The Hole in the Fence - a Note from Mirjaveh, Iran 1979

I was recently sorting through some old papers when I came across a Christmas card I had sent to my parents in New Zealand. It was dated 26 November 1979 and written in Mirjaveh, Iran. I had added a short note saying that: “I’m writing this at a desert border post between Iran and Pakistan. It’s 7.45pm here but 200 yards down the road, when we cross the railway line and go through the hole in the fence it’s 9.15pm in Pakistan. The Iranians won’t let us out until tomorrow morning!” I also went on to mention that: “I’ll be well away from here when I post this, probably in Delhi.” The envelope hasn’t survived, but as I had to visit the GPO in Quetta a couple of days later to send telegrams to book the group’s onward accommodation in India, I would have posted the card there. We had left the city of Kerman early the previous day, driving into the Dasht-e Lut Desert towards Zahedan. About 90 minutes later the silhouette of the Arg-e Bam appeared out of the desert. This was the ancient citadel of the interesting desert city of Bam, described in Fodor’s Guide to Iran as the ‘loveliest oasis in Iran.’ The modern town was dominated by the mud-brick ‘Arg-e Bam’, a massive citadel which Fodors described as the largest adobe structure in the world, with sections dating back to around 500BC. The entire old city, mainly in ruins, was completely surrounded by massive mud walls which were then still largely intact. We paid the entry fee and spent an hour scrambling through the deserted ruins and up to the highest point of the citadel with sweeping views over the crenelated ramparts and the abandoned crumbling mudbrick dwellings. Bam, once famous for its textiles and clothes, had also been an important stop on one of the Silk Roads linking China and Central Asia to the Iranian cities of Isfahan and Shiraz and, ultimately, the ports of the Persian Gulf. The city and its caravanserai would be a welcome break on the journey towards the coast.

The mudbrick wall of the great fortress at Bam

I have used the past tense in my description of Bam as at 5.26am on the 26 December 2003 a massive earthquake of a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale reduced this amazing centuries-old city to rubble. Over 26,000 people perished and more than 30,000 were injured. With assistance from UNESCO, Bam was on the World Heritage List, and the World Bank, certain features of the Arg-e Bam are to be restored. From Bam we continued across the Dasht-e Lut Desert towards Zahedan, stopping at about the halfway mark at what was known as the Mil-e Naderi. This mud-brick tower was a desert marker dating from the 12th century and was an effective guide to the caravans that made their way across these featureless wastes. At night a beacon was lit at the top turning the tower into a sort of land lighthouse. The condition of the road to Bam had been reasonably good but as we approached the desert marker it began to deteriorate badly. A British firm, Marples-Ridgway, was reconstructing the road and our coach was intercepted by one of the Company’s Landrovers. The English driver insisted we follow him back to their rather lonely road camp as he had noted we had a number of young English and Australian ladies on the coach. These isolated English roadworkers felt the need for a party, so they offered to put us up for the night, an offer we readily accepted. A good English feed was followed by a riotous session on their homebrew, an illicit enhancement of the local malt beverage. Since Iran was now an Islamic State under the tutelage of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, alcohol was forbidden, but Camp C, as this isolated ex-pat camp was known, was far enough away from civilisation to be able to flout these laws. Three weeks before, just a few days before we left London, Iranian students and Revolutionary Guards had stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and taken 52 diplomats and other US citizens hostage. The hostage crisis was ongoing, in fact it lasted for 444 days, and the future of the Marples-Ridgway contract was up in the air. As it turned out, on my return journey a few months later I heard that the camp had closed and the British workers had returned home.

The Mil-e Naderi, the 11th century marker in the Dasht-e Lut Desert

Next morning, still feeling the effects of the ‘home brew’, we set off for Zahedan, a largely Baluchi town and I noted in my diary that the people did seem to be different from the other cities we had visited in Iran. We had been advised to stock up with food in Zahedan for a few days as the roads to the border and onwards into Pakistan were bad and the next large town was Quetta, some distance away. It was slow going to the border post of Mirjaveh which we reached around 2pm. In 1979 Mirjaveh was still a secondary border town. We had hoped to complete formalities and enter Pakistan that evening, but we found than the Iranians had closed their side of the border; it would open at 4pm we were initially told. There was no one else waiting at the border post and as 4pm approached we were told that the border would not now open until the next morning. A lone customs official was on site and after Colin, our driver, and I had tea with him he said they would put us through first thing in the morning. As there were no eating establishments in Mirjaveh, our Customs friend told us that if we followed the railway line there was a fence-gate on the border with a hole in it and a hundred yards or so further on was the small Pakistani village of Taftan where there was a basic restaurant, but we should keep in mind that the time in Pakistan was one and half hours ahead of Iran. The restaurant would also accept Iranian currency. As dusk fell we made our way along the railway line and through the hole in the fence. In the distance we could see the snows of the 4000 metre high volcano Kuh-i Taftan reddening in the setting sun.

The 4000 metre high Kuh-i Taftan volcano at sunset

The little restaurant had goats running around the tables and the food was Baluchi cuisine, more akin to spicier Indian and Pakistani foods than the blander chelo kebab we had been eating since we had been in Iran. After a satisfying meal we crept back along the railway, losing the hour and a half we had gained, to sleep on our air-mattresses in the Iranian Quarantine Centre. Next morning, true to his word, our Iranian customs friend made sure our group was first through the border and after clearing Pakistani formalities and changing money in Taftan we were on our way over equally atrocious roads towards Quetta, still another 20 hours away. We bumped and lurched through potholes and over deep corrugations until just after dark we stopped for a meal in the small town of Nokkundi, a ‘grubby little town’, as I noted in my diary. On entering a restaurant we were greeted in a loud voice, much to our amusement, by the maître d’ with a “No gentlemen here – only Baluchi”. I noted that the meal of vegetables, rice and naan bread was ‘quite good’. We then we set off to drive through the night to reach Quetta, largest city in the Pakistan state of Baluchistan, just after daybreak.

A street in the Pakistani town of Quetta

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

For the full Overland story see my book: One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride