We stayed at a street car park outside the Blue Mosque in the European side of town with a lot of other campers. The car park was guarded 24hrs a day and cost about 60p a day, double normal price because of the size of the lorry.
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We met with our first real taste of street hawkers. "You buy this Mister, very cheap" and others "I buy everything". They even offer shoe-shine when you're walking around the town with sandals on. After about three days of wandering around the town we came across a huge area of shops devoted to the motor trade. About the size of old Romsey. There just happened to be two Bedford dealers so as we thought we had a squeak in the region of the clutch we put on our dirty togs and dropped the gearbox out onto the road. Anyway we couldn't find anything wrong but put a new thrust bearing in just in case. Upon putting everything back together we saw the pivot to the leaver arm was out a long way and slightly bent, but it would not budge and there was no new one to hand, so it was left. We still had an occasional squeak.
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Next day we left for Ankara.
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The sea was perfectly clear and very refreshing as it is now beginning to get rather warm. We spent 4 days edging our way along the coast and then headed inland across the mountains. We crawled up a rutted almost washed out dirt road for 25 miles to over 11,000 ft [2>]and then down for 20 miles. Eventually we met with the notorious central road.. A very bad road, a little good surface followed immediately by gravel and pot holes.
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At the Iranian border they did not want to let the lorry in as we did not have the correct papers for a lorry, but we eventually persuaded them it was a mobile home and they then let us through.
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In Tehran we went to the only camping site and found it was full of British lorry drivers swimming in the pool and generally lazing around in their 'units' waiting for their loads to be cleared by customs and unloaded. After a couple of pleasant days there we trundled up to the Caspian Sea which we found to be filthy.
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Stayed at a motel for the night at . The owner befriended us so we stayed a few more days in total luxury with servants, iced drinks on the patio, etc. One afternoon the owner, also a local landowner, took us to the "brother of the King's beach villa" for a swim and laze followed by a huge dinner. Very nice. Oh, Iranian roads are as good as British ones (A/B class).
