Dust on My Feet: Tales from the Road: Reminiscences of a Tour Leader

Overland coach crossing the Chambal River near Agra, India 1980

As the current covid-19 virus pandemic has now put an end to most recreational travel for the foreseeable future, perhaps it is now timely to reflect on the forty years I have spent as a tour leader. It is a world that changed dramatically over that time. 40 years ago there was no social media, no cellphones, no emails, no texting. If something went wrong we were on our own. If it was serious, and we were lucky, we might be able to find a telex machine and, maybe, have to book a time. Despite a tape being made, more often than not, the message would come out scrambled at the other end and would have to be repeated. Telexes, charged on a per minute basis, were costly, especially when you were trying to one-finger type a reply - not many of us had had typing experience in those days! An International phone call, also expensive, would have to be booked - in India sometimes two or three days ahead, and then you could not guarantee that your space would still be available, or if the call would actually get through. On Overland tours, we would have to book hotel rooms in advance by telegram, and there was no way of knowing if the booking had been received - often it hadn't. But we managed, it was all taken for granted, and despite many frustrations, we coped with all types of issues. I will start this series of reminiscences with border crossings, one of our most important tasks and a source of endless frustrations and delays, but it did all depend on how you initially handled officious, self-important officials.
To say I was tossed in at the deep end on my first tour was certainly not an understatement. I had completed a Sundowners European training trip a few weeks earlier and it was in early June 1979 when I was sent down, from London to Istanbul, with Merv, a Kiwi driver with an empty coach. We had to pick up the second half of a Kathmandu - London Overland group of maninly Australians and New Zealanders, who were flying in to Istanbul from Kabul, Afghanistan. Merv and I were to take them through Turkey into Syria, Jordan, to Jerusalem, then across the Syrian Desert to Baghdad and through Iraq to the northern border with Turkey. Istanbul and Cappadocia, the first two stops on the tour were the only places I had been to - Istanbul just a couple of months earlier on the training trip, and Cappadocia, I had visited 9 years earlier! At the time there had been serious unrest in Afghanistan, and Iran was in the throes of the Islamic Revolution. Client safety could not be guaranteed, so Sundowners had made the decision to fly the group from Kabul to Istanbul. Turkey was also having its problems at this time, and as it was difficult to purchase diesel in the country we had purchased two 44-gallon drums of diesel at Alexandroupolis. But at the border, the Greek customs, no matter how much we argued, would not let us take the diesel out of Greece.

Galata area of Istanbul in 1979

On the the appointed arrival day we went to Istanbul Airport and I headed in to check the flight arrival information, and the scenario went something like this:

'Where is the information lady?'
'Taking chai' - I could see her with an officious bespectacled gentleman in the next office.
'Does she speak English?'
'Yes' – sigh of relief. She saw me and returned.
'At what time does Ariana flight F6711 arrive from Kabul?'
She consults her list, which I can see says arrival time is 1500 hours – not so late after all.
'It has already landed.'
'Whaaat?'
'Landed 1230 – new time.'
'Where are passengers?' Shrug!
'You are sure flight has arrived?'
'Sure – passengers gone.'
Now what to do! 'Where have the passengers gone?'
Another lady enters the office. The is a conversation in Turkish, which I had been told was somehow related to Finnish, not that this was any help to me! There are glances in my direction.
Then – 'Sir, sorry, flight now arrive in one hour.'  Which was more or less the time I had been told by London that it would arrive.
At 1415 Afghan Ariana flight F6711 touches down in Istanbul.

Varanasi, on the Ganges, was the first stop after crossing the Nepalese/Indian border

Border crossings, in the pre-terrorist era, could also be trying and frustrating. As long as you humored the border officials, you could get through relatively quickly. But you you tried to hurry them along, became arrogant or argued, the process could be lengthy. There were, of course, some border crossing that you knew would be slow, no matter what. The Nepalese-Indian border was a case in point.
The Nepalese were never a problem but with the Indians there was a definite procedure. We would arrive at the Indian side of the border at about 10.30 and having collected all the passports would take them into immigration. The head immigration officer, with appropriate head movements, would look at all the passports then say: “Border is closed.” To which I would reply: “No, no, it is only 10.30. Border open.” There would be a slight pause, he would look at the stack of passports again, sigh, then say: “I not be having pen. Nothing to write with. Cannot do passports!” I would be prepared for this. “Ah, I have pen here for you.” With a shrug of the shoulders, he would process two or three passports, look up at me, then at his colleague who was sitting alongside doing nothing, and say: “My friend, he not be having pen. Two can work faster than one” With a sigh I would say: “I have another spare pen here.” With head movements that only Indian officials can emulate, they would process a few more passports, then: “Chai? You have chai.” “OK” and after a few minutes, cups of ‘chai’ would appear and there would be a break, with appropriate small talk, before the passport process continued, now a quicker pace. I could see members of the group pacing up and down the muddy street outside, looking impatiently into the office. Eventually all formalities were complete, usually after about two hours or so, and we would be on our way. If one was arrogant or demanding, as some new tour leaders could be, it could take twice as long. Patience and pleasantness always got things done quickly - at least by the standards of India.

The Zamzama, or Kim's Gun, outside the Lahore Museum, Pakistan

Crossing into Pakistan was quite different. Since 1977 Pakistan had been under the rule of General Zia ul-Haq, who had introduced stricter Islamic law than had previously been in force, especially as it applied to alcohol. There was still a big illicit demand for alcohol, and we were always expected to bring in anything alcoholic, particularly whisky, usually cheap Indian whisky which was, of course, much safer than the methyl alcohol which every so often would claim Pakistani lives. We would always load up two or three cases of Indian whisky in the luggage lockers, concealing them appropriately among the suitcases. When we arrived at the border, the Pakistani Customs and Immigration officials knew the routine. I would take the passports into the immigration office and a couple of bored officials would start processing. After about 10 minutes one would say: “You have present for us?” I would hesitate, feigning deep contemplation, before saying: “Maybe I have bottle of beer.” Their eyes would immediately light up. “Yes, good!” So I would disappear to the coach and come back with a couple of bottles of Indian Golden Eagle or Rosy Pelican beer, which I would surreptitiously sneak into the immigration office. In a relatively short time all the passports would be stamped. Meanwhile on the coach, a couple of Customs officials would undergo a search, accompanied by the driver. This always began with the overhead luggage racks. We would always make sure there was an almost full bottle of Indian rum in the rack, partially concealed by a coat or bag. The rummaging officer would uncover the bottle: “Ah, what is this?” To which the answer would be “Oh dear, one of our passengers must have forgotten it was there.” The Customs officer would give a knowing grin and say: “Alcohol forbidden in Pakistan. We must be taking.” “OK, fair enough. We understand.” And that was usually the end of the Customs search, or if they did go on it was only in a half-hearted way for another few minutes and then we were free to go, the head official saying he would see us at the Hotel International in Lahore. Later in the evening he would turn up at our hotel and we would give him a bottle of whisky.

Overland coach in the Dasht-i Lut Desert on the road to Mirjaveh, Iran

On one tour in November 1979, we had driven, rather quickly, across Iran to the eastern border post of Mirjaveh. Iran was in a state of flux under the new Islamic rule of Ayatollah Khomeini. A couple of days before we left London, the Revolutionary Guard had just seized the American Embassy in Tehran and were holding American diplomats hostage. We had expected this all to be resoled by the time we crossed from Turkey. It hadn’t, but we encountered surprisingly few hassles when we had entered Iran. We kept well away from the hotspot of Tehran, and headed south to Isfahan. Everything went relatively smoothly and we reached the border at Mirjaveh one afternoon around 2pm. We had hoped to complete exit formalities and enter Pakistan that evening, but the Iranians had decided to close their side of the border for no apparent reason, it would reopen at 4pm we were initially told. There was no one else waiting at the border post and, as 4pm approached, we were now told that the border would not now open until the next morning, again no reason being given. A lone Iranian customs official was on site and after Colin, the driver, and I had tea with him, he said he would make sure we went through first thing in the morning. There were no eating establishments in Mirjaveh, so 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. We should keep in mind that the time in Pakistan was one and half hours ahead of Iranian time, and the restaurant would also accept Iranian currency. As dusk fell, we made our way along the railway line to the fence-gate and, sure enough, there was a hole in the fence. We could see the few buildings that was Taftan up ahead. As we strolled along in the half-light, we could see, in the distance, the snows of the 4000 metre high volcano Kuh-i Taftan reddening in the setting sun.

An encounter on the Quetta - Mirjaveh road, Baluchistan, 1980

The little restaurant in Taftan had goats running around the tables and the food was Baluchi cuisine, more akin to spicier Indian and Pakistani food than the blander chelo kebab and rice we had been eating since entering in Iran. The restaurant owner greeted us with a "Welcome, welcome. No gentlemen here, only Baluchis!" After a satisfying meal of curried vegetables and rice, we crept back along the railway to Mirjaveh, losing the hour and a half we had gained, to spend the night, as best we could, in the Iranian Quarantine Centre. Next morning, true to his word, our Iranian customs friend made sure that we were first through the border, and after clearing Pakistani formalities and changing money in Taftan, we bouncing our way over atrocious roads towards Quetta, still another 20 hours away.

On the return journey about three months later, we had managed to time our arrival to be at the Iranian border when the officials arrived in the morning. Besides passports, they would want to see vaccination certificates for cholera, typhoid and para-typhoid. On checking the vaccination certificates, I realised we had a problem. The vaccination certificate of one of our ladies had not been signed and stamped by her doctor in Australia and that meant she would probably have to be re-inoculated by a local Iranian unless we could find some way around it. When the officials did arrive and began checking the documents I began to shuffle around the passengers, moving them from one queue to another. The passports were all checked successfully, and we had managed to confuse the medical officer enough to enable all the vaccination certificates to get through, with the rogue one going unnoticed and, thankfully, we were soon on the road to Zahedan.

The rocky Syrian Desert on the road to Baghdad

The Iraqi border with Jordan was in the middle of the rocky Syrian Desert. We cleared Jordanian immigration at the unimaginatively named H4, formerly a pumping station on an old oil pipeline between the Iraqi oilfields and the port of Haifa. It was around a 3 hour drive to reach Iraqi immigration. It was close to midnight when we arrived at Rutbah Wells and entered the immigration compound. The few bored, uniformed officials immediately brightened up when we arrived. After all, the night so far had been spent processing a few long-distant lorry drivers carting goods through to Baghdad from either Amman or Damascus. A coach load of Western travellers, including a large number of young females was a different matter and perhaps the night wouldn’t be so boring after all! Feigned horror at the number of passports but first forms had to be filled out, then the usual delaying tactics – small talk in pidgin English and French, cigarettes offered –‘No thanks, sorry I don’t smoke’ – ‘you smoke!’ ‘Take it', Merv, the driver, hissed 'It might get things moving’ – a hesitation, then a reluctant ‘OK’. Spluttering and coughing, trying not to inhale too much of the, at least to me, rather strong acrid smoke we managed to get some of the male passports processed. Then ‘we need to see all the ladies’, ‘Why?’ A sly grin: ‘To make sure they are the same as their photos.’ A rather dubious excuse as they hadn’t wanted to see the men, but we had no option but to comply. One by one the girls filed through to the slow, leering scrutiny of these officials. I noticed one passport had been put aside. When all passengers were back on the coach I asked for the passports and all were given to me except the one put aside. ‘Why not that one?’ ‘We need to see her again’. It was the passport of Sylvia, a blonde Swiss girl. ‘Why?’ ‘We need to see.’ So I had no choice but to get Sylvia back again before these leering officials. They asked a few inane questions, obviously mentally undressing her, but finally – ‘OK you go.’ The passport was handed back and we were finally on our way through what was left of the night to Baghdad.

Our journey around Iraq went smoothly and after a night in Mosul, and a short stop at the ruins of Biblical Nineveh we headed to the Turkish border at Zarkho. Merv and I spent about 2½ hours on the Iraqi side of the border hassling with the officials. About halfway through the passport process, a group of Iraqi officials entered with a young black man and after a conversation in Arabic, pushed his passport in front of the officials. I noticed that it was a Ugandan passport and the surname name was Amin. The young man said nothing but looked at me and gave a rather weak apologetic smile. His passport was processed in just a few minutes and he was ushered on his way. When I thought about it afterwards, I realised that this was probably Jaffar Amin, a son of Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda who had been deposed just a few months earlier. Amin and his family had fled into exile in Libya, but had been asked to leave and moved on to Iraq before finally being granted asylum in Saudi Arabia. Once young Amin had gone, things seemed to speed up and we finally crossed to the Turkish side where all passport formalities took about half an hour and we were on our way to Mardin.