New UAE - Iran - UAE ferry details
 

After some considerable searching, i have finally got my tickets for the Sharjah - Bander-e-Abbas ferry on Tuesday.

The reason for the confusion is the Oasis Freight does not now seem to exist and the company acting as agency for all the freight and passengers on the ferry is now Al Hili Marine Services LLC. All the contact details are below. It appeard that some of the people working for Oasis, are now with Al Hili, but whether it's just a change of name, i'm not sure.

AL HILI MARINE SERVICES LLC
Ground Floor
Al Ikhias Tower
PO Box 27522
Sharjah

Tel: +97165288575
Fax: +97165288574
E-mail: info@alhili.com

Website (Iran): www.valfajr.ir
E-mail (Iran): catamaran@valfajr.ir

They were all very helpful and i was out of there within 30-35 minutes. Now for the port..............

I've emailed Al Hili but any idea which days the ferry departs from Sharjah to Bandar-e-Abbas, and what the price is for one person and a normal sized car?

Received a reply:

"We have weekly two departures fm Sharjah to BandarAbbas. Every Sundays and Tuesdays.
Dep in the evening and arrival next day morning at Bandarabbas. Tickets should be
purchased at least a day in advance. Pax must hold valid visa for Iran.
For the car Carnet De passage and registration docs is required.
Pax ticket fare is Aed.310/- and freight and charges for a normal car is Aed. 1620/-."

Thanks for these details! Al Ikhias Tower appears on Google maps when you search for it so it was very easy to locate.

Be prepared for a lot of messing about over 2-3 days though.

On the Sharjah side there was a lot of messing about because at the office they neglected to give us a lot of details of what was going on. There was a lot of confusion when we were told we couldn't be in the "Passenger Departure" terminal too. Immigration is the building next door which is were we were told to wait but you need a "boarding card" which you get in the passenger departure building, which we were told multiple times not to be in...

But it was nothing compared to the Iranian side. I recommend never arriving at that port during Ramadan. We had to stay 2 nights in exciting Baddar Abbas with a giant mess of paperwork and then offices being closed early because of the holy month. Even in any other month it'd be difficult to do after 13 hours on a ferry with hardly any sleep.

Also take any luggage you might need or might get damaged in the sun before you enter the immigration building, there's a huge chance it may be left there overnight.

Ohhhh soooo true !!!

Be warned those of you planning to travel there - great patience needed !!

Please see my other post at: http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ran-iraq-63783 for further info and if you want help in the Bander Abbas port with the importation formalities, contact a guy called Ahmad, who just happenned to be my taxi driver from the hotel back to the port on my second day after arrival. He had been in Britain for a couple of years in the '70's and spoke good English. He agreed to help me get through the Customs and Immigration nightmare and 3.5-4 hours later, i was on the road to Shiraz. He didn't mention a figure for payment, but i was so relieved that i gave him the equivalent of about $60, which i thought was well worth it as he did a superb job. His number is 00989173674031 and i'm sure hat if you called him either on arrival, or before you left Sharjah, he would meet you and help you through the complications to enter Iran.
Even given the entry problems, Iran is well worth visiting and the people are superb and very friendly, so don't be put off and enjoy !

Hi,

Thanks for this information.
I'm planning a trip to Mongolia from Dubai and I was curious about the ferry crossing.

The UK foreign office have advised me not to travel to Iran at the moment but I'll be traveling with an Iranian and she thinks that if we avoid certain areas mainly Iraqi/Afghan border towns, there is no issue.

How difficult was it to obtain a visa to enter with a vehicle?

The only reason the FCO says don't go to Iran is because there is no embassy in Tehran any more. So if you get into trouble you won't get any consular assistance.But that is not a reason not to go. You will have to try really hard to have a bad experience in Iran.

No special visa needed for a vehicle. Just a normal tourist visa and turn up at the border with all your documents (including CPD) in hand.

Ah thanks for clearing that up.
I'll be getting the ferry from UAE to Iran so the posts above help me a lot.

The one thing I can never understand is the CPD.
I have to deposit a predetirmined amount of currency with an agency to get a CDP, how do they detirmine the amount to withhold and can I just leave them with a credit card?

Sorry to mess up the thread, you can PM me the answer and I will delete this post if you want to keep the thread tidy.

Taking a Ferry to Bandar Abbas: Advice Needed
 

I'm going to visit Iran this September after a short trip in Dubai. I hope to gain some special experience by crossing the Hormuz strait to Iran instead of taking a boring flight.
It's said that the Iranian immigration officials are best known for their poor efficiency in handling paper works needed for custom clearance in B. Abbas. Waiting time of hours or even up to days are common before getting outside the port. However these reports were given by drivers who brought their bikes or cars to Iran by the same ferry.
I wonder if the situation may be different for someone who has only a large backpack and a bag. Can I pass through the check quickly without much hassle? Did anyone traveled in a similar way before? Thanks for your help.

For those interested and with a lot of time on their hands, I detailed the whole miserable experience here:
Super trip of awesome: The Saga of Sharjah and the Clever Rhyme at Bandar Abbas

But Fresh Nomad, if you don't have a vehicle it's pretty straight forward. You still need to go to Al Hidi to get the ticket which was $100ish from memory.

On the day you leave, if you're not taking your luggage onto the passenger deck then you go to the "passenger departure" building and drop off the luggage there while getting your boarding card. Then you sit and wait in the immigration waiting room and then get stamped out. Then you're loaded on to the ferry where you'll spend the next 8-16 hours of your life.

On the Iran side you'll go through immigration, then pick up any luggage you checked in and go through customs. That's it for a passenger.

I'll note that at no point did customs check my luggage. I could have been carrying any number of western materials!

Don't worry about the Iraqi border, i had no problems riding in the areas, or crossing into Iraq.
As for an Iranian visa, just get your invitation letter with it's ID number on it, apply at the Dubai Iranian embassy and after a few days and probably having to give them your fingerprints, it should be issued.
I did have a problem finding Health Insurance to cover me in Iran, because it is on the UK's FO list of problem countries and all the policies i looked at that were issued by UK based insurance companies, excluded any country that was on the FO list. I got around it by getting my cover through AXA in the UAE, but you do need a current UAE Resident Visa to keep the cover valid, so keep that in mind if and when you search for some.
Enjoy your trip, i found it a wonderful experience.
J

CDP is expensive.
I got mine through the UAE Automobile Touring Club Automobile and Touring Club - UAE and they have a set formula for working out how much you have to deposit.
In my case, a motorcycle was 37000 UAE Dirhams and this was not negotiable. The same applies for a car or 4x4, but you will have to check the rates with them. This amount has to be left as a deposit with them until re-claimed, so a credit card is not accepted, only cash or a cheque....then you have to claim it back when you return with the stamped CDP, which in my case is a bit awkward, as i'm now in the UK and off to China soon. Just make sure that you have some way of reclaiming it set up before you pay and leave.
One other point, is to make sure that the Iranians (and any other country that requires one), stamps the CDP on the correct pages when you leave the country. I had a bit of a problem when i exited Iran into Iraq, as the border officials kept telling me that it was not necessary to have it stamped and when they did agree to do so, they stamped it in the wrong place, so i had to press them to do it correctly, to try and protect my 37k Dhs, which they finally did. Hopefully that will be enough to get my money back when i finally manage a trip back to Abu Dhabi at some point, we'll see !
J

We paid AED 60,000 for our Carnet de Passage, in cash. The official insurance value of our car is AED 80,000. We got it done in the Dubai automobile and touring club office (Deira).

We no longer had a UAE residency visa when we applied for the CPD, and at first they were absolutely unwilling to issue the CPD, saying it was illegal etc. Eventually, a friend of a friend of a colleague is a big cheese and he made a call and all was ok.

We had originally been quoted AED 40,000 deposit for the CDP, but the lack of visa seemed to up the deposit!!

It's a pretty simple process, once you get to the office with passport, registration card and cash.

We were also sent off to the RTA to get a "Letter of tourism" which you hand in at Sharjah Port on leaving.

We bought our health insurance at the Iranian Consulate in Dubai. Apparently they realize that it's a but tricky at the moment! We think it cost about AED 300 for the two of us.

NB. We no longer had a UAE residency visa when we applied for our Iranian visa, which meant they only gave us 10 days (we have now been given 30 days on our return as we applied from Europe).

How difficult is it to get to UAE from Iran on a motorcycle??