last minute packing, as always…

My flight leaves from Nice airport at 3pm. It’s now 1 and i still havent packed my bag. Predictable.

The initial ‘leg’ of this journey is infact a false one: it takes me from Nice (where i’ve been for the last 10 days visiting my mum and stepdad) back to Beirut, from where the real games begin. However, it is nonetheless stressful, and will take over 12 hours and 2 stop overs (Paris and Budapest)…

I should arrive there at 4am tomorrow (Sunday). Just enough time for me to go to my friend’s house, take a quick nap, shower, and pick up my big backpack, before heading out to Damascus round noon with J and Caro.

In Damascus, we will meet up with Di and Jeevs, who have gone on ahead of us in order to buy the train tickets to Tehran. Our train is scheduled to leave at 8am on Monday morning. The train is 2350 km long, and taks over 50 hours.

Route: From Damascus, it takes us north into Aleppo, and then further up into Turkey. From there we turn east and run along into Kurdistan, till we reach lake Van. I think then we have to take a shotr ferry. Then back on the train till the Iranian border, where we cross at Razi. And then we descend south-easterly into Tehran.

For a detailed timetable, see here.

So that’s the first stage… Quite hectic, but that only increases the excitement.