06-Sep-2004 -- This is the 11^th out of 29 Confluences on our tour from Germany to China, the story continues from 30N 57E.

On the fifteenth day of our tour we started before dawn at 5:35 a.m. in Bām. One might not understand why on earth we would voluntarily start that early whilst being on holidays, but there were two simple reasons: during daytime it gets incredibly hot, and it is unpleasant to sit in a car without air-conditioning. Secondly, we stayed the night in the destroyed city of Bām. Since everything had been demolished by an earthquake, there was nothing else to do at night other than to go to bed early and wake up early.

On our way to Zāhedān we passed by the Confluence located near the main road, 73 km past Bām (or 64 km beeline distance from Bām). At a distance of 1,800 m from the CP, we parked the car near the road. Guang was a little tired and stayed in the car, while I put on my jogging-shoes and ran to the confluence point. I am a marathon runner, so this was absolutely nothing for me, even though it was sandy. It was just 6:37 a.m. when I took the pictures at the Confluence and the sun just was about to come up. It is probably the earliest confluence visit recorded on the DCP. Usually, confluence hunters face the problem of dusk, there is hardly ever a problem of being unable to take the pictures due to morning-darkness. Forty minutes after we had parked the car, we were back on the road again.

Actually we passed CP 30N 60E later by just 3 km, but we decided not to go for the point because this frontier region is, at present, not a place to walk around. It's very likely no problem to visit the CP, but we decided not to risk stepping on mines, or meeting some armed robbers. At 10 a.m. we reached the city of Zāhedān near the Afghan and Pakistani border. Here, gas for the car is a little scarce. If you really want to pay the official price of 0.08 Euros per litre, you need to queue for a couple hours. We found the price offered on the grey marked (of 0.15 Euros per litre) reasonable. Some kids showed up with a 20-litre container and poured it into our tank.

CP visit details:

• Time at the CP: 6:37 a.m.
• Duration: 40 min (until we were back on our route)
• Distance of car parking: 1800 m
• GPS height: 609 m
• Description: Flat plain with hardly any vegetation but some scattered tussocks of grass. Sand and gravel with a corn size of maximum 1 cm.
• Given Name: The Early Confluence

Story continues at 29N 68E.