Now Playing: Vision On
Bit late doing this today, spent last night with Benny telling him about the trip and explaining the communication failures. Still had some fun going through the pictures I took, and hopefully Benny will find time to put some of them up on the site over the next few days.
Anyway let me continue on with my tale of the trip, I think I got to the point where the Special Ops guys pushed me out of the plane.
As I said the whole thing took me by surprise, I normally have lightening quick reactions but I reckon I was tired from the long day, plus I was concentrating on putting on my black make up for my disguise. It didn't take me too long to get my bearings though and go into HALO mode. As I plummeted towards earth a couple of things struck me. Firstly that I wasn't as high as I'd expected to be, and secondly that Iran was more brightly lit than I remembered from a trip I made many years ago. Thinking back now there were signs that maybe I'd got on the wrong plane, after all the Special Ops blokes were wearing White outfits which I thought strange for desert operations. At the time I assumed they were trying out some new style uniform. Anyway I made a perfect landing as always, I was top of parachute class five years running, and another thing struck me. This was definitely not the outskirts of Tehran or if it was then things had got a hell of a lot greener. I disposed of my parachute as per the manual, donned my orange robes and found a road into the nearest town all the while trying to remember the Hare Krishna song. Iran has come a long way as I noticed they have made the effort to put all the road signs in English. No doubt this is to help out the Yanks should they ever invade. They also drive on the same side of the road as in the UK which certainly was a pleasant surprise. The nearest town could be seen from the distance and a number of high rise buildings came into view. They weren't marked on my pop up map of Tehran so I stopped a local to ask for directions to Khomeni's B&B. Credit where credit is due, the guy made a very passable attempt at speaking English although I had to listen carefully. Apparently I could find it in an area called the Qurbals, which also wasn't on my map. He merely pointed toward the east and staggered off. Made sense I suppose, that's where all the mosques would be so off I yomped. I never did find it though and ended up at some place called the Hotel Teflon which was run by another face I found vaguely familiar whose English was also passable. Something didn't add up.
OK, well there'll be more tomorrow as I have to make my way back to work today and I know the guys can't wait to see what souvenirs I've bought them.
Shalom
