Dave’s Reise nach Osten

There are certain things that help much to get an insight in how a culture works. Here are some suggestions for your next trip.

• Go to the hospital. Preferably as a patient.
• Post a parcel. Not with DHL – in the main post office.
• Use a taxi.
• Use an overland bus. Use a train. Use whatever else there is. For example motorbike taxis in Teheran.
• Try to find something specific in town. Things you want to buy. It is getting more interesting if it is a thing of high value, for example a car.
• Ask for a vegetarian meal.
• Ask for the way.
• Spend a day ore more in a small village.
• Try to talk to locals.
• Meet locals.
• Be in need of help.
• Do as the romans do and contemplate why they do it that way. Join their free time activities.
• Work on a local farm for some weeks. (http://www.wwoof.org/)

1. Learn to understand Indian English. It will be of much use to you when you deal with the embassy folks. If you don’t understand it you might find yourself in dialogs like the following:
   

   Embassy staff member: “***some really tough subcontinental English*** – do you understand?”
   Me: “No, I don’t understand.”
   He: “Can’t you speak English?”

2. Go to your own embassy and get a recommendation letter. Or first call the Pakistanis and ask if it is still needed: 66944888. In the Swiss case, it costs you 40 Swiss franks (today: 360′000 IR) and you can get it between 8.30 and 11.30. Have a look at the current opening hours.
3. Get a visa application form at the Pakistani embassy and fill in everything needed. To lower confusion:
   • It is necessary to provide an address in Pakistan, any hotel will do.
   • And they want the address of two persons coming up for the costs in case of an accident or such. That these two addresses were exactly the same, only the first name of my parents was different was not a problem.
   • There are also lines for the same thing with addresses in Pakistan, I left them blank, that was ok.
4. Next they want you to write a personal application. They gave me a blank sheet of paper and I wrote an application with my hand.
   

   Dear Sir
   I hereby apply…

   It feels weird.
   You should state why you want to visit Pakistan, how long, when and especially why you did not apply for the visa in your homecountry.

5. Hand in:
   • the application form
   • the handwritten application
   • three photos of you
   • the recommendation letter
   • a copy of every page of your passport that has a stamp or anything on it

   Hand it in between 9.00 and 11.00. But too early does not make a lot of sense, because they will let you wait until 11.00, then ask you a few questions and then tell you to call again in about 3 working days. They told me to call 4 days later, between was also the weekend (Thursday and Friday).

6. You call, you go to the embassy. They tell you to deposit money on a bank account. In my case 32 Dollar respectivelly 320000 Rial. Walk south from the crossing until the end of the street, then right, and just over the crossing you find the bank, badly signed. You go back, hand in the receipt from the bank and your passport and they tell you to pick up your passport a few hours later with a receipt they give you. This time use the main entrance.
7. For Swiss overlanders: Apply at home! You can get a three month visa with a flexible entry date within the next year.

Address of the embassy of Pakistan on Teheran:
Block No 1
Ahmed Etimadzadeh Alley
Dr. Hussain Fatimi St.
North Jamshidabad
14118 Teheran
www.parepteheran.org

There are a few bicycle stores in Tabriz. But there is one that got some reputation in the cycling community. I guess not because of the ‘free service for tourists’, but because they do their work with passion, have a lot of spare parts and are very friendly.

So if your bike needs something and you are in Tabriz, that is the place to go:

Saeed Mohammadi Bike
Nader sq
Tabriz
Tel 280 77 76
saeedbike.blogfa.com

A few years ago, someone stopped Steven on the street while he was cycling into Tabriz: “Hello Mister, you have a problem with your bike”. He brought him to his cousin Saeed and because they did not have the spare parts he needed, they drove him to all bike shops in town. Great service, isn’t it?!

Funny sidestory: Steven gave me some pictures (that I carried with me all through Turkey) to bring them to Saeed. They came along with a visit card with the address. When I asked at the hotel reception where this address his, the man said: “In Esfahan”. I obviously had the wrong visitcard in my hands. However, Chris also had an address of a good bike shop, so we went there to look for spare parts. When I sat at the table, waiting for my bicycle to be ready again, I compared the table on the pictures in my hand with the table in front of me and started wondering…
The table on the picture and the one in front of me where the same! I was in the right place and could deliver the pictures!

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However, a word of warning has to be said: While the service of Saeed is good, it is not perfect. I had to readjust my gearshift after the visit and if they want to exchange all your spikes, you better say no…

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Saeed has a guestbook and it was fascinating to have a look at all the travellers that passed through this place.
Here is a list of the homepages I could find in the guestbook, the oldest entries were about 15 years old:

• geocities.com/kens-journal
• beon.ch/ausgefahren
• poppinosvelotraum.de.vu
• globecyclers.de
• levelrouge.ch
• patensop.6x.to
• teddytravel.ch
• northlandboy.com
• ride-earth.org.uk
• robik-troglodyte.blogspot.com