On October third, we wake up early to leave for the Iranian border and as we are about to leave, a employee of the hotel informs us he knows somebody in Salmas, a small city not too far from the border. He says these people would be happy to welcome us in their home. We think this is a great opportunity to meet a local family and we gladly take the invitation.
On the road to the border, there was a problem with the petrol supply and none of the petrol stations had petrol. We ended up driving thirty kilometres back in a sandstorm to find petrol in a local village, located a kilometre off the main road. The road was in horrible condition and incomparable with the usually excellent roads throughout Turkey.
We choose the small border in Saray because we thought less traffic means a quicker border crossing. Unfortunately this isn't the case and we encounter another problem as well: there are no ATM's at this crossing so we have to change all our emergency dollars for Iranian money. This is due to the fact that we can't get any money from the Iranian banks and also our credit cards are worthless there. The crossing takes three hours and with barely enough money, about 500 euro, we enter Iran in the afternoon. We had to pay an insurance for Iran for about 70 euro/year.

First Sight of Iran

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