that the only song in the world I know all the words to is I’m a Barbie Girl……how embarrassing, most other songs I just seem to know one line of, maybe I should work on that during this trip!!
Of course on arrival at our hotel we do the usual wifi/Internet check and wooo hooo we have free access to wifi, how amazing, so that will keep us happy for the afternoon.
Today we take our flight to..….good bye Iran. I have enjoyed it but am so ready to move on now and head to India. Not sure if I will return, mind you Flipper told me they had very good plastic surgeons and most people in the city have excellent teeth, so if I ever need the above, cheaply I will be coming back!!
At the airport we run into an English guy called Ollie, he was traveling alone, he was also heading to Mumbai. He was a really nice guy he was actually going to India to do some trekking for 3months which 17-25 year olds.
It seems also in Iran that they don’t know how to que, mind you I think it’s only the British that know how to do this, and yes we do it so well!! We were laughed at when we sat down with our bags in the que waiting for the check in to open!!
We played quite a few card games whilst waiting for our flight which again kept the Iranians entertained, they kept wandering over and having a look then wandering off.
Woo wee our first plane journey of the trip, we were all quite worried about our weight limits but all was ok and they seem to let you take anything on the plane you wanted to?
As soon as we got on the plane we took our headscarf’s off…..mine absolutely smelt sooo bad, mind you my clothes still did as I had been in the same set for two weeks but hey they did the job and I requested that I be the first in the shower on arrival at the hotel in Mumbai!!
