Operation Tamam - France to Mongolia and back...

Diktat

New member
Tamam : everything is fine, OK (Arabic)


Hello everyone,

First and foremost, a quick presentation. I was recently referred to this forum after writing a brief Q&A session on another website. I was surprised at the attention this story received, and was advised to write a more proper, in-depth description of the trip. Now here's a brief disclaimer. I'm not usually one to travel in order to have a good story for the next youth hostel, I'm a generally very private person. Be it good or bad, I like my trips to be confined to memory, and generally don't talk much about them. I don't take notes, and pictures are more of an... "if it happens" rather than a constant objective. This is not a judgement, but rather an explanation of why this might not be the most proper, organized, developped story out there. I will be writing all of this from memory, and of course will answer questions if you should have them. Add to that the fact that English is most definitely not my mother tongue, and I hope you will forgive the mistakes that are bound to happen.

Hopefully this story can convince some people still hesitating that an overland trip can be done by anyone.

This is the story of how three young Frenchmen prepared and attempted a several month long journey to Mongolia and back in a 30 year old car, crossing some of the most dangerous countries in the middle East, through all of central Asia, with very, very minimal funds and preparation. None of us had ever done an overland journey with a car before. All of us had traveled to some extent or another, and I had completed a two-month long journey through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos on a motorcycle. From the conception of the idea, to the first day of departure, we had a mere 6 weeks of preparations. When the idea of an overland voyage dawned on us, we had neither car, visas, nor any information whatsoever. Everyone told us it was impossible.


The idea:

The idea got build up over time. In the beginning, a friend of mine was completing an Erasmus year in Istambul, and offered that I come back there to visit him in the summer. The plan was to rent a car there, and drive out into eastern Turkey. Being young and stupid, the idea grew, carried away by the fuel of all stupid ideas, beer. We moved away from a simple Turkish road trip, into fixing up an old Renault 5 my friend had laying around in France, and driving from home all the way to eastern Turkey. That was to prove impossible upon closer inspection, as the old R5 was completely rusted, and would cost more to fix up than to buy another car. What to do, then?

The obvious next step, instead of reverting back to renting a car, was to buy a new one in France. But if we bought a new car, we couldn't limit ourselves to Turkey, could we? We'd have to get the best bang for our buck, and go further! Which car should we take, then, given our (desperately) low funding? (All three of us are students). Well, of course we opted for the cheapest possible 4x4: Lada Niva. Careful planning and information-gathering ensues.. At this point, we are roughly 5 weeks to departure date, and still have no car or visas. But this was not the end of our problems.

Lo and behold, to cross Iran, one needs the fabled "Carnet de Passage". Legendary document allowing the temporary importation of vehicles while leaving a hefty amount of money in escrow back home to guarantee the reexportation of said vehicle. Now this was starting to be more than we bargained for.. The purchase of a new car (even an old Lada Niva would run us 1200 euros at the minimum), plus 150% of the car's value (at a minimum of roughly 2300 euros), was more than we had budgeted for. Not only that, but with the notorious reliability problems of the Niva, our original plan was to drive as far east as the old mule would take us, dump it when it inevitably stopped running definitively, and take a plane home. That plan went out of the window because of the Carnet.

So here's where reasonable people would say "Hey, too bad for Iran, I guess I'll go visit it another time", and pass through the Caucasus, and north to Russia. But we were hell bent on the middle East, and Iran was not the only country we wanted to go through... So we did what unreasonable people would. A bank loan, and a car purchase. But since we now had to bring the car back to France because of the Carnet, we didn't want to stay on the Niva.. So we went hunting.

The car:

In the end, three options seemed viable. (Remember, we only had about a month to departure by this point, and still no vehicle, no Carnet, no visas...). An old LandCruiser with over 600.000 kms, that seemed in a fairly decent state, a Nissan Patrol with some basic equipment for overland journeys, and then the car I immediately fell in love with - a 1986 Land Rover Defender.

Of course, forgetting all reason, I went with my heart.

Here's Deffy, our home for the next few months, enduring some last minute preparation work:

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The finalization:

Now I won't bore you with the details, but what followed were 4 excruciating weeks of bureaucratic agony. Trying to finalize countless visas, while doing all the administrative paperwork on the purchase and insurance of a new car, along with the Carnet, and information gathering on the countries we would cross.. This was basically a full time job, but we organized ourselves well enough, and managed to complete it. Or so we thought. For anyone that has travelled in central Asia, you know how it goes...

I won't recommend doing any of this last minute, we had to overspend on visa in order to get them processed urgently, had to lie, fake, invent documents, to get some visas, and our car was untested and unprepared. But we were young and stupid, and we had a goal.

Our bibles in this period were:
  • Vehicle-dependant expedition guide, by Tom Sheppard
  • Overlander's Handbook, by Chris Scott
  • Land Rover Defender service and repair manual, by Haynes
  • The Internet... And our thanks go to the dozens of unnamed travellers who experimented, fought, adventured their way into the most remote places, and came back to share their tale.

But of course, there were many, many unknowns, for which no information was available...

In the end, one of us received his last visa 3 days before departure, and the Carnet de Passage arrived in the mail... on the day of departure. Luck was with us so far!

The departure:

At last, after a few mods on the car itself, some preparation and fixing up, last minute purchases, loading everything in, I set out for the first kilometer of what was to be a 34.000 km long trip that none of us will ever forget.

Below is a crude map of what we were planning on accomplishing.

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Diktat

New member
First portion: Europe


I'll give a quick overview on this portion, since all three of us had extensively travelled in Europe beforehand, we didn't stop much and kept on going.

After driving from the Atlantic coast in France to Toulon, we continued on to Annecy, where we would pick up our last gear. We were ready to leave France... Of course we did so at 3 in the morning, having spent the day and early night making everything fit, and checking the last details.


France - Italy - Slovenia - Croatia - Bosnia

The kilometers went by, slowly... We drove without stopping, except to eat or stretch our legs, and without sleeping. Beautiful scenery in northern Italy, from Turin to Milan, and on to Venice. Once in Slovenia, we picked up a German hitchhiker at a rest stop, and brough him to Zagreb. At the border between Slovenia and Croatia, the Slovenian border guards made us notice that we had not purchased the "vignette", or the highway toll fee that is shown by a sticker on the windshield. They wanted to fine us an exorbitant amount. After a bit of laughing and arguing, we crossed the road to the "entry" side, bought the vignette, stuck it on our windshield, and told them that there was no longer any need for a fee, since we had it on. The guards laughed, and let us go. Croatia turned into Bosnia, and by that time we were absolutely dead tired, neither my friend nor I could keep our eyes open. After crossing into Bosnia at 3 in the morning through a tiny little backcountry road, and passing the cursory check of a suspicious customs official, we drove on to Banja Luka, where we crashed for what remained of the night. Annecy to Banja Luka in one stretch was completed.

The next day we woke up fairly late, stretched our legs and visited Banja Luka, capital of Republika Srpska, the ethnically Serb region of Bosnia. Beautiful scenery, but a bit of a strange area. We drove on after eating lunch, direction Sarajevo. And this is where our first little adventure started. Somewhere between Banja Luka and Sarajevo, we got completely turned around, and ended up losing the main road, driving on little dirt mountain paths. At one point we almost could not climb, as we stalled on a very steep incline making a 180 degree turn up the mountain, and could not start up again. After carefully backing up, we managed to navigate that part, and keep on going.

Our Bosnian highway:
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Here's a Serbian wedding in a small Bosnian town, after we had rejoined asphalt roads:


Finally, in the evening, we arrived in Sarajevo, and stopped for some beers and supper, before taking up the road again. We had to pick up our third companion in Istanbul the next day, and we were starting to be pressed for time.

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Bosnia - Montenegro - Kosovo - FYRO Macedonia - Greece - Bulgaria - Greece - Turkey

This second part was also done without stopping, and with no sleep. Red bull and cigarettes kept us up, and we gobbled up the kilometers on the terrible roads of the Balkans. Leaving Sarajevo, we got stuck behind an incredibly drunk driver, zig-zagging on a tiny mountainous road, probably attempting to get home. Almost falling off the cliff several times, stopping abruptly at random intervals, we endured that for about an hour, before he deigned veering off to a side-road, perhaps to take a nap. After that it was pretty smooth sailing, until we got to Bulgaria. The very first thing we needed to do was bribe the border guard, as for some reason Bulgaria only allows two packs of cigarettes with you when you cross the border. Of course, being a smoker, I had stocked up much more than that. After that, we needed to buy the Bulgarian "vignette" (highway toll sticker), but the guard told us to buy it a bit down the road, as it would be cheaper than the official 20 euros or so. We drove a bit further, and, of course, it turned out to be a lie. They were asking double the official tarriff.. After some arguing, we got the price down to 25, still 5 euros more than we should, but we didn't want to drive back to the customs office, having just bribed a guard. We were already pretty mad with Bulgaria at this point.

A bit before Sofia, we picked up a random hitchhiker on his way to Georgia to work on a seaside bar with a friend for the summer. Dead tired, his conversation kept us awake and going. Then we hit Sofia. It seemed like the entire city was one huge roadwork. Everything was a traffic jam, and we must have easily spent 4 hours crossing the city itself, moving as a snails pace. At this point we knew there was no way we could pass the overpopulated, slow, stuffy Bulgarian - Turkish border, so we decided to slip back into Greece for a tiny detour, and enter Turkey through the "backdoor".

There were two reasons for this. One was the fact that the major border crossing between Bulgaria and Turkey is always full of people, and very slow. But the main reason was also that my friend, at the time, was not able to "legally" get into Turkey. French citizens are allowed a 90 stay period without visa, but my friend has already used those 90 days on his Erasmus period... Thus we felt than a small, rural, greco-turkish border post might be more lax on this matter.

After making sure our new companion had nothing illegal on him, we approached the border post. On the greek side, absolutely no problem, a fat, jovial officer waved us through after seeing that we were French... However the Turkish side proved to be much different.... Barbed wire and armored personnel carriers welcomed us in..


To be continued...


P.S. - How can we post links on the forum? Would like to link to some youtube videos I'm uploading.
 

Diktat

New member
Second portion: Crossing from Europe to Asia

Entering Turkey

As we approached the secure checkpoint, the first thing we could notice was that it was completely deserted. After a no-man's-land of barbed wire, the only people on the Turkish side were military. And they did not seem happy to see us coming. After grunting while searching through every paper we could scrounge up, from insurance to driving licences to passports, and many questions on why we were entering Turkey, where we were going, they motioned us onwards. We thought we were home free.

Now the reason the Turks are a bit careful at the moment is because most people going to Syria from western Europe do so by going through Turkey's porous border. Add to that the fact that we had Afghan visas in our passports, and that I don't exactly look like a Norwegian, and they were eyeing us very suspiciously. We were, after all, travelling in an old Defender, with the back windows hidden.

We drove approximately 10 meters forward, before a line of half a dozen armed guards stopped us again, motioning us to exit the vehicle. This was to be the start of a 3-hour long search of the entire vehicle. Emptying everything, letting them explore every nook and cranny of the Defender, and slowly packing everything back in, trying to make it fit again. But finally, after they were satisfied, we were finally waved through into Turkey.

We sped towards Istanbul, we could already taste the beer...

Istanbul

Anyone who has driven in Istanbul's rush hour traffic will know there are few other cities on the planet that make you hate the world as much. Snail paced anarchy, loud mayhem, zig-zagging idiots and people with wheelbarrows on the highway trying to sell water and food to irritated commuters are only a fraction of what you find there. The traffic is unreal.

Finally, after 3 hours of driving around Istanbul, we manage to find an underground parking near our youth hostel. Impossible to camp in Istanbul, so we decided to splurge on a bunkbed room that locked. Immediately, we shower, and take a quick 30mn nap before our last companion lands and joins us. We meet over beers, talking about our travels with our hitchiker friend. We will take him a bit further, where he will go East towards Georgia while we continue south towards Ankara. We end late, walking over Taksim square in the middle of the night.

The next morning, our first surprise: the car will not start. Mechanical problems already, when we barely left asphalt? Not a good sign... Stuck in the underground parking lot, we try to wave down people to give us a boost with our jumper cables. Istanbul residents being themselves, noone gives us the least bit of attention. After trying to push-start the old diesel engine, we decide to push the Defender in the middle of the narrow passage. If someone wants to get out, he will have to give us a boost. Mean? Perhaps. But we had no other solution, and we were on a countdown...

At this point there needs to be a bit of explaining. One of the countries we were planning on crossing was Turkmenistan. For those who do not know, it is an isolationist, closed, obscure dictatorship, that requires you to have a guide with you at all times in order to issue a visa. Not wanting a random Turkman with us on our trip, had we even been able to afford it (which we did not), we decided to get a transit visa instead. Turkmenistan issues transit visas for those passing by in vehicles, but they typically do not allow any kind of tourism. Point A for entry, point B for exit, and you must take the shortest route between the two. Should you be stopped at a checkpoint outside of your predetermined "route" (you must carry a roadpass with you at all times with your route drawn on it), you will be fined a large amount, and potentially deported. The major problem here is that transit visas are issued for a maximum of 5 days, and at exact dates only. This meant that before leaving France, we had to guess our exact date of passage through Turkmenistan, months in advance, and do everything to stick to it. This is why we were on a schedule until then. More on this later.

Finally someone wanting to leave the parking lot accepts to give us a boost, and after 15mn of juicing up, the car finally starts. Finally smiling, happy to get on the road, we start driving... 10 meters further, we hear a loud squeal: the Defender is too tall to exist the underground parking lot. We squeezed in on the way down, not realizing how close we were in the dark, but going up is impossible.

Having waster enough time, we start to deflate the tires, taking things off the roof, but still, there are a few centimeters off... People are starting to line up behind us, honking, the parking guards are getting annoyed (by now we've been stuck in this parking lot for quite a while). We jump on the roof with hammers, and hammer down the platform supports that bolt into the ladders, to gain a few precious centimeters. (More on this system later). Finally we get out, swearing to never use underground lots again - little did we know we wouldn't even see another one until we were back in Europe.

We drive on a bit, stopping at the first mechanic we can find, to try and find the electrical problem that caused us to not start. It turns out our primary battery is dead already... We buy a new truck-grade indian battery, on the cheap, and some teenager brings it on a scooter 40mn later. We take advantage of the time to clean out filters and hoses. We're starting to realize that the Defender is definitely going to need careful attention during this trip...

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Off we go, in midday Istanbul traffic, after getting up early to try and avoid it. Joy. Finally we exit the city, and drive on, dropping off our hitchhiker buddy and continuing on towards Ankara, and Cappadocia.

Cappadocia

Finally, after driving through Ankara, and leaving it behind, do we truly start to get the feeling that we are leaving Europe behind. The scenery changes drastically, we no longer see major cities, and we decide to make up for lost time by driving through the night. In the early morning we arrive in Cappadocia, through long, deserted asphalt 1x1 roads. In the early morning, we see three very serious accidents for overburdened trucks in a matter on 45 minutes. Trucks badly damaged and overturned, police all around, and obviously nothing good happening. We ignore it and heed the warning, swearing that we'll try to stop driving when tired - which will turn out to be impossible.

Finally we arrive in Cappadocia proper. The beautiful scenery unfolds before us as we decide to go offroading for the morning, before going into town for lunch.

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Afterwards we hike up into the troglodyte caves of Cappadocia, exploring all the tunnels we can.

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After spending the entire afternoon exploring, we go down further south, exploring some underground troglodyte tunnels that a local told us about. No lights, no guards, out of the way completely. Satisfied, we drive all night, stopping shortly after Gaziantep near the Syrian border to sleep off a couple hours while lying down on the platform, facing off Syria in the distance.

Syrian border

Now's a good time to explain a brief practicality. Given our budget, a rooftop tent was a no go. We did not have over a thousand euros to throw on comfort, all of our budget went to necessities, fuel, food, repairs and fees. However we knew that just carrying tents was not a viable option, as there would be several areas where flopping down a tent would simply not be possible for natural or safety reasons. Therefore we did the next best thing, and built a wooden platform on the roof. This platform would open sideways, unfolding over the driver's side, resting on two ladders that would act as supports and access. Once unfolded, the platform would be large enough to throw a couple of 2-person tents, and providing a nice spot of shade underneath to cook and rest.

For most of the travel, we didn't even bother pulling up the tent, as it was so hot and we were sleeping so little. We would just unfold the platform, and depending on our state of fatigue we might or might not put down the air mattress before crashing. More pics to follow.

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After waking up from a few short hours, we cooked some rice and coffee to be less cranky. Of course, at this point we realized we forgot the sugar, and our coffee was.. let's just say cheap and local. We had the brilliant idea to sweeten our coffee by using sweet soy sauce that we kept to perfume the rice. The resulting mixture was probably one of the nastiest things anyone of us had tasted. We gobbled it down, and went onwards.

For this part of the trip, we simply followed the road that is parralel to the Syrian border. Barbed wire, tanks, fortified outposts, patrols, the Turkish military was definitely securing the border.

Once we arrived in Mardin, we rested, physically unable to go forward. Stopping at an empty terrass cafe, we fell asleep after ordering a cold drink.

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To be continued...
 
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Diktat

New member
After sleeping a bit in our cafe, we woke up, freshened, and ready to go on. Lo and behold, our little Deffy would not start, once again. Pissed off, as we had just changed the battery, we starting exploring the possibilities... Eliminating potential culprit after potential culprit, there was only one possibility left - the alternator was shot. That day was a holiday in Turkey, end of Ramadan, and absolutely everything was closed. Some locals took pity on us, and invited us in for food. We gladly accepted, tired of the rice we had been eating for the past few days. After a little charade playing (attempting to communicate in pidgin Turkish), they called up a friend of theirs that knew how to fiddle around with cars. We pulled out our construction-grade floodlight, and shined into the engine while our new friend worked with a hammer and screwdriver, taking everything out so he could fit the alternator out. Opening it on the side of the dirty road, he cleaned off the brushes before mounting it up again, smiling. Giving us a jump from his truck, we were now back in business. After a last bit of tea with our friends, we set off again into the night.

Come morning we stopped on the outskirts of a small town a mere few meters away from the Syrian border. We found a truck stop that looked inviting. We were dead tired, and needed rest. Besides that, we were about to enter Iraq the next day, and we wanted up-to-date information on the movement of Islamic State and Peshmerga troops, to plan our route accordingly. Truckers heading for Iraq were sure to have all the necessary information, we thought.

We spent the entire day, evening and night at that little truck stop. The host was this amazing Kurdish Turk that knew ever so slightly English. Between his few words and our little Turk, we could hold short conversations. We took advantage of the day to give a complete checkup on the car, not wanting to have a mechanical failure in ISIS controlled territory.

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Our host played translator between us and some Kurdish truckers, and we got the information we needed. Apparently there was one rule:

Follow Turkmachine! Iraq machine bad! Turkmachine go!

From what we discerned, that meant we should follow Turkish licence plates once across the border, and most definitely not any Iraqi licence plates.. Seemed simple enough right? Of course not...

We fell asleep a mere few meters away from Syria, awaking to a beautiful morning the next day.

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To be continued...
 
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Diktat

New member
Approaching Iraq

We continue to follow the road right up against the Syrian border, until we arrive at the point where Turkey, Iraq and Syria join. Heavily militarized zone. The lack of civilians, and the smoke from burning things tell you right then and there that you entered a warzone. The air gets more and more tense as you approach the border town of Silopi...

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Finally, after crossing the very conservative and militarized town of Silopi, we approach the Iraqi border... This was two days before the devastating suicide bomber attach that happened here, and was the cause of hightening of tensions between the Turkish government and the PKK / YPG / Iraqi Kurdistan. We were literally two days away from this place going to hell.

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Finally, we were about to enter Iraq proper, and, in our minds, to really start our journey....


To be continued...
 

Diktat

New member
Turkey road overview

Here's an approximate map of our road in Turkey. It's rough, and doesn't count the several times we wandered off the main path for some exploring, but it has the general idea and direction.

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To be continued...
 
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Cummins_expo

Adventurer
Wow what a journey.. I look forward to your next installment/ This makes Mexico look tame :) Really enjoy your narration.
 

Diktat

New member
Third portion: the Middle East

Entering Iraq

A little nervous, we exited Turkey, driving over a short no-man's-land towards the Iraqi checkpoint. We were in the unknown here. We did not have an Iraqi visa, but we were crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan's autonomous region. From the information we had gathered, a French citizen could procure a temporary visa to the Kurdistan region on arrival. However that information was slightly dated, and the only ones to have reported on it had arrived by plane into Erbil. Could this be done over a land border? Was this still valid after the Islamic State's northern offensive in Iraq, and the relatively recent fall of the city of Mosul into their hands? The border crossing is about 100km from the city center, and driving to Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, would bring us under 30km from Mosul... and much less from the "front', that porous region where the kurdish Peshmerga forces have taken up the fight against Daesh in the wake of the Iraqi army's desertion. Questions that worried us as we approached the terminal.

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As we approached, we were waved down by an angry looking man, pointing us away from the line of vehicles.. Every single one of them was a cargo truck, there were no civilian passenger cars that we could see. We stopped next to the man, but staying near the line. Angrily, he shouted: "Police! Document!"

Anyone having traveled extensively knows that your most precious belonging is your passport. Under no circumstances should you hand out your passport to anyone, much less some random guy in civilian clothes. We had lots of photocopies of our documents, to hand out to police, or military personnel. Often, "control checks" are in effect bribe seekers that will hold on to your documents until you pay them a fictitious fine or fee. We started to question the man, asking him what he wanted, who he was.. Without good arabic language skills, the conversation was short lived, as the man kept repeating "Police! Document!", before becoming more and more angry. We handed out photocopies of our passports, but he demanded the originals. At this point, we were getting a bit angry ourselves, as we assumed he was just someone looking for a quick buck. I got out of the car, leaving my friends to guard it, and walked with our passports to the truckers standing by. Pointing at the angry man following me, I asked the truckers "Police?" They nodded, smiling and shrugging, pointing at the unmoving line of trucks.

It turned out that the man was indeed Kurdish police, but since today was a holiday (first day after Ramadan), he was stuck on duty and not wearing a uniform. After a cursory check, and a smile when he realized we were French, and we apologized, he waved us on to continue to the immigration area where we were supposed to receive our visas...

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Parking the car in front of the decrepit building, we went inside, unsure what to expect. A lonely man was sitting behind a desk, waiting patiently. We approached, handing in our passports, which he eyed surprisingly.. Flipping through them several times, perhaps looking for a visa, perhaps pretending to verify something, he got up and motioned for us to back up and wait in the room. Walking away with our passports, he entered an unmarked door in the back, dissapearing inside. We waited for a long time, until finally the policeman came back with another, older man, out of uniform. This second one spoke a little English, and was now carrying our passports. Eyeing us while the policeman went back to his deserted desk, he pointed at the passports. "No visa?"

Shaking our heads, we tried to explain in pidgin english that French citizens were supposed to be able to acquire a visa on arrival. We didn't question him, not wanting to show our hesitation, but presenting it as a fact. After asking us a few more times where our visa was, and us giving him the same answer, he silently went back to his office, leaving us alone once again.

After a long while, he came back out, and walked over to us. "Chief coming. Wait". And so we waited.. After another hour of this, another man came into the deserted building, immediately walking to the office. Several moments later, he peered out, calling the name of one of my friends, and motioning for him to come into the office. Over the next hour and a half, we were individually questionned in the office by the "chief', while the other man stood beside us, telling us repeatedly not to talk between ourselves. Fortunately we all had the same story, visiting Iraqi kurdistan on our way to Iran, showing him the Iranian visa in our passports. Officially we merely wanted to visit Erbil, before continuing on.

After the individual questionings, he came back out to us. "Cannot enter Kurdistan." was all he said. We started to question him, again stating that officially nothing prevented us from entering, that French citizens had a visa on arrival procedure, and pressuring him to give us a valid reason... We started spinning a story about how we could not backtrack into Turkey as our visas were not multiple entry, that we had to cross Iraq to get to Iran, and that we had no choice in the matter.. After a while, the man changed his story, telling us that the French embassy supposedly had contacted the Kurdish government, asking to refuse entry to French citizens. This of course worried us greatly, but seemed very strange... French diplomats are notorious fear-mongerers, very often building up the potential danger of travels to certain areas to avoid having citizens travel there, but had never, in our knowledge, actually asked a government to deny entry to their citizens. In France, liberty of movement and travel in a foundation of the diplomatic corps.

Thinking quickly, we pulled out our cellphones. Fortunately before departure we had jotted down the contact information for all embassies and consulates in the regions we would be crossing. This turned out to save the day, as of course, without internet we would have no way of finding it otherwise.

We called up the French consulate in Erbil, and the officer in charge of consulate security picked up the phone on the other side. We quickly explained the situation, asking if what the officer was saying was true. Reluctantly, the officer told us that there was no such rule, but that he very much advised us not to attempt to enter Iraq, and that we should turn back to Turkey without hesitation. We spun the same story to the officer, explaining that one of our members had already utilized all the visa-exempt days for Turkey, and that they would most definitely not accept our return... This wasn't an outright lie, even if Turkish officials would most certainly have accepted our temporary return.

After a while (and an ungodly amount in roaming fees), the officer accepted to talk to the Kurdish police for us. For the entire duration of the phone call, they repeatedly were asking us the name of our contact at the embassy, his rank, and what he was telling us. I passed the phone over to them, and the French officer spoke in broken English to a police chief who barely spoke it that he was from the consulate, and that they had no express rule against us entering the country...

As things got sorted out (the police chief went back to his office), we chatted with the remaining policeman, trying to figure out what was going on.. Apparently tensions were running very high in the area, both because of tensions between ethnic Kurds and Turkey, and because of an Islamic State offensive going on in the region.. Apparently they had reports from Syrian kurds of a massive influx of foreigners illegally crossing the border into Syria to join the ranks of ISIL. Then, with a serious look, he pointed at me, before motionning at his own clean shaven face... He waved his hand in front, signaling the absence of beard in contrast with my unshaven, unkept tatted mat of facial hair and told us "We don't know where you go after this..."

The boss came out, looking a bit mollified. Apparently he had come to the conclusion that had we been wannabe jihadists, we probably would not have called up the French military in charge of consulate security. He brought us back to the original desk, and got our passports stamped quickly, before waiving us off...

This was it, we thought, after several hours, we were finally in Iraq! But of course, nothing was so simple...

A hundred meters away, another checkpoint. We hadn't cleared customs yet... A taciturn customs agent came up to us, talking in arabic, before attempting Turkish. In front of our incomprehension, he motioned for us to park on the side, and follow him in the building, before pointing us to a desk. No indications, no informations, signs, or documents anywhere to be seen. Fortunately, on the other side of the desk was a short, jovial man who spoke almost flawless english, having studied in London for a number of years. We explained the situation, and he said "No problem, no problem!" while pulling out a series of documents. Of course, here, "no problem" means that there are problems...

It turns out that one can only drive a car in Iraqi Kurdistan if they exit by the same border crossing they enter. To ensure this (ridiculous?) rule, the customs officers take, and keep, the official car documents at the border until you return to claim them. Needless to say, you cannot cross another border if you are not in possession of the vehicle documents.

After arguing some more, (arguing is not the proper term here, as the man was actually incredibly nice. More like presenting the situation), he frowned, trying to think of a solution. Apparently we were the first people they had ever seen that were going to drive across their country to go to another one...

Remember how I told you this was a national holiday? Yeah... Nobody of any significance was at the border crossing that day. And noone would risk their *** and career by waving through an old Defender with three young men, should we end up in the hands of ISIL, or worse, joining their ranks. We continued the debate, "surely there must be a provision, a rule, an exemption, surely a great country like Iraqi Kurdistan must have a way to let us cross through, bla bla bla" (A little *** licking never hurts in this situation, especially since Kurds are very, very touchy about being recognized as different from the rest of Iraq).

After a while and a few phone calls, and running around from office to office asking absolutely everyone what to do, (I was following our new friend around), it turned out a fairly important man from the Ministry of Finance and Economy would be nearby in a while, he was finishing a "meeting". (Turned out to be a lunch).

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Waiting for what seemed like hours in the sweltering Iraqi heat, by the car, we were the curiosity of the year. People would randomly walk up to us, inspecting the car, looking around (and in, wanting to take pictures of themselves behind the wheel - see below -), and peering at us. A kurdish man who spoke English came up to us, asking us to jumpstart his old beat up car. While we did so, we talked a bit and laughed around with him, explaining the absurdity of the situation. It turned out he was from Kirkurk in the south of Kurdistan, and was driving home after a bit of business in Turkey. We inquired about the situation in Kurdistan, where the frontline currently was, and so on. Laughing, he just shrugged, telling us "it changes, but Kirkurk safe!', and inviting us over to his place should we decide to go to the city. We exchanged information before he drove off, and we kept waiting...


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Hours later, our friend finally came back looking for me, smiling, telling us that the "important man" was now ready to receive us. I followed him through a meandering labyrinth of offices and desks, before getting into a waiting room, where a bunch of officials in suits were laughing and talking to each other. I waiting, unable to understand anything. After another while, we were finally waved into the office.

I stood there, in my dirty clothes and flip flops, stained with oil, mud and dust, an unkept and tatted beard, in a luxurious meeting room where a bunch of Ministry officials sat around a desk, suited up, and stared at me... Feeling a little uncomfortable to say the least, I waited while our friend explained the situation. After a brief exchange, my friend waved for me to exit. We were done. And like that, we had permission.

We walked back to the other end of the vast compoud, to one of the offices we had gone to previously to see if there was any way to let us in... Our friend explained that the "Boss man" (To this day I have no idea who he is) had given permission, and all was fixed. The men all stared at me suspiciously, before barking something at our friend. Turns out they wanted a written guarantee from the Boss man, so they could put it in their folder. (I have a suspicion we were in some kind of intelligence service branch, as while I waited for my friend to go back to get the written permission, they photocopied every single document I could give them, as well as took pictures of me). Once back, they started to redact the document that would allow us to drive freely in Iraq. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but motioned a few times around their faces (everyone was clean shaven, and they were obviously talking about my beard)... It was time for me to shave, most definitely.

After a while, I was handed the precious document, as well as all my papers... After spending around 8 hours at the border crossing, we were finally let into Iraq proper... After profusely thanking our english-speaking friend, shaking his hand many times, and sharing our cigarettes, we parted ways. I'm absolutely convinced we would have been stuck for the night at the border crossing without him, having to wait for the next working day. He saved our ***.

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Finally breathing easier, we got all our stuff together, and climbed back aboard old Deffy, ready to go on. We handed our manuscript authorization to the guard on post, which he examined carefully, before waiving us on through..

So now, all we had to do, was find a safe road to Erbil, that did not go to Mosul... But all was good, we had the sage advice from our Kurdish trucker friend! Just follow the Kurdish trucks, right?

Remember how I said that day was a national holiday? Yeah.. They were not letting any trucks through until the next day, hence the enormous line of trucks we had seen on the Turkish side of the border...

We peered ahead.. An empty sand-covered road into Iraq laid in front of us, with only a few Iraqi cars, and absolutely no trucks or Turkish licence plates to be seen... And our map showed the only existing road to Erbil passing through Mosul...

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To be continued...
 
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