February 2011 Update: If you are looking for info on the visas and border cross­ing itself, Chris has posted about that here.

We were both still sick, but non­ethe­less on Wednesday, June 16^th we bought bus tickets from Van, Turkey to Orumiyeh, Iran. I must admit that deep inside me I was a little uncertain.

Chris and I say goodbye to Turkey and our Lonely Planet Turkey guide which Chris carried around for about 4 months.

The bus left Van at 9:45 am. Tired, a bit hungry (because I’m always a little hungry) and still sick, I struggled to keep my eyes open. I don’t know what it is about buses but they’re always rocking me to sleep. When I managed to keep my eyes open I saw a won­der­ful land­scape unfold­ing before me. Fields turned into shrubbery-covered moun­tains that, for some reason, reminded me of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is from photos I have seen.

While driving from Van, Turkey to Iran we spot this mag­ni­fi­cent stone fort out the window.

We got to the border at 2:00 p.m. Immediately when the bus stopped I folded the head­scarf I held in my hands, wrapped in around my head and safety-pinned it under my chin. The man and his family who were sitting by us and had con­versed with through­out the bus ride, giggled and smiled. “She says you look like you’re seven or eight years old,” he told me.

“Wonderful,” I thought. “I was hoping to lose a few years in appear­ance but not that many.”

Chris and I stepped off the bus with our belong­ings. At the top of a moun­tain, to the left of the build­ings in front of us, were huge bill­boards with the faces of the past and current Ayatollahs, the reli­gious leaders of Iran. Uncertain of where to go, we hes­it­antly entered a door way. We were sur­roun­ded by tem­por­ary walls covered in mirror-like mater­ial. A man ushered us to line-up with the rest of our bus to “check-out” of Turkey.

We walked through a hall, or what I like to think of as “limbo” between coun­tries. Obvious west­ern­ers, we were ushered through a sep­ar­ate doorway and told to take a seat. Two older Swiss men entered at the same time.  They started up a con­ver­sa­tion. “That looks good. It’s real natural like, what with Allah written on it and all...” one of the men com­men­ted on my head­scarf. “Did you wear that in Turkey?” asked the other man. “No,” I replied. “I put it on 5-minutes ago. I have to wear it in Iran. It’s the law.”

Five to seven minutes later the Iranian border guard came back and addressed me as “Miss Laura” as he gave my pass­port back. That was that. We walked through another door and we were in Iran. Customs didn’t even look at any of our luggage. No scan­ners, nothing. And everything was done with such a calm, friendly demeanour.

Before I could blink a man was up in my face asking, “Change? Change?”. Confused, I went and stood by Chris for pro­tec­tion. It is impossible to get Iranian cur­rency outside of the country so they were trying their best to grab vis­it­ors seconds after enter­ing. What a bunch of sharks! We declined and decided to wait until we got to the city in the hopes of a better rate.

One of the first things I noticed in Iran besides a dif­fer­ence in house archi­tec­ture, were the painted advert­ise­ments on the sides of build­ings like this one.

Two hours later we arrived at Orumiyeh, Iran.  As soon as we stepped off the bus we were har­assed by taxi drivers.  I was trip­ping over luggage, includ­ing my own. The space between our bus and the next was so small, that with all the taxi drivers, luggage and pas­sen­gers, it was frus­trat­ingly claustrophobic.

One driver managed to snag us, saying he could take us to exchange money. He took us to a shop outside the bus ter­minal. A very sturdy, serious looking man sat behind a desk.  All around him were stacks and stacks of boxed goods from juice boxes to yard dec­or­a­tions. The man spoke some English, some­thing we would later learn is very rare. He was the man with the power and the money. After learn­ing we are Canadian he quickly said, “Canada is much better than Iran”. Being only 2.5 hours into the country I didn’t feel I was in a pos­i­tion to agree or disagree.

One of our cozy hotel rooms in Iran. It’s prac­tic­ally impossible to get a room with a double bed, so Chris and I usual find ourselves in a room with two singles or some­times even four singles. For $25 US dollars a night, the beds are slightly on the shady side but not the worst we’ve slept on by far.

In the last six days it has become very appar­ent to me that people are not saying “hello” to me, they are not talking to me, or ask me where I am from, they are talking and asking Chris. This state of bystander exist­ence I receive as a foreign woman is quite hard to get used to.  Yet on the flip side, men (but primar­ily women) stare at me without shame.  It’s also very hard to get used to that. I try my best to ignore the stares, or to simply smile back.