We were travelling completely alone with one bike on the Kurds areas in Iran, very near to Iraq border (c.a. 50km to border) in august '05.
Absolutely no problems, kurds and iranians both are very friendly. Lot of police and military there, also in Turkey on kurds areas there's amazingly lot military involved, you even see tanks on smaller roads. In Iran we were mostly stopped but got through the military and police posts just with smiles and friendly conversations - managable only the few words of english they know, they just wanted to see our bike and ask where are we from. Only one time we got the bike confiscated on the police station, but after two hours of cunfusion we were released again with all our stuff back, with the only "Sorry, Mister" words from the chief policeman.
In Turkey kurds area they saw from distance us with big bmw enduro and knew we are foregners and probably thought "can't fit guns&bombs to support kurds or terror organizations in our very limited space" so automatically let us through, while checking most of the locals, especially the big trucks. No problems with motorcycle.
Hope this helps, Margus
[This message has been edited by Margus (edited 31 March 2006).]
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