Dave’s Reise nach Osten

Finally, I uploaded a selection of pictures from Iran. I hope you enjoy them.

Ich habe endlich eine Auswahl meiner Bilder vom Iran hochgeladen. Ich hoffe sie ergänzen euer Bild dieses Landes.

Teheran

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Qom

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Kashan

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Isfahan

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From Isfahan to the border of Pakistan

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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

Yazd

Yazd war wirklich toll. Und zwar vor allem wegen dem Silk Road Hotel das eine gute Küche und eine faszinierend breit gefächerte Speisekarte hat – man merkte, dass ein Europäer im Management dabei ist. Curries, Spaghettis, karribianisches Essen, Dattelmilchshakes (yammie!), Yazdie Sweets und verschiedenste Tees, inklusive wirklich gutem Milchtee. Da wartet man gerne noch einen Tag länger auf die Kameraden. Wir haben von Isfahan aus alle unterschiedliche Routen genommen und uns in Yazd für die Weiterfahrt wieder getroffen. Wir, das sind Arjen aus Holland, Kevin aus Irland und Jan und Dusan aus der Slowakei.

Yazd selber hat einen tollen Stadtkern. Alles Lehmhäuser mit natürlichen Kühltürmen (badgirs genannt), die fangen den kleinsten Wind ein und leiten in ins Haus.

Und dann gings an die grosse Busreise. Rund 40 Stunden waren wir unterwegs und haben das Äquivalent einer Zeitzone durchquert. Als wir die Tickets kauften und auf unsere Fahrräder hinwiesen, hiess es nur: No Problem, no Problem. Es war dann tatsächlich kein Problem, die Fahrräder wurden alle auf dem Dach des Buses festgezurrt. Der Bus verliess das Terminal pünktlich um 5 Uhr und hielt – ganz in iranischer Manier – 5 Minuten später an einem grossen Kreisel um noch weitere Passagiere einzuladen. An diesem Kreisel warteten wir eine volle Stunde.

Kerman und Bam lagen noch auf der Route, ich hätte sie mir ganz gerne angesehen. Aber so anders können sie nicht sein, ich freute mich auf ein neues Land und ich wollte die Möglichkeit in einer Gruppe zu reisen nicht missen. Der Bus fuhr also bis zum Morgen früh, immer mal wieder mit kurzen Stops – Klos gibts ja nicht im Bus.

Am Morgen früh waren wir in Zahedan, Grenzstadtgefühl, man wird mehr angebettelt als sonst. Frühstück und dann mit einem Pickup-Fahrer verhandelt der uns an die Grenze fuhr. Eine Stunde Fahrt, die Grenze.

Fortsetzung folgt.

I already stated that my texts are missing the view of women. Luckily I met a traveler who can provide it. Annika travelled overland from Berlin to Pakistan to study in Islamabad for a semester. (who calls me crazy anymore?) I am happy she provides a guestpost to my blog. If you like it, read more from her on her blog: traveleidoscopia.blogspot.com

From the eyes of a woman

„If I want to travel, I have to get a passport. To get a passport, my father or my husband have to agree on it. As they don’t want me to travel alone, I don’t get a passport. I’m trapped.“

The freedom of a woman or a girl in Iran depends a lot on the place where she lives (as not all of the places are as westernized as Teheran) as well as on the family (how much the parents allow). This is how I perceived it first.

One girl told me that she would love to travel but that her parents don’t allow it to her. Her only chance will be, as she put it, to marry an open minded man who let’s her go to travel. But finding such a person isn’t so easy in a gender separating society as the Iranian, where one of the first contacts with a person from the other sex is in university (besides the family relatives from the other sex that you might have contact with).And even if you get in contact with a possible open minded future husband: your parents will have to agree on him and what to do about it, if they want to choose or don’t approve your choice?

Women have relationships before marriage, but one women in Tabriz summarized what a lot of women I spoke to, expressed: „When you have a boyfriend before marriage, which most of the girls have, and you might have sex with him (which is forbidden), he will not marry you afterwards, because he thinks that you are a bad girl.“

But the daily problems go further than the decision about relationships. They touch the decisions made on a personal level for an independend life. It is hard for a woman to divorce from her husband without his agreement and renting an appartment is not possible without the father’s or husband’s permission.

A friend whom I was walking in the streets the other day told me about her brother’s wife. She had cysts and needed a life-saving operation. For this operation her husband had to sign a paper that he gives the doctors permission to make the surgery. Even before she went into the operation he was called again to confirm that he agreed on her being operated although she might loose her futility. And he was asked again and again how many children he already had and if he wouldn’t like to have more. (Well…how can he have more, when his beloved wife dies? Except of the idea of „replacing“ her…).

These are just kaleidoscopick minipixels out of the talks I had in the recent days in Iran with some women.

Friends and family asked me how I cope with wearing a hejab, the in Iran compulsory covering of your hair. It is just a piece of cloth. Wearing a hejab and a manteau for two weeks isn’t too bad. It is just some extra clothes that you have to get used to, despite the fact that most of the women wear the hejab more loosely than you might think. And by going into a catholic church in Italy you would also adjust to the dress code, I guess…

„It is not that we have to wear this“ said Afsane one day while pointing to the hejab, „or that we have to obey some extra rules and get along with our families: it is the whole society. Even if my family is open minded and I can do what I want, there’ll be neighbours, gossipping and rules that can make a women’s life hell here.“

Ich bin nun schon etwas mehr als drei Wochen im Pakistan. Die Eindrücke die man hier von dem Land kriegt sind ganz anders als den Eindruck den man zuhause davon kriegt. Und es sind viele Eindrücke die man hier kriegt. Ich weiss gar nicht wo mit erzählen beginnen. Deshalb hier die Frage an meine Leser: Was wollt ihr über Pakistan wissen? Was soll ich euch erzählen?

Hinterlasst einen Kommentar und dann finde ich hoffentlich bald die Zeit was dazu zu schreiben.

Dave

I am now in Pakistan for a little more than three weeks. The impressions you get from the country here are very different from the impression you get from it at home. And you get a lot of impressions here! I don’t really know where to start. So here is my question to my readers: What do you want to know about Pakistan? What should I write you about?

Leave a comment and hopefully I soon find time and energy to write about it.

Cheers, David

What is the biggest danger for tourists in Pakistan? Do you think of Terrorists, Taliban, bombs and kidnappings?

If so, you are mightily wrong. It is plain and simple Diarrhea.

I am quite well again. But not really in the mood for writing. Jan, one of my fellow travellers was. So if you want to get a glance at my last experiences in Pakistan, I recommend to read his articles:

• Cycling to Asia, week 12
• Cycling to Asia, week 13