Turkey

– Petrol stations with euro diesel are easy to find. Diesel is called “motorin” and was around 27 TL/l (2022). Gasoline was a little bit cheaper. Petrol stations along the highway are often quite large and have often a restaurant next to them. Almost every big petrol station that we visited was equipped with clean toilets (and they were free to access!). They were even better than most petrol stations in Europe! An attendant fills your tank for you and you pay (with card at least) inside at the counter.

– Car parts are really expensive in Turkey. Prices are often even higher than in Europe so don’t expect fixing your car cheap in this country. In our case, one benefit was that Volkswagen is really common in the country so car parts and expertise are quite easy to find, but once again, you’ll pay a high price for them. One major disadvantage is the language barrier. I called around 15 mechanics in Istanbul, asking them for help, but the answer almost always was “Abi, yok English, yok”. Even communicating at official Volkswagen dealerships was a real pain. After visiting many mechanics who couldn’t solve the car problem, we got help from ‘Overland Anatolia’. Emre, the boss of Overland Anatolia, is a nice guy who really knows a lot about Overlanding and cars. He provides a service in Istanbul (and I think in other parts of Turkey as well), where he puts you in touch with a ‘good mechanic’ (according to him of course) and helps you with translation and finding accommodation and stuff during the repair. For this service, he asks 20% of the total amount that you pay to the mechanic (and, I THINK, other expenses that you make through them, like hotel bookings as well). If you have car problems, it is good to contact him. However Turkey is expensive and you can probably find some things in Iran and Pakistan as well, it often requires much more effort in these countries. Sometimes it will consume large amounts of time to find a trustworthy and capable person to do the job and to find the necessary items. For these reasons, I highly suggest checking your car properly and to buy some spare diesel and parts in Turkey before heading toward Iran.

– You must buy HGS tag. The roads in Turkey are great but you also pay a large sum of toll for them. At most toll stations for example at the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul you cannot pay by card or cash so you need to have an HGS tag. This is like a fast tag. If you don’t have an HGS at the time you cross the bridge, it’s not a problem. You can just drive through but in the end, you will get a small fine registered on your license plate. You can buy an HGS tag at a PTT branch for 10TL. In theory, shell gas stations and official post offices are PTT branches and sell these fast tags but it is not as simple as you think. The first 5 shell gas stations we came across couldn’t help us and some post offices could not help us either. Some didn’t sell it, but mostly they just couldn’t understand us and didn’t make much effort. Finally, two days before leaving Turkey we were able to buy an HGS at a post office. So actually, we always drove without HGS and it never caused any problems except that you will pay a fine at the end but it was not that high. To buy this you must give them a copy of your vehicle registration card and a copy of your passport. Once you have bought it you have to put credit on it on the official website. All vehicles with 3.20 meters or longer wheelbase and 2 axles are class 2 vehicles. Make sure there are no unpaid toll fees or fines left open on your account before you go to the border because they won’t let you leave the country until you’ve paid it all off. We thought we had paid all toll fees and fines that were on our account but eventually, at the border, we were told that there were still some unpaid fines. Due to the language barrier, it was difficult to figure out what we had been fined for but since it’s never a good idea to argue with customs we just paid for this and left the country.