“We couldn’t walk down the road without people inviting us in for a cup of tea and a chat. “
Jon of HitchHikersHandbook.com shares his experience travelling through Iran.
Normally when we are hitchhiking one of the first questions we get asked is where we are from. Our answers (Ania is Polish and I am English) tend to provoke different reactions depending on where we are. In Georgia, for example, people completely ignored my Englishness choosing instead to celebrate Ania’s Polish roots (“ahh you’re Polish, that’s great, the Russians killed your president”). Hitchhiking in Iran however, things were a little different…
The first problem for British (and American) people travelling in Iran is the fact that the government doesn’t really want you there. One quick glance at the former US embassy in Tehran, replete as it is with posters of brave Iranian soldiers stamping on the US, British and Israeli flags, is enough to tell you what the authorities think about Britain. Getting into Iran is difficult enough, as officially British people need to be travelling with a guide. For the budget traveller this causes no end of problems as guides don’t come cheap and you have to pay to feed and accommodate them for the duration of the trip. There are ways around this, it helps to have friends in Iran with contacts in the travel business, but the hassle is endless and I speak from experience.
Furthermore, when applying for the visa, and additionally when entering the country, I was required to give extensive fingerprints (each finger, thumbs, both hands individually and then together) whilst Ania sat there with ink free hands. I felt like a criminal without the thrill of having committed any crime. On top of this we were questioned extensively upon entering the country by a charming woman who was obviously very skilled in questioning. The beauty of the whole thing was that, while seeming to be innocuous, she probed away at our history, our political beliefs and our intentions whilst in the country.
But once the officials had been satisfied, my experiences with the actual people of Iran couldn’t have been much more different. To a man, everyone was friendly and so hospitable it almost made us embarrassed. We couldn’t walk down the road without people inviting us in for a cup of tea and a chat. Every time we pulled out the wallet to pay for something we were waved away. The welcoming nature stood in such stark contrast to European attitudes. When have I ever been shown such niceness by complete strangers in the continent of my birth?
And when they found that I was English, the glee that passed across their faces. The chance to practice English with a native! Such joy! I was quizzed on my country, my family, how much I earnt (a little too forward for us, but there you go). They wanted to know what we thought of Iran, how it compared to England and lots more besides.
Delving a little deeper, the thoughts they had about Britain were a little strange to us; primarily, the widespread belief that British people ruled the world. U.S. hegemony? Laughable for Iranians as they knew (well at least they thought they knew) that Britain was the power behind the throne. The country that with Machiavellian sleight of hand bent the whole earth to its whims. Despite my protestations that Britain hadn’t been a major power for 60 years, and that we are not even the most significant nation in Europe nowadays (that’s Germany obviously), my arguments were waved away. Britain, it turns out, was responsible not only for the economic sanctions, but also the whole Islamic Republic. This was news to me but all my logical arguments convinced no-one.
So, I resigned myself to the fact that Iran with all the oil, people and land was actually the puppet of my little parochial island where people are more concerned about pulling out of the E.U. than controlling the world. Strange life isn’t it?
Read more about Jon and Ania’s hitchhiking adventures on their website – HitchikersHandbook.com