My travel mate assured me we will be in Kish latest nine pm. I was a bit sceptic given that it was getting dark and hitch hiking at night didn’t seem like a good idea, but at the end I let him do it his way.
We arrived in Kish and 2:30am in the morning.
In between, we arrived at the harbour at 9:30pm where he confessed we would actually need to sneak on the ship because foreigners are not allowed on it. So he asked me to close my manteau better and hide my hair with the headscarf before trying to find a way to the ferries. I didn’t think hiding my hair would make me look any less foreign, but I know that when dealing with officials, you better have your hejab straight.
We didn’t find a way to get to the ships though without passing by the security, so after a bit of searching he went in and started discussing with one of the guards. It turned out that I would have been allowed in, even as a foreigner, but the police office in Kish where I would need to register was already closed. They told us to come back tomorrow. When he got back and explained our situation, saying that we would need to find a place to stay for the night (at 10pm, at a harbour), I thought he was crazy. I wasn’t ready to give up. There was a safe bed waiting for us waiting in Kish and I had no intention of spending the night at a wharf. I know Iranians love to talk and if you let them talk long enough usually they talk your way in. It also helps to be a helpless foreign woman with a well done hejab, so I put some tears in my eyes and went back to the security with my best desperate look on the face. I have no idea if it actually helped, but my travel mate was let in again and started talking again, and after 15 minutes he went back and I was allowed to get to Kish that night.
We went to the car ferry where we were stopped by a friendly looking guy in a white overall who guided the cars to their parking slot with his torch. I was not sure if we were allowed on the ferry without having a car and I didn’t understand what they were talking, but at the end he pointed us with his torch to the corner on the right until he figured out what to do with us. It turned out that he was the captain of the ferry and he also spoke English very well; and after a while he decided we were suitable guests and asked his staff to show us the bridge where we could stay for the ride. The crossing took 3 hours and not 30 minutes, but our new friend was super nice and had some very interesting stories to tell; so I was more than happy to pass my time there rather than somewhere outside.
At 3am we got off the ferry and were picked up by his friends. I still needed to show up at the police station, so they drove us to the one end where a police officer was sitting in front of an x-ray but let us pass with no inspection, we went through the building, got out on the other side, and after a few seconds his friends arrived and we hopped in the car and drove to their place. It is close to the most useless thing I’ve done for bureaucracy, but it got me to a place to stay the night so I had no complaints to make.
I was about to go to bed, but our hosts prepared dinner for us so we ate at 3:30 and slept until noon the next day.
Kish itself is a different experience to all of Iran. It’s full of luxury hotels and malls and people say they it reminds them of Dubai more than of Iran when they are there. My travel mate mentioned Kish has more of a European lifestyle and I wondered what Iranians think of Europe. The only place I could imagine people showing off like this and with a similar amount of luxury and malls would be Monaco.
Our hosts were super kind and showed us around the Island. Scuba Diving turned out to be too difficult to organise, but I still had lots of fun and interesting discussions with them so I was happy to be there. After two nights, it was time to carry on.
I noticed more and more that it was also time to leave my travel mate, as the constant moving was exhausting and we had some different ideas of how to travel and where. After Kish, we rushed to Bandar Bushehr, but from there, he followed his road, and I went first to Behbahan and from there to Yazd. In Behbahan, I could stay with a loving family and the next day I went with their son to Yazd.
After around 2500 km in about two weeks, I was done with travelling for a while. I got a nice room in a beautiful historical building and decided it was the right spot to stay for a while.
