How I ended up in Iran without money or any clear means of obtaining it
The graffiti on the wall of the former USA Embassy
So, I got the ticket Dushanbe - Tehran, applied for the visa in time and it seemed that all was set.
But no, in reality it was much more complicated. Iran is under the USA sanctions which made their banking system isolated from the rest of the world. For me it meant that my MasterCard and Visa cards are not gonna work there, AT ALL. The ATMs are only accepting local cards.
Even though I knew that before, I was stupid enough to forget about it and so I didn't cash out any money beforehand.
Only during the boarding to the plane I remembered about it and suddenly I saw the future in different colors, it seemed that I reached the whole new level of difficulty after Pamir.
In the plane a man told me that I can cash out my money in a specific bank, so the situation appeared to be not so grave as before.
I only had 100$ in my pocket which was barely enough to pay for the visa. But at least I got it and they let me in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I talked with locals only to find out that it was some kind of religious holiday (unsurprisingly, holidays and weekends seem to always get in my way) and everything was, of course, closed.
Then I found a driver who agreed to take me to the city, in some musofirkhoneh (cheap hotel/hostel for locals), and take his fee from its management. It is remarkable that he didn't even tried to scam me, even though at first we arrived to a 35$ hotel, which was unacceptable. I insisted on a cheaper option and after 3 more attempts we found a 15$ musofirkhoneh. They paid the driver and let me stay now and pay later. Those dimes I still had left I spent that same evening for some food.
Next morning I went to the bank and eventually found out that it isn't possible get outside money through their banking system, even through the Central Bank. So I started to look for the money exchange services as I heard that some of them can cash out your money, but with some commission.
I visited lots of them, with no avail. Western Union was closed and I suspect it wouldn't help anyway.
So I resorted to the last place I could think of - the Russian Consulate in Tehran.
I met with the consul, explained my situation, proposed to transfer some money to him in exchange for cash, and waited for a couple of hours for them to make the decision which turned out to be negative.
Higher-ups forbidden him to accept any transfers from me. But at least he introduced me to an iranian guy who had some business related to tourism and getting russian visas in particular. He was there for this exact reason.
He also had a russian bank account and needed money outside of Iran, so I made the transfer of 1000$ to him and got the precious cash, to our mutual benefit.
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Tajikistan: 7, 8, 9, 10
Kyrgyzstan: 4, 5, 6
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