Iran – Border

Yesterday we finally entered Iran, which, for a British passport holder is no easy feat.

First and foremost, the border.
1. Start by entering the border area in Turkey, by driving through the wrong gate. The other gate is broken.
2. Find the car lane, avoid all the minibusses that barge in and hand over your ICMV or V5 and passports. Get signed in and move on
3. Park your car in the massive mess of minibuses. Don’t get hit. It helps to have one person driving and the second standing in front of the minibuses to block them. Don’t get hit by a minibus (I did and still refused to move)
4. Take passports and V5/ICMV to gate next to barrier and get the car stamped out of turkey.
5. Keep walking forward and on the right side there is a small booth that asks for V5 and drivers’ passports hand over and wait
6. Passengers need to go into the Duty Free Terminal and queue to get stamped out
7. Cars finally progress in batches, into Iranian soil. The minibus driver from before will try to cut you off. When you don’t him, he will nudge your car with his bus. Honk your horn solidly and drive into him. Hit the bus, and hit it hard. Scrape the side. Show him that you aren’t intimidated. The border guard will eventually shout at him an let you through.
8. Park cars and wait for the soldier to come and do the car search. He will look at the mess in the back, sit in the drivers seat. Laugh at the size and ask you where you are going. He won’t touch a thing. Move the car forward if you can at this point. Block traffic as the next part is hard.
9. On the left of the holding pen there is a door, go in with your passport, green card and ICMV. Hand these over through the small windows. Put your elbows on the windows as the minibus drivers WILL cut and shout and scream an make a mess. Stand your ground. DO NOT GIVE YOUR DOCUMENTS TO THE RANDOM PEOPLE FLOATING ABOUT. They are fixers who will charge you 50-100 USD to give your documents to the guards. Give docs only to people in uniforms (brown).
10. Take passport to get stamped once they stamp your CdP (in the same building). Then take everything back to the glass window and get an exit slip with two stamps.
11. Drive out, pay 100,000rials (3usd) to get your car sprayed with disinfectant.
12. Drive down the hill, stop at the small hut and hand over exit slip. Get one more stamp.
13. Exit, they keep the exit slip.
14. welcome to Iran…

Notes:
– Temporary transit documents that replace the CdP/carnet if you don’t have one can be obtained at the border. The team that got it there paid 6million rial (187USD approx) from a fixer, so probably cheaper if you do it yourself… It’s slow (5-6 hrs). Get the fixer on the Iranian side, NOT the Turkish side.9
– Total time was 3hrs for us (UK/Canadians – 3 cars) with carnet, and 5-6hrs without the carnet (1 car, UK)
– Exchange rate is 32,000 rials to a dollar.. but you can get 33,000 if you haggle at the border.
– Do not trust the photocopier dude. He will ask for all sorts of random prices. Don’t pay more than 5,000 rials for a single photocopy (15cents).
– Do not trust the fixers. Follow them and your documents.
– Whoever is dealing with your documents, stand next to them or block the door. Otherwise – everyone will cut in.

Total cost:
$3 for the car disinfection
(and $187 if you don’t have a carnet)