The home of bad advice

An unexpected and strange side-effect of having a few books published is that all of a sudden you’re regarded as a bit of an expert. A couple of hundred pages, bound and glued, it seems, is the key to instant credibility.

Readers’ Digest, for example, have asked me to be their Italian ‘expert’ for an article about European countries. There are a million people more qualified than me. But because I bought an old Vespa, rode around Italy and wrote about it, they’ve decided that I’m their man.

A Kiwi called Kylie contacted me the other day for advice on getting a visa to Iran. She’s riding a bike from the UK to New Zealand and the Iranian embassy in London were dragging their heels, holding her up and making her postpone her start date.

I’m not an expert on getting Iranian visas. It’s true, I got one once. A long time ago, in Budapest, after a lot of rigmarole. So I suggested Kylie check out Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree for more up-to-date advice.

Then I told her what I’d do. I’d set off on my journey and try any Iranian embassies I came across along the way. (Generally speaking, the closer you get the easier it becomes.)

After I rattled off my email and sent it, I started worrying that I had given Kylie a bum steer. What if she couldn’t get an Iranian visa along the way? What if she rode all the way through eastern Turkey to the border near Dogubayazit and got turned away? Would her dream be over? Would I be to blame?

Luckily, I’ve met Kylie. She came along to my talk at the TNT Travel Show and I had a beer with her and her boyfriend afterwards. She’s a tough, enterprising Kiwi who wouldn’t let a little thing like a snub from the Iranian government stop her trip. I suspect she’d look at a map, backtrack to Trabzon, cross into Georgia and plot a totally new, even more exotic route east.

Well, that’s what I’d do.