Begging for Gas, Smuggling and Crocodiles

We are packing again and moving to our next hotel in Iranshahr. On that route we pass by several smaller villages. Our route from now on is always close to the border of Pakistan.

In this area there is a strong presence of heavily armed police. Smuggling seems to be a major enterprise in this region and apparently goes both directions: Gas is heavily subsidised in Iran, thus extremely cheap. So it makes economic sense to smuggle gas from Iran to Pakistan. The other way round, from Afghanistan and Pakistan drugs are smuggled into Iran. 

From what we hear, unfortunately a significant number of the local population is addicted to opiates themselves. 

This man is preparing salted fish, as far as I can tell.

I didn't feel very comfortable to make a lot of pictures on this gas station among a lot of grim looking men. However, I observed something I have not seen before like that. 

Looking at this photo, the obvious but irrelevant question is: why on earth is there a collapsed metal rig between petrol pumps and station building. More importantly and ghastly was observing the boys. I have not seen that before. The boy on the left side of the photo holds a plastic bottle in his hands.

In fact, a number of boys had bottles cut in half and were cajoling the adults and begging for gas. At least they tried to collect the last drops that fall out of the pump nozzle after fuelling the cars. They collected drops and minor amounts of gas (spending their day in the fumes) to sell it later on the street.

Finally we visited a crocodile station. In this part of Iran there are sweet water crocodiles. But as the river runs dry the crocodiles can't survive in their natural habitat and a crocodile station tries to protect this species. Again, saddening to see that the large cages are littered by soda bottles and stuff like that, visitors throw in to get the attraction of the crocodiles.