We had reached Erzurum fairly early in the evening, despite all the stops on the way and this is where we had planned to stay the night. Over dinner however, we had some things to consider. It was very still very cold in this area, with plenty of snow on the ground (though streets were free) and given the altitude varying between 1500 and 2000 meters above sea level, it made for a rather uncomfortable place to be walking about. And you wouldn’t want to be driving here if the snow returned, although the subzero temperatures weren’t very comforting even without the snow.

Our next big item to take care of was the border crossing into Iran.

This would be the first big point in our journey where we didnt expect it to go smoothly. We had heard of horror stories with it taking many hours to just cross over even if you had all the required paperwork. What if we were short a piece of paper or a stamp somewhere? We wanted to be ready for these eventualities.

The Iranian border is roughly 4 hours from Erzurum and if we set off early, we could be there at the start of the working day (even though the crossing is theoretically open around the clock, we had heard that some custom procedures may only be conducted during the day time hours).

The weather forecast was cold but dry and this could be our chance to reduce the time required to get to the border in the morning. So we decided to drive on to Ağrı, about two and a half hour away. This will only be the second time we’ll be driving in the dark. The first time was when we drove into Istanbul but that was a good standard motorway whereas this was a regional highway.

Having found a hotel, we set off in the night.

There was not a lot of traffic on this section. Hardly any.

Even saw some grey wolves on our way.

We reached our hotel around 11 pm. The staff there spoke the lease amount of English that we’d encounter on any of our stays but they were helpful nevertheless. (Grand Cenas Hotel. €52 per night, conveniently located on the highway passing through Ağrı. including breakfast. Has seen better days)

This was perhaps the most tiring of all the travel days we had on all the trip. I was exhausted myself but Hira was even worse off, with all the symptoms coming out in full swing. A heavy price to pay for the 580 km we covered that day.

We got all the paperwork in order for tomorrow’s border crossing and went to bed knowing that even if we didnt get up early in the morning, we’d still have plenty of time to make the crossing and spend the next night in Iran. And we need to stay and rest, we could do that too.

For crossing into Iran, you need the following documents:

1. Passport, valid for 6 months.
2. Visa: The Iranian consulate in Frankfurt did not put a visa sticker on our passports and instead gave us a printed out visa confirmation with all the relevant information on it. https://evisa.mfa.ir/en/
3. Carnet de Passage (CdP): Essentially, your vehicle’s passport. This is issued by the Automobile club in the country of your residency and most of them only issue these documents to the vehicles registered within that country alone. The holder of the CdP must be one of the passengers in the travelling party and they must present their passport together with the CdP to the customs officer. https://www.carnetdepassage.org/
4. Travel medical insurance. This one may be a little bit tricky at the moment, due to international sanctions against Iran. We were able to get insurance from ADAC (same place we got CdP from) and it covers Iran as well as Pakistan.
5. Original vehicle registration documents so that the customs official can match the data on the CdP. It helps to have the registered owner of the vehicle be one of the passengers but if that is not the case, you must present a notarised letter indicating you have the owner’s express permission to cross the border with this vehicle.
6. Have at least two set of photocopies of all of these documents with you as some officers will require them and you’ll save yourself a lot of hassle to have one made at that very moment.
7. Cash: Make sure you have adequate amount of cash at hand for your entire duration of the trip + a reserve for contingencies. No foreign credit or cash cards work in Iran as the country is blocked out of the global financial infrastructure. You’ll be able to exchange into Iranian Riyals both at the border or in any major city once you are in.

I can’t stress it enough how important it is for any prospective traveller to do detailed research on entry requirements and documentation to enter Iran well before starting the journey. For example: DO NOT have any alcoholic beverages or drugs on you or in your vehicle. Drugs smuggling carries a death penalty in Iran. Another big no-no is to have Israeli entry/exit stamps on your passport. Citizens of some countries may not enter Iran unless they are part of a tour run by a government approved travel agency. Please do your research, the Internet is your friend. If you feel we can answer your questions here on this blog, please dont hesitate to write to us.

We even removed the dash-cam, in case it was something the border guards didn’t approve of. I’ve crossed a fair few borders around the world and it is well worth your time and sanity to err on the side of over compliance instead of assuming you’d be able to force your way through, just because you believe to be in the right.

Specially, if you are not white.

We did take our time the next morning, made sure the border crossing was open and there were no major delays being reported. We reached the border crossing at around 10:30 am and we had plenty of snacks, water and other supplies to last us the day, if need be.

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