Border crossing

JILL WORRALL

There nothing like a border crossing to get a travel geek's heart racing.

Is it perhaps being born and raised on an island, where oceans define our country, that makes land borders such fascinating places to many Kiwis. Well, maybe the word "many" might be an exaggeration but certainly they elevate the pulse in geography geeks like me.

It's not so much the boundaries created by rivers, lakes or mountains that are so intriguing but those imposed upon the landscape by man, often with little consideration for the lives of individuals and communities who live on either side.

Throughout most of Europe these days the romance, even the slight frisson of excitement, of a border crossing has gone as the European Union expands and passport checks for low-risk visitors like Kiwis are perfunctory.

However, I suspect many a border guard's heart sinks nonetheless when he sees a New Zealand passport as he or she braces for the usually polite request of "Please can I have a stamp?"

We Kiwis like to have proof of where we are and something to show others where we've been.

There are still some borders, however, where the meeting point of different cultures, languages and even religions retain the romance of travel, often combined with astounding amounts of red tape.

It pays to have a robust sense of humour, an even more prodigious quantity of patience with you, along with all the necessary documentation.

Recently I took a group of 25 New Zealanders across the border between Syria and Jordan.

Despite its Middle East location this is usually a low-key event, albeit sometimes a lengthy one.

This is partly because like most land crossings you actually have to be allowed to leave one country before you enter the next.

We were still in Syria when my local guide emerged from the immigration office to say there was a problem with one of the 26 passports.

An official on arrival had forgotten some vital step in documentation and as a result the senior border man was insisting that as one of our group had not officially arrived in Syria they couldn't leave it either.

So we waited for faxes to be dispatched and received.

"Just 15 minutes more," said the guide, emerging from the office like Chamberlain after Munich and as it turned out, just as successfully.

An hour later we were still there.

People slumbered on the bus, while the smokers got restive and begged to be released, only to be sent back again, smilingly but firmly by a guard with a gun – thankfully not before they'd had a couple of puffs. Meanwhile my cellphone kept ringing as the guide on the Jordan side of the border asked where we were.

"We'll be 20 minutes," I said confidently.

On the 20-minute mark the phone chirped again. "Where are you?"

Through gritted teeth I told him we were still exactly where we had been 20 minutes earlier.

"We have to get to the Sea of Galilee before sunset," he reminded me, unnecessarily. Most of the time I relish the fact that my job involves logistical problems like getting to lookouts near the Golan Heights before nightfall or calculating how much tip money I need for 12 elephant mahouts, but at this moment I longed for the simple angst of being boxed in at the post office carpark.

Two hours later the Syrians declared that my tour member did exist and now that she did, she could leave.

As the bus pulled away the phone rang again. "I have bought bananas to help cheer everybody up. Are you nearly here yet?"

Officialdom, no matter what style of cap or colour of uniform, love to make things complicated.

It was a sizzling hot day when, with another group, we went to cross the border between Azerbaijan and Georgia in the Caucasus. Here there is a relatively short stretch of no-man's land between the borders. But with the temperature over 30 degrees Celsius and the road slightly uphill the local guide and I decided we'd ask the border officials if we could drive the bus to the other border to save everyone having to drag their cases and bags along the sticky tarmac road. We were told we could.

The barriers were rolled back and everything went fine until we got to within just a few metres of the Georgian border.

A man with a bigger hat and whiter puttees than the guard who'd granted us permission, stepped into our path and demanded we stop.

He'd not been informed we'd be coming and no, we couldn't go any further and nor we could we stop where we were. He then insisted the bus driver turn the bus around – apparently reversing what was a non-permitted activity in no-man's land.

So after performing a 93-point turn, most of which took place beside a sheer drop into a wooded valley, we returned to Azerbaijan. And came back again on foot with cases and lugging between us one tour member's impulse purchase of three enormous Azeri rugs.

An hour later we were in a Georgian winery where I was relieved to see they served wine not by the glass or even the bottle, but by large earthenware jugs. By the time our long lunch accompanied by round after round of Georgian toasts and singing ended, many of the tour members couldn't even remember the border crossing.

While most of my border experiences have been played out in the company of Kiwi tour group members, occasionally I've been left to muddle through without an audience.

The most memorable was crossing from Turkmenistan into Iran at a crossing little used by independent travellers. I found out why.

It was lunchtime when I was dropped at the Turkmen border where the immigration officer was not impressed about having to forgo his lunch to process me.

First of all he took the three forms I'd been told on arrival in Turkmenistan to guard with my life as without them I'd be unable to leave, and filed them in the rubbish bin. Then, scattering bread crumbs over my passport, he'd stamped it and sent me on my way.

After five Customs officials had all checked my bag to make sure I wasn't smuggling out any 3m by 2m antique carpets I was told I was free to go into Iran.

"It is too far to walk, several kilometres and a big bridge," said my escort. "But there is a bus." We found the bus – there was no driver, but also no seats, no windows and the door was secured with a Gordian knot of wire.

There were however a lot of gleaming, rumbling long-distance trucks in full working order. Maybe I could hitch a lift? My helper disappeared among the big rigs and I waited to see what shiny monster would be taking me to Iran.

One by one they drove away until all that was left was a battered, belching orange pick-up truck. The driver slung my bag on the tray and motioned I should climb up into the cab – no easy task given I was now clad in full-length black coat and head scarf in order to enter the Islamic Republic of Iran. Sitting between me and the driver was another man.

I asked the escort who he was. "Oh, he's just a local who is curious about you and is going for the ride." I supposed that if things got difficult, I could restrain him with the two metres of headscarf that I'd just extricated from the door.

My companions motioned I should take the scarf off. I was to be given maximum freedom to the last minute. We set off through the rock-strewn desert to the river that forms the border between the two countries.

As we lurched our way to the middle of the one-lane bridge both men looked at me and shouted "Yes!" while pointing to my scarf. A stroke of a pen, a twist of a river – the past really was a foreign country. They'd do things differently here.

- © Fairfax NZ News