The next day we drove three and a half hours along a rough and bumpy road to the Turkmenistan-Iran border at Saraghs. Hostile desert scenery interspersed with dry land wheat farms, surrounded us for most of the trip. A dust storm encroached the desert late in the morning, sweeping vast deposits of suffocating brown sand across the road and reducing visibility to a few hundred meters. The storm was from Iraq, Maksat told us. From here on all the dust storms we encountered were blamed on poor Iraq. It was probably correct.

As we sped inevitably toward our destination of the Saraghs border I could not help thinking about what would befall us in Iran . The evening before a local guide looking after a German tour group kept us "entertained" with stories of tourists he had met at the border. "Iran is like being in jail" he said. "You should hear what the female tourists say about their experiences". The guide had relatives in Iran. Borders are tenuous in Central Asia and when boundaries change, the inhabitants are inevitably caught up in the disputes. You could be in one country today and another tomorrow. He continued to recount his relatives' perspectives of Iran. They also thought it was like being in jail.

Of course the guide was quite correct about personal freedoms in Iran. We knew very well that the country had very strict codes of conduct and that I had to be fully covered neck to ankles and to wear a head scarf at all times. We were also very mindful that, amongst an array of personal restrictions, alcohol is totally prohibited. I couldn't help but think that 15 days in Iran was sounding like a very long time .

We arrived very suddenly at Saraghs, a rather non-descript border township. And suddenly our trip in Turkmenistan was over and another adventure was about to begin. I never cease to be amazed how unprepared I always feel when we finish one journey and enter upon another.

We had experienced a number of land border crossings on our previous travels and knew full well the difficulties that may arise. We were aware also of how vitally important it is to have your travel agents in each of the bordering countries in close contact to co-ordinate the crossing. We were highly relieved that our agent in Iran, Ms Pari Nikzad had assured us that she had been in contact with Advantour (Owadan), and that there would be no problems. And as far as our travel agents were concerned, there were no problems with their organisation. The border bureaucracy - well.....

And like all border crossings, it was not at all easy. Firstly, we had to negotiate a long walk from our car, literally squeezing our way with our luggage between dozens of huge and massively long, articulated road trains and stumbling over rough unpaved ground before we reached the official border administration buildings. We wondered how people with a lot of luggage would have fared - let alone anyone with an even slight physical disability. 

Thankfully Turkmenistan allows guides to assist their tourists with border formalities. We arrived at the border administration buildings to find that there were no English written immigrations forms, only those in Turkmen language. Apparently, they had run out of English forms some time ago. None of the officials spoke English and we were the only Europeans in sight. Goodness knows how we would have fared if we had not had Maksat with us. The forms took ages to complete even with his assistance.

Border protocol meant that Maksat could no longer stay with us after immigrations procedures were completed. We bade him a hurried thanks and farewell, before entering customs and the baggage surveillance section. The x-ray equipment was not working so all our luggage had to be manually inspected. Each of our bags was labouriously poured through bit by bit by unfriendly staff. "What is this for?" barked a stern woman official holding up my cosmetics bag. "Personal use" I answered rather pathetically. This seemed to answer her question although she probably had no idea what I was saying. Alan had similar treatment. The funny thing is that the whole procedure makes you actually feel quite guilty, even though you have nothing to hide.

It was with some relief that finally we were gruffly urged to move on. But where to? There was just a door which looked out onto "No Mans Land", the strange unowned zone between two countries. A Turkmen woman travelling to Iran rescued us and urged us toward a bus around an obscure corner of the building. We paid some absurd amount to be driven less than a kilometer to the Iran border gate. And then we were in Iran.