Chabahar Final Day: Cheating Danger on the Road

March 26

Once Hossein left, my excitement to carry on simply vanished. I decided to shoulder my massive backpack and hitchhike toward Bandar Abbas. Right at the Konarak junction, things almost took an ugly turn. A Pride with pitch-black tinted windows pulled up. The driver and passenger were two young men wearing Baluchi clothes. They asked where I was heading. When I said Bandar Abbas, they replied, "Oh, perfect! We're heading to Bandar Abbas too!"

I opened the rear door to hop in, but the passenger seat was pushed all the way back. I squeezed in anyway, balanced my heavy pack on my lap, and we started rolling. Did I mention my friends call my backpack "The Giant"? It's a 68-liter pack, and with the tent and sleeping pad strapped to the sides, it looks enormous. Hoping he would slide his seat forward, I said, "I really don't fit back here." The driver tilted his rearview mirror toward me and said, "Well, you need to put it in the trunk."

At that moment, all the red flags lined up. I pulled out my phone, pretended I had left something behind, and told them I needed to get out and head back to Chabahar. The driver insisted, "We can just drive back together," but I answered, "No thanks, I don't want to trouble you." I jumped out as fast as I could and ran for my life straight back toward the start of the Konarak fork.

A key lesson for hitchhiking: always ask for their destination first so you have an easy excuse if you get a bad feeling. I was genuinely lucky nothing went wrong.

Once I caught my breath, I checked available flights and saw the earliest departure from Chabahar was to Shiraz. Since every backpacker must stay flexible, I pivoted my plans from Bandar Abbas to Shiraz on the spot. I bought my ticket right there by the roadside and headed back into town. Thanks to Instagram, I found out my friend Reza was hanging out with Mansour, a local Baluchi friend. I joined them to share one final cup of traditional milk tea (Shir Chai) before leaving Chabahar behind.