Carnet de passage

A carnet de passage (CdP) is a document guaranteeing that a vehicle is only transiting a country, not being imported. Getting one requires a deposit that is 100% to 300% of the value of the vehicle depending on what country you’re going through. The CdP needs to be stamped upon entry and exit of the country where it is needed, otherwise the deposit might not be returned. The only country that needs a CdP on my trip is Iran (Malaysia theoretically needed one, but with my small bike at the time it was not asked for, and India would have needed one if I had brought a bike in). I got my CdP from the TCS. The responsible from the TCS was by far the most competent, helpful and efficient person I’ve dealt with on this trip, and got the CdP to my Mom before she came to India.

Iran visa

To get a visa for Iran from a consulate, you need an approval number from Tehran. To get this number, you need to apply through a travel agency and it should take 10 days to process. I started a month before I intended to go to Iran, after 10 days I hadn’t heard anything from the agency so I tried phoning, after a few days I finally got to speak to somebody who said there was probably a problem because I didn’t provide a detailed itinerary.

Next I tried a more expensive agency that doesn’t ask for an itinerary. After a few days I phoned them and they said that they hadn’t done anything yet because often people apply and then don’t need the visa in the end. After a further week waiting in Dubai, with the information that my bike was supposedly already in Iran, I decided to fly in via Tehran (a huge detour for Dubai – Bandar Abbas).

On arrival in Tehran (at 5 in the morning) I went to the visa counter, the guy told me to fill in a form, then after checking his computer told me it wasn’t necessary, next I had to pay 50€ to the counter next to it and then I had my visa for 15 days. I was done before my baggage had arrived.

Moral of the story: if you want to arrive by land or sea, start getting your visa 2 months in advance, and harass the agency every two days by phone. Otherwise fly to Tehran.

PS: the Iranian consulate in Dubai won’t let you in if you’re wearing shorts.

Iran

I’ve managed to get into Iran with a visa on arrival, flying in via Tehran. Tomorrow I’ll try to get my motorbike from the Bandar Abbas port and start riding. I have a long way to go and a short time to get there: my visa expires on the 23rd. The route I’m thinking of taking goes like this:
B. Abbas – Shiraz – Persepolis – Esfahan – Hamedan (or: Qom -Tehran) – Qazvin – Zanjan – Tabriz
I will face some cold weather and may need to adapt my route accordingly. Unfortunately WordPress and Flickr are both blocked in Iran so I cannot keep you folks up to date. I will write stuff down, and post all my experiences and photos when I arrive in Turkey. (this message was kindly posted by my brother)

Dubai

It looks like I’m still going to be stuck here for another week waiting for visa and shipping related stuff that I will publish in separate posts when it all works out. I’ll be so happy when I’m back on the road in Iran as there shouldn’t be any major paperwork (and the inevitable delays and costs) from then until I get to the Swiss border.

Dubai. It started on the emirates flight when I noticed the flight attendants would have made a good Benetton advert. There are people from all over here: east Asia, India, Africa, Europe (many Russians it seems) and of course from all over the middle east. I get the feeling there’s an energy drawing people here to work hard and get rich, this is the real land of opportunity. For a long time Dubai has been a small, but prosperous trading city (village?), thanks in part to the natural resources (mostly dates and pearls it seems), advantageous geographic location and most importantly stable leadership with a free trade policy and low taxes. Then oil was discovered in the late 60’s and things went crazy.

You can clearly see this turning point in Dubai’s history when you look at the structure of the city: around the creek is the old town with souks still selling spice, gold and clothing as they have been for a long time. There are traditional buildings that have been beautifully restored to be used as (free or very cheap) museums today. I like the wind-towers, a sort of natural air-conditioning system:

South of the creek, about 2km inland and running parallel to the coast a huge road with 6 lanes in each direction and a metro line form the backbone of the new downtown. Along this axis, skyscrapers have sprouted up like mushrooms. Here’s a crop at the Dubai marina:

Along with the superlative office/residential/hotel buildings, there are also some of the world’s biggest and craziest malls: The mall of Dubai has a huge aquarium, theme park and some nice waterfalls while the mall of the Emirates has an indoor ski-slope. I like hanging out in these malls because of their excellent food courts offering a diverse selection of fast food (there are also restaurants but out of my price range) and relatively affordable cinemas (I’ve been twice already). An interesting observation is that the French seem to have a hand in both malls with large spaces occupied by Galleries Lafayette in the Dubai mall and Carrefour in the mall of the Emirates. The mall of Dubai is a bit fancier, you can see by the density of (non-911 😦 ) Porsches in the drop-off zone:

Generally speaking, Dubai is a civilised place, on par with Switzerland and Japan in cleanliness, order and prices. This makes it an attractive place to live and work, but less interesting for the low budget traveller, I can’t afford all the fancy restaurants, hotels, spas, shopping, skydiving, indoor-skiing, etc… I’m staying in an extremely cheap (still about 50 Fr. for a single room though!) guest house near the gold souk and have seen most of the museums now, there’s still a (free) beach to try out and “12 Years a Slave” has just come out in the cinema…

India to Dubai

I returned to Mubai for my last night in India, in the afternoon I walked around the fort district, looked at some so-so art presented in a fancy art gallery and took pictures of nice colonial era buildings in the Fort district (this one’s the university):

In the evening, I went to Andy’s place to pick up the shipping papers for my bike that was already in Dubai at the time. It turns out it was his anniversary party and I enjoyed some home cooked curry with his family and friends. I will probably try and fail to replicate the potato – egg curry we had when I get home.

The flight to Dubai was uneventful, it was upon my arrival there that things got interesting. First of all, it’s somewhat of a culture shock to be back in a place where things are clean, organised, where people drive in lanes and make minimal use of their horn. Next problem is that I messed up my booking at the youth hostel, and the somewhat unhelpful receptionist told me to go take a taxi and ask to take me to a cheap hotel. Where I was there seemed to be lots of people looking for a taxi and not many taxis, so I didn’t stand a chance with my big bag and good manners. I headed back to the airport with the excellent metro, in hopes of getting help at the tourist information. It just happens to be the “shopping festival” in Dubai, all the hotels are booked out and charging 2-3x their normally already high rates, this makes things very difficult. I got intercepted by an illegal cab driver, being tired, and confident of my stubbornness I got in at the same time as an american also looking for accommodation. We ended up sharing a place that was at the high end of what I was prepared to pay given the situation, 400 Dh (about 100 CHF!). The next day (today) I went out to find an internet cafe, and while asking in a hotel, met a British man that was also looking for cheap accomodation, we walked around all morning in this really cool bazaar neighbourhood and found a place for 250 Dh for two. Now I’m waiting for my Iranian visa number, and going to go see the sights a bit.

Agonda beach

My Mom has gone back to the civilised world, and I’ve still got lots of time to kill before my bike gets to Iran. I already mentioned my will to head back to Palolem in south Goa to sit on the beach and chill out, but I met a Dutch lady in the bus who convinced me to go to Agonda instead, just a little north of Palolem, but less developed, calmer and cheaper. I’m staying in a hut with toilet and (cold) shower that’s right on the beach, I can hear the waves as I go to sleep and it’s only costing me INR 500 per night! There is also a restaurant with reasonable prices and a good selection of food, as long as you are not in a hurry.

The green hut is mine. I spend my time now eating, swimming, reading and sleeping, so there might not be any blog updates for a while, I’m taking a holiday from my holiday!

Mumbai 2

Back in warm Mumbai. We went to see the Elephanta caves, which I found frankly underwhelming after the Ajanta caves that are much more numerous and well-preserved, but I did enjoy the hour long boat ride there, walking the shaded path to get there and I also had an encounter with a monkey that wanted to steal my water bottle. The carvings are more about size than fineness.

We stayed in the Taj Mahal palace, not only an island of luxury but also a tourism-worthy place in itself, here you can see the palace, the tower and the gate of India as I saw them coming back from Elephanta island:

A tip: it is worth paying a bit extra to stay in the palace section rather than the tower for the real 5 star experience (we stayed in both). I particularly enjoyed the lounge reserved to the palace section where you could enjoy tea, cocktails and cognac at the appropriate times, there was also a chess table, unfortunately, people without mustaches were admitted and smoking cigars wasn’t allowed. Even the best places have room for improvement. Here’s the central spiral staircase beneath the main dome:

Delhi

Delhi is a very big place with lots to see. Luckily it’s got a good metro system so I could see quite a bit of it in the 1.5 days I spent there. The first thing I wanted to see is Jantar Mantar: gigantic concrete astrological instruments for measuring the position of the sun, moon and stars. The silly thing about it is that they were built in the 1700’s IIRC, at a time when the rest of the world was already using hand-held versions. Bigger is better, and it looks cool in any case (just a shame that it’s falling into disrepair and you can hardly see the graduations):

Rajpath is the impressive boulevard, built large for military processions and flanked by impressive government buildings built by the Brits in the early 20th century, not long before handing over India to the locals. At the end of it the president (or viceroy) has his house, it was closed when we went:

Finally, we saw the Qutub Minar, a giant minaret, built by the same Mughal empire that built the Taj Mahal and Red Fort. The tower itself is impressive, but the surrounding ruins with their detailed carvings of Arabic script, executed by Hindu artists so it’s slightly more rounded is an important part of the experience.

A final note: it seems that on the last night we stayed in Delhi, a Danish tourist was robbed and raped very near to the fancy part of town where we were staying, she was asking for directions. I haven’t often had a feeling of insecurity in India, mostly just annoyance by beggars, but apparently it can suddenly get dangerous if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Agra

We took an overnight train from Jalgaon (near Ajanta) to Agra. It came 3.5h late so we were waiting in the station for a while. Agra is much further north and it’s actually cold in mornings and evenings, I bought a thick woolly sweater that will undoubtedly come in handy later in my travels too.

Agra is known for the Taj Mahal, it was a bit hazy and around midday when we went to see it:

Beautiful symmetry, incredible craftsmanship with the precious stones inlayed in white marble and dense crowds of people.

Later in the day we went to the Red Fort, another impressive structure from the Mughal era. Personally I found the feeling in and around the fort more magic than the Taj, perhaps because of less people, beautiful evening lighting and less expectations:

Next stop: Delhi.

Ajanta caves

I’m now travelling with my Mom, so things have to be a bit comfortable, and I might use “we” more often in blog posts. First we took a train from Mumbai to Jalgaon that took 6 hours and left 2 hours late. Then a sleeper bus that took one hour so we could stay in one of the two state run hotels in Ajanta. The next morning we walked and took a short bus ride to the famous Ajanta caves.

The caves are Buddhist temples/monasteries constructed from the 2nd century BC to the 6th AD and then abandoned until rediscovered in the 19th AD by John Smith, an Englishman who was leading a tiger hunt (what would I give to be that man!)

The caves had nice carvings, and would have had a calm, spiritual feel were it not for the hordes of school kids harassing me and my Mom. There was also a group of Chinese tourists that bowed to the Buddhas and left money (encouraged and cleaned up afterwards by the Indian guards), a Japanese group complete with walking sticks (there was a medium-sized flight of stairs to get to the caves) and a British hipster with inferior SLR, tattoo and facial hair than me. The caves were dark, and tripods were not allowed (a guard got me just after I had set up an awesome shot but hadn’t taken it yet), so I didn’t get all the pictures I would have liked, but I hope this gives an impression: