Our route

Due to the unrest in the Arab world, we were unable to travel via Syria. We've already been there (2008) so we had a good excuse to take a detour via Iran, a country that has been on our list for many years. It took us a month to travel back from Bahrain to the Netherlands and we spend a total of 12 days in Iran. The total amount of kilometres: 9500.

Our journey was amazing, especially visiting Iran was an interesting experience. Mary kept a blog, so if you're curious and want to read more, take a look here.

For the online photo album, take a look here.

While driving back to the Netherlands, we have decided to raise money for a good cause. We have decided for the Stichting STOPhersentumoren (foundation STOPbrain tumors).

 

Challenges

Driving back to the Netherlands during the summer, taking your own car, two children and during a revolutionary period in the Arab world added a few challenges to our trip. It took us months to prepare our trip as a massive amount of paperwork in needed (especially for Iran). Travelling a distance of 10.000 km is also not without risk, so we did quite some research to decrease our exposure to risk. Looking back, now safely home, we realize that we must have had an angel on our shoulders, travelling with us...

 

Preparation and planning

The secret to a project like this was to make a well thought to-do-list and stick to it while working through the massive amount of tasks. Due to our evacuation from Bahrain in March, we saw our plans jeopardized, but fortunately Mary could return to Bahrain (leaving Onno and Niels behind to sit their exams without further disturbances and unrest). We gave ourselves a deadline and promised ourself to make a decision on a certain day and stick to this decision; either start preparing the trip or forget about it completely... In May the situation seemed manageable and still give us enough time to prepare, so and we decided to go ahead.

 

Our car

We purchased our car during our first months in Bahrain in 2007. Mary was the official owner which made things a bit complicated when Thijs wanted to take the car across the border from Bahrain into Saudi Arabia. Women are not allowed to drive their car in Saudi but with an authorization letter, this problem was solved. Thijs took the car for his last working week in Saudi Arabia and had it sprayed with special stuff to protect the car from dessert sand damage. It looked cool and we kept the car like this until halfway Iran. When people started writing messages in the dust on the hood (using car-keys) we decided it was time to wash our car...

 

Communicating

To keep all our followers informed, we opened an additional Twitter account especially for this trip. Mary started a special blog too and on her own Facebook page, we tried as best as we could to keep in touch with everyone. Using social media from Iran was virtually impossible so we had to think about a work-around.

Niels, who stayed in the Netherlands, had access to all Mary's social media accounts and we send out sms-text messages to Niels using local sim cards, which he would put on twitter. From Iran, we send him our blogs in emails and he uploaded our blogs regularly.

 

Media

The Wereldomroep covered our story and followed us during our journey. Maurice Lapariere published this article while we were in Iran.

 

Interview (Dutch)

The interview with the Wereldomroep was broadcast in the Netherlands in July 2011. Maurice Lapariere interviewed us while we were in Iran.

Download the file here >>