The problem I find when arriving is that the very fact that it is 24 hours, is that there is a massive queue. Along the right of the road is a very long line of trucks, bumper to bumper. It takes a couple of minutes to pass them all, but I am waved into a much smaller line of only cars and small vans. More than 400 vehicles and 3000 people pass this border each day.

I am asked for my papers by a soldier with a big gun, who waves me on to the Customs station. Each vehicle is looked over but not many actually searched, and the passengers have to get out while they do it. Not the warmest day, so I wear my coat, which isn’t searched. We have to drive through a big scanner arch, but they obviously don’t find my left over kebab, so I am free to go.

This is slow, but I am through in less than two hours, which I thought was pretty good.

Heading off on the Iran side, I now have time to look about me. The road is very good quality, but it might not always be so. [Oddly, Google Maps refused to plot a route through the border and instead wanted to take me on a far more complicated route north. I therefore plotted to the border, and then from the border into Iran.]

Open stretch of road.

Amazing views left and right.