We thought you may like a quick update of where we are up to currently.\u00a0 We had good and bad news concerning our Iranian Visas.\u00a0 We were granted permission to apply and provided with a permit number but our chosen consulate in Dublin informed our agent that they couldn’t possibly process them in only 4 weeks!!\u00a0 Agent was furious and suggested that if they turned on their computers then they might find processing visa a bit quicker!!\u00a0 Anyway another option became available when another customer needed his urgently and was prepared to pay for a courier to fly to Frankfurt and back next week and get it over the counter.\u00a0 Other than Dublin Frankfurt seems to be only consulate not requiring fingerprints.\u00a0 So by next week we should have our Iranian visas but this has more than doubled the cost.\u00a0 Iran is becoming very expensive for just a few days but is crucial to journey so we have bitten the bullet.<\/p>\n
When the visas gets back we will thern sort out Uzbekistan visa which should be no problem.\u00a0 Just the Turkmenistan one to go then.\u00a0 Have any of you had any thoughts about that one?\u00a0 By way we got Kazakhstan visa without need to provide hotel details.\u00a0 Just shows how arbitrary the whole process seems to be.<\/p>\n
Our application for a second passport was turned down by the Identity and Passport Service last week.\u00a0 We appealed but that was also turned down. We claimed that the countries we were visiting were incompatible and added USA into our route but they claim it would be no problem entering USA with Iranian visa in our passports.\u00a0 They even said that Israel would also not find it a problem.\u00a0 Should have lied and said we had visa from Israel so couldn’t get Iranian but thought we would get them as we used a letter that had previously been successful.\u00a0 Asked them for a copy of the list of countries that they consider incompatible but got no real response so will follow up with a letter when we get chance.\u00a0 When we have all visas we will make a few dummy passports to use outside borders.<\/p>\n
Still waiting for RAC to come back with Passage de Carnet cost but expect that any day now.<\/p>\n
We are in midst of immunisations for Rabies and tick borne encephalites and got ourselves a one to one medical trauma day for 24th of May with company who gave training to Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman.\u00a0 The MD was also the chief medic on the Land Rover G4 competition to Mongolia.\u00a0 He spent 5 months recceing routes before Land Rover pulled the plug. He had some useful advice.\u00a0 The country and people are fantastic and best country he has been to.\u00a0 As a result of severe temperatures diesel is difficult to get and quality is poor with plenty of water in it.\u00a0 Two inline filters sound a good idea.\u00a0 The more modern Land Rover engines found it difficult but older Tdi and Td5 were fine.\u00a0 Presume Olav’s Land Cruiser will also be fine.\u00a0 LR bought in their own diesel and had a tanker for their use.\u00a0 Terrain is very volcanic and punctures were a daily occurrence.\u00a0 Suggested that as well as ultra strong sidewalls a few inner tubes would be useful.\u00a0 He warned that maps and GPS tend not to match.\u00a0 Whole towns can be 20 miles out on map!!\u00a0 Features can disappear as well.\u00a0 Whole lakes were on maps and when found no longer existed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We thought you may like a quick update of where we are up to currently.\u00a0 We had good and bad news concerning our Iranian Visas.\u00a0 We were granted permission to apply and provided with a permit number but our chosen consulate in Dublin informed our agent that they couldn’t possibly process them in only 4 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preparation"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3bX1q-4h","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapetim.co.uk\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}