GREECE, TURKEY and onto IRAN!

Location: Eastern Turkey, not really sure!
Speed: Averaging 30MPH
Status: Driving down some really poor roads in East Turkey.

We stayed in Kavala last night which is a lovely little Greek town. We arrived at a campsite right on the Aegean sea, we pitched our tents at around 22:30 with another rally team. Deciding to wash in the sea we got into our swimming gear and ran into the water, it was lovely and warm and refreshing after a hectic weeks driving. We washed, got changed and headed into Kavala for a few drinks. The night was fairly late, we saw the sun rise, it was nice to get out of the ambulance for a while!

The next day we left around 15:00 somewhat later than we planned due to our rather late night. We drove East towards the Greek border, the temperature has hit around 32 degrees, shorts weather!!

Five hours later we arrived at the Greek/Turkey border where we went though the usual procedure of walking from cabin to cabin with all our paperwork, and forking out for insurance etc.

The border guards were fairly impressed with the Gobi Bar in the ambulance but for a moment they wanted us just to go through in case there was an emergency!! That would have been great, but we wouldn’t have had the paperwork we need at the Iranian side of Turkey!

We arrived into Istanbul around 22:00 and checked into a Hotel Ibis just outside the main town.

We had a great time in Istanbul, we had a Turkish bath which involved getting totally naked, wrapping yourself into a towl. We were then ushered into a Sauna where some rather fat Turkish chaps washed us with some exfoliating pads then massaged us, pouring hot and cold water all over us. It was great, very relaxing all be it painful in places!

After the Turkish bath we did some tourist bits, looking around Mosques and shopping. Finally we all had a Turkish shaves with a cut throat razors, so we all look and smell very clean for the journey ahead.

We left to at 05:30 to get as much day light driving in as possible. The plan is to hit the Southern Iranian border tomorrow (Sunday 27th) which is only 20 miles for Iraq so we really are in unfamiliar territory.

As I type we’re driving down a road called the D100 which should take us as far east as we need to be. We’re driving until around 19:00 today when we’ll find somewhere to camp, the convoy has increased in size. We not have four Mongol Rally vehicles with us – a Sumo, SJ410, 2CV and an Allegro. We’re all going to camp together tonight, safety in numbers and all that!

We’re all still in high spirits, getting along well and tackling any problems that come our way with ease (so far!). The Gobi Ambulance (aka Blossom) has served us well so far, fingers crossed she’ll keep doing so for the remainder of the trip.
We are attracting lots of attention. Driving down the road everyone waves at us, beeps at us and smiles – people even take photos, we feel famous!

Some stats for you - we’ve travelled around 2500 miles, 12 countries and used around 450 litres of diesel with average sleep running at four hours a night; this is tough!

Blogs might come few and far when we enter Iran and the other Central Asian states, we’re not sure on Internet access but we will write daily and post when we can.