Urmia – Van (Turkey)

30th August 2014        33℃      290km
Urmia – Van (Turkey)

I was in a crappy room last night, with some sort of construction going on under my window until 3am. The result was that I was late getting up, and therefore late to meet the fixer who would guide me through the maze of the Iranian border customs process.
Fortunately he didn’t seem to mind my tardiness, and we set out for the border together, about 45km away.

When we reached the border, he told me to wait, while he disappeared with my passport and bike documents. After 45 minutes, I thought to myself “I’m sitting here now, with no passport, and I have no idea where he has gone”. After an hour, he reappeared, saying “Big problem! You are five days late. Must pay $200”. I laughed and said “not my problem! Your problem, I’m not late”. He laughed also. Fortunately, he was joking.
He disappeared into another building, and was gone for at least another two hours.

While he was gone, I killed time updating the blog, chatting to the kids loitering around, and buying drinks and biscuits from them.

Eventually Mr fixer reappeared, and said I was good to leave. He guided me to the gate, we shook hands and waved me goodbye across the border.

On the Turkish side, I was immediately greeted with “Welcome to Turkey”. My passport and bike documents checked, and I was sent into an office for formalities. A quick check of my visa, passport stamped, then onto customs for the bike import. All was going well, until they asked for my European insurance card. I told the guy I didn’t have one, as the bike is from Singapore. This stumped him, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He put my documents to one side and processed someone else. After a while, he showed another official, who also didn’t know what to do. I decided I’d try out my Singapore insurance policy, which clearly states out only covers Singapore & Malaysia. He looked at the photocopied document, and said “yes!”. Noting down the policy number, and with that I was on my way.

Outside it was chaos, at least 50 semi-trailers, parked randomly, blocking the dirt trail. I started weaving my way between trucks, but eventually got stuck where I could neither go forward or back. I waited, sweating between the hot trucks for about 10 minutes before a small gap opened up and I weaved the rest of the way out, leaving the trucks behind and onto the open roads of Turkey. The roads were excellent, aside from some deep gravel placed in the middle of the otherwise sweeping fast corners.

I stopped at the first town to fill up fuel, and was greeted by a team of attendants, who filled the bike and gave it a wash, while they provided me with tea.

Refueled with high quality 97 octane fuel for the first time in months, the bike was running fantastically, although the transition from paying $3 for a full tank in Turkmenistan & Iran, to now paying nearly $40 a tank, stings.
Turkey has very high fuel costs due to high taxes.

I rode onto the town of Van, where they were spraying soapy water on the road, presumably to clean it, but it made everything so slippery, I nearly had a get-off on one wet corner. It was hard to even walk in the soap, let alone ride.

I located a cheap hotel and settled in, walking around the vibrant town, streets filled with people.