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We headed for the first town with an airport to try to drop off the people who had decided to fly to India. We drove for a few hours across some mountains and through more desert, and when we arrived in the town the guys stopped to ask some police for directions to the airport. That was a bit of an unfortunate mistake. The police hung around for ages trying to work out what to do with us, talking to their radios and generally struggling to communicate with Steve and Adam. We still aren't sure what the problem was, but we suspect it's to do with the bombing in Zahedan earlier this week, for which foreign influence was suspected by the Iranian government (even though a Sunni muslim group claimed responsibility for it), and they were worried for our safety. They told us there were no planes at the airport, and no buses out of town (they just wanted us out of there - of course there would have been at least buses, although the airport did look strangely empty when we drove past it later). They escorted us into town to get something for lunch, and then at about 3pm they bascially ran us out of town, although they did let us stop to fill up with water and fuel, which was nice of them.

They drove with us halfway to Khash, where we picked up another group of machine-gun toting army-ish police in a ute, who escorted us into town. They were adamant that we had to drive all the way to Zahedan today, which would have been another 4 hours or so driving, and we wouldn't have got there until midnight, so Steve put his foot down and said no way, we are staying here. After a lot of mucking around, they agreed to let us camp in the grounds of their mosque. We weren't particularly over the moon about this, considering recent events, but it was really nice of them to let us stay there so we put up our tents on the concrete and cooked our food and almost got stung by lil scorpions that were running around. It is much cooler up here as it's a slightly higher altitude, and very dry so it was a really nice change. The police hung around all night, but they left us alone and didn't bother us or ask us for food or anything. So, looks like we have to try the airport drop off tomorrow in Zahedan, since the Khash airport seems to be off limits as well.