Leaving Turkey, entering I Ran

We set off at 8am in the shadow of a cloudy topped Mount Ararat.
As we approach the border, there is a long queue of trucks waiting to cross the border that we are able to by-pass as Dennis leaves us here and drives all the way back to Latvia over the next 7 days or so.
As we approach the gate, a couple of guys get on the coach immediately to direct us where to go – you'd think they were officials, but they are trying to see if any of us will exchange our Turkish Lira into Iranian currency.
We'd like to say it's chaos at the border, but we believe that even chaos has some sort of order, and there's none of that at this border.
Our first 'queue' is to get a Turkish exit stamp, whilst our party stands in a good orderly line there are hoards of others who are pushing and blatantly walking past the security guard and handing their passports back for others to check. Most of us try the 'elbows-out' technique and use our luggage as weapons to assert our position, but it's pretty futile as we some of our party appear to go backwards in the line. It is surprising throughout the process how the currency touts appear to wander backwards and forwards into and out of 'no-mans' land. Non-British passports seem to get the most grilling as we exit Turkey and a couple of Oz-Bussers have a short wait whilst their documents seem subject to further scrutiny.
Kenneth left his back pack on the bus, as he was hoping to rejoin us in Erzican from the overnight bus, so someone needs to carry his back pack through. David takes the risk he has no playing cards, no top-counter magazines, or anything remotely bad as he carries through the additional pack, together with his own back pack, and camera bag and wheely suitcase.
Then we are in 'no-mans' land, where we hope that Kenneth will join us, but we get a text to say he is still a short way out of Doguybayzit, although he can see Mount Ararat, so that is welcoming news.
The remainder of us sit in a holding area together whilst our Iranian visa's are checked at immigration. This process takes some time and the official who is exclusively checking our groups passports constantly gets hassled by others who want their passports checked.
Eventually, we are all checked and we wander through to the next process – no sign of Kenneth.
The next phase is more blue ink to the finger tips so that we can provide another set of prints. We are called into a small office one by one and give an individual set on one side of the paper and a full finger set and individual thumb from each hand. The blue ink is a bugger to wash off, so I see just how lightly I can press my digits onto the ink pad and paper. The guy is obviously telling David to press harder so he pretends as best he can that he is doing so. We were hoping that Kenneth would catch us up at this point, but at least we hear that he has arrived at 'Dodgy' and has got straight into a taxi.
All the Brits are fingerprinted (including Matt the American) and we can wander through to where our coach is waiting. We have an opportunity to exchange cash – the rate is around 15000 to the pound, so some of the party can't resist the opportunity to make themselves local millionaires. There's even an ATM outside to get currency directly, but it doesn't work for us. The first few through seem to get their notes in denominations of 10,000 which gives them a big wad, we appear to have received the big notes! (50,000 a piece) which will be interesting to change when buying a bottle of water.
Our Iranian coach is waiting, so we sit, doze and wait until over an hour later Kenneth appears on the new bus to a cheer, and then we set off into Iran on our way to Tabriz past an even longer queue of trucks winding up to border control.