Sowerby reconnects with Iranian pal

On Oct. 15 , 2007, I received an e-mail from a man I met during the summer of 1997 in Tehran, Iran. His note began: "Exactly 10 years ago this day, we both appeared at our rendezvous right on time for implementing your goal to break record going around the world ... "

Ahmad Homayouni is a businessman I had contacted regarding help with Iranian entry paperwork and to assist with speedy, safe transit from the Turkish to the Pakistani border. This was the trickiest link of my second assault on the around-the-world driving record, so a man on the ground in Iran was key.

Ken Langley and I had already set the record for global circumnavigation by car in 1980 by piloting a Volvo station wagon around the planet in 74 days. That record stood for more than a decade but in the mid-1990s, for reasons that continue to perplex, the folks at Guinness Superlatives changed the rules on what criteria constituted this record.

The new rules actually made the task easier. Three drivers rather than one had to cover a driving distance reduced to 18,000 miles from 25,000. And the big one: The clock stopped when the car and team crossed the oceans, making the attempt more like five continental mini-drives.

That meant we could even surface-freight the vehicle across oceans and start the clock three or four weeks later on another continent. In 1980, the clock only stopped when came back to where we started: The pressure never let up.

With all sponsorship out of the United Kingdom on the 1997 attempt, our start-finish point was Greenwich, England, instead of North America. Instead of a college crony who had spent years pulling the program together with me, I shared the diesel-powered Vauxhall Frontera with two Brits. Graham McGaw, a Scottish factory-vehicle technician, knew the Vauxhaul inside out. Former Welsh policeman Colin Bryant was an outstanding driver although he and I had a very different approach to people -- an issue that I suspected would surface along the way.

As I read Ahmad's e-mail I could taste that drive, especially the run from Istanbul, Turkey, to Chennai (Madras), India, where the sights, smells and sounds scream "far away." Turkey, Pakistan and India would definitely present challenges but Iran was my big concern throughout the planning stages.

My wife Lisa and I had met Ahmad Homayouni a few months before the drive got under way when we flew into Tehran from Karachi, Pakistan, on a regional reconnaissance mission. During two days of meetings, I grew to like Ahmad. His business acumen, humor and genuine interest in us and what we were up to cemented a friendship I have valued ever since.

Then it was just a few months later that I found myself barreling through the Atlas Mountains of eastern Turkey, closing in on the Iranian border post. Through sporadic communications, we had made arrangements to meet Ahmad at the border to assist with clearing us into his country. I hoped all was in order.

I was particularly looking forward to seeing Ahmad again, not only for his assistance, but to fracture the hush that had settled into the Frontera's cockpit. Colin Bryant was not talking and the silence was deafening. Depressed, I recalled other long-distance events where adventure and comradeship trumped frustration and fatigue.

We pulled up to the desolate border post within minutes of our projection, like we knew what we were doing. After an hour of maneuvering through Turkish border bureaucracy, then "the tunnel" to the Iranian side, there he was. It's hard to say who was the most excited, but Ahmad managed to speed up the process and within a couple of hours we were rolling toward the seething Iranian capital of Tehran.

Ahmad and an associate escorted us in his own vehicle for the entire 2,000-mile drive across Iran assisting with routing decisions and accommodations. He played interference with authorities and showed us some of the sights along the way, like the spectacular Mud Palace at Bam that has since been annihilated by an earthquake.

One night we stopped in Kerman, a couple of hundred miles from the Pakistani border. Ahmad invited us to dinner at his cousin's place. He was a radiologist who practiced in North America before returning to Iran to run the radiology department at the local hospital. My teammates preferred to hang out at the hotel, but I jumped at the opportunity and spent the best evening of the entire trip fêting and feasting with the gracious Iranians.

The next day Ahmad escorted us to Zahedan and then on to the Pakistani border where he assisted us through the Iranian side. As we crossed the line into Pakistan, I waved goodbye to our guardian angel. The tension in the Frontera had eased and my depression had slid into obscurity thanks to Ahmad. I wondered if I would ever see him again or be able to return what he had done for us in some small way.

Yet it didn't surprise me that 10 years later, the person who went so far out of his way for three strangers, was the one to remind me about what I had been doing 10 years before. For that, I thank you, Ahmad Homayouni.

Garry Sowerby, author of Sowerby's Road, Adventures of a Driven Mind, is a four-time Guinness World Record holder for long-distance driving. His exploits, good, bad and just plain harrowing, are the subject of World Odyssey, produced in conjunction with Wheelbase Communications. Wheelbase is a worldwide provider of automotive news and features stories.