Hi,

I'd not seen any posts recently so maybe this has been standing news for some time: from South and West of Bam and heading East you are obliged to have a police escort.

I came up from Bander-e-Abbas towards Bam through the countryside rather than up the main road to Kerman. Shortly before Rudan (about 50km from Bander) I was stopped at a checkpoint and then had a further eight hours of police escorts into Bam (about 350km). This went on four hours after sunset.

Bam itself requires police escorts to go anywhere -- I was told this has been true since the Japanese guy was kidnapped in 2007. They're not that quick at turning up, either.

I understand I'll be getting a police escort to Zahedan tomorrow and (obviously?) over the border into Pakistan and up to Quetta (and beyond given the current situation).

The escorts aren't so much of a problem: I was pretty honest about my speed with the first but then got bored and they were quite happy to try to keep up (until my reputation preceded me and I was told to slow down and follow).

The real problem is that each escort only takes you between 5 and 50 km before they stop you at the side of the road and organize the next one -- usually a good half hour waitiing.

They were very keen on me going inside police compounds at each stop with, I suspect, the hope that I would stay the night and save them the bother of finding the next escort.

So, if you're headed this way, look at maybe 40-50kph as an average speed.

Cheers,

Ian