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This morning we headed towards Zahedan, since our escorts insisted we could only use the airport there. We drove across more desert and were held up at various points going into Zahedan by many police, who have the city locked down because of the bombing, presumably. We got through to the airport and said quite a sad farewell to 10 of our number. We will catch up with them again in India. We left them at the airport although they were told they would have to get taxis into town to buy tickets. They are planning to fly to either Dubai or Tehran, and then on to India, various locations but most are planning to go to Goa to sit on the beach for a bit.

The rest of us headed out of town again and towards Mirjaveh across more dry desert, although it wasn't as hot as it was further south. We realised after looking at the map that at this point we were only about 30km or so from the Afghan border, and we'll stay close to it well into Pakistan.

The wind picked up as we got closer to the border and the sand was really blowing about when we got there. It was only about 3pm, but we discovered the border had closed for the afternoon due to a public holiday (although we were told later by a local that there was no holiday and he suspected laziness). There is one small hotel at the border. Steve booked up all the rooms - there was airconditioning in some of the rooms and even two showers (omg!!!) so we made ourselves as comfortable as possible and chilled out for the afternoon.