Having left the Silk Road city walls of Herat (Afghanistan) in our dust we trailed west toward the frontier with Iran coming to the Afghan border post at Islam Qala. There we cleared exit formalities with authorities who regarded with side-eye our saucy-red VW sedan, its makeshift rooftop carrier accommodating three additional passengers and a small trailer. These appurtenances, hinting of a post-apocalypse road-rig, taxed our little VW suspension to its limits as we dragged gravel at every dip in the road across a no-man’s-land rightly abandoned after millennia of invasion, rebellion and pillage.
then to Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. (See earlier posts covering these stages
of our journey.) The current stage unfolded between Herat and the frontier of Iran
along Asia Highway #1 that passes through the pilgrimage city of Mashhad.
Sections of this route had already been paved, but gaps in the upgrade threatened
our genteel VW sedan built rather for German autobahns. We would frequently
meet high-slung outfitted trucks carrying Western adventurers to their encounter
with eastern ashrams and gurus. map credit:paintbrushdiplomacy.org
But if we nursed any illusions of having washed hands of no-man’s-land or even the romance of Herat, we would soon learn otherwise. As the sun set, we drew up to the Iranian border post near Taybad to present passports. They demanded to see our Iranian visas. We protested that the Iranian embassy in New Delhi had assured us by letter that we would need no visas to pass through Iran. They asked to see this letter. Maybe it was the growing darkness, maybe the dust that had by now settled on our powers of recall and reason, but this letter was nowhere to be found. And no amount of wheedling was going to open sesame, however grand the glories and munificence of ancient Persia.
Now we found ourselves in a catch-22 worthy of Franz Kafka himself. We were barred from entry into Iran. But we had already exited Afghanistan where our single-entry visas had been cancelled. That meant we no longer had permission to re-enter Afghanistan to procure the required visas back in Herat. And stretching out before us in the darkness was a beastly no-man’s-land.
was powered by an air-cooled rear engine. We kitted out our number with an
imposing roof-rack capable of sleeping three additional passengers. Lined with
rubber cushion, it provided sweeping, open-air vistas of the passing scenes:
wild mountain country through the Hindu Kush, dusty plains of vanished empires
and inland seas like the Caspian viewed from summits in the Elburz range.
photo credit:bilwebanctims.se
There is only one impulse equal to such dilemmas: rash determination. The most fearless among us took the wheel and sent us rocketing eastward in the manner of a Dakar-to-Paris rally. What punishment was being meted out to our undercarriage one feared to imagine. On returning to the Afghan border gate, we could see that the lights had been turned out, but one barrier had been left open through carelessness – or, perhaps, to accommodate after-hours smugglers along the Silk Road. We shot through the complex with a roar and veered onto the highway leading back to Herat. There, beside palm trees, we bivouacked – though with little sleep – outside the Iranian consulate so as to be first in line at the visa window when morning dawned.
The gate-keepers of such Silk Road cities are adept at the formalities that caravans require, whatever the peculiarities of their journeys. Within an hour, we had the necessary inkpad smudges that would pave the way to an open road. As if by some cosmic harmony, we were waved through the Islam Qala exit gate with knowing smiles, as though by now we were next of kin, and with the morning sun at our backs, absolved of all nighttime misdeeds, we drew up to Iranian immigration as innocent as babes, and then headed sedately for the holiest city in all of Shia Islam: Mashhad.
*In September, 2019 I began a series of Traipse blog posts (‘Mother of All Road Trips’) giving an account of a boyhood journey by car from Karachi (Pakistan) to Rotterdam in the summer of 1965. Eight of us tucked into/onto a VW 1500 Variant for an 8000-km (5000 mile) trek that would be unthinkable today. That series continues here.
Glad it was a “minor” hiccup.
Hello, Orlando, mon cher! ‘Minor’ being any incident short of ‘buying the farm’!
Wow when was this that you went through Mashad? My parents were there and we also had a series of these older VWs . Bug, Square back, Fastback, 4DrW-11, they drove London to Mashad twice and back once with me as a youngster to little to remember much. Thinking you actually could have met…amazing
Hello, Marshall! Good of you to stop by the blog! These travels do often trigger – even much later – surprising connections. We passed through Mashhad in July, 1965. My next post will give some description of what we saw and experienced there. Its history and prominence in the story of Persia and Shia Islam is remarkable. Such a pity that, for now, much of that is out of reach. But that will change one day soon. And you’ll be on that storied highway with your family in tow! Best!
We were there for sure, I was almost two. :). how fun a coincidence!
Though only a Larson would undertake such a ride;
leave it to Larson’s “Can’t win unless it is tried;”
Sit around and wait till the sun has you fried?, or v
Go with Jon Larson and tell tale with some PRIDE!
A few more details would not be too much, Jonathan 😂. Have you got a book acoming?
Kagiso, mong a me! Now you’re waxing lyrical on me – not unexpected for anyone who’s been ‘fried’ in the Kalahari sun. If anything, these meanders and encounters have taught me personal lessons in humility! The next post about a ‘roadside sacrament’ is such a moment. Good of you to hang with me on the trail! Glad to count you as a companion.