For a country that’s viewed by most as dangerous and (as recently and inaccurately demonstrated by Top Gear in their Christmas Special) somewhere to wear protective body armour, fear for your life and escape from asap it was actually the most hospitable place I have ever been to and I have never been so well looked after in my whole life! Unfortunately I was only there for 5 days at the beginning of December but I’d hve gladly stayed longer. Obviously you’d have to be extremely naïve to deny that many parts of Iraq are extremely dangerous and are unlikely to be your number one choice for your next summer holiday. Even in Northern Iraq (generally more peaceful and safer than the rest of the country) we decided to give the city of Mosul as wide a berth as possible seeing as it’s been declared one of the most dangerous places in the world at the moment.
However, my experience of Kurdistan (I call it this because everyone I met during my time there was Kurdish and so I experienced Kurdish culture and in many ways it did feel like a separate country to the rest of Iraq) was of a stunningly beautiful place full of exceptionally friendly, helpful people, eager to welcome foreigners and rebuild their country and lives. It’s an amazing place and our trip encompassed stunning scenery (despite a little more rain than I’ve been used to over the past few months), the art of Kurdish cake making, wading barefoot through rivers of ice cold water on the holy pilgrimage site of the Yazidi sect, more tea than I’ve ever drunk in my life, lashings of hospitality (no not ginger beer), first hand stories of the impact of war, a whole coach load of Turkish smugglers, some more tea, the beginnings of what will become some rather smart, modern cities and, oddly, a surprising amount of Norwegian.
For anyone who likes looking at maps (mother) to briefly summarise where we actually went I’ll outline our route. We crossed from Syria into Turkey at the Qamishli border after an overnight bus from Damascus to Qamishli (the Syria/Iraq border is too dangerous), then travelled from Nusabin in Turkey to Silopi and then crossed into Iraq. From Zakho on the other side of the border we went to Dohuk. Dohuk to Sulaf and Amedi/Amediya, Amedi via Lalesh to Erbil/Arbil then back to Dohuk. We intended to get as far as Sulemani/Sulemaniya near the Iranian border but because we spent so much time with the family we met in Amedi we had to leave this out.
Four is the ideal number for traveling when it comes to Kurdistan, mainly because you have to take taxis everywhere as public transport either doesn’t exist or is too dangerous. If there are four of you taxi fares are kept as low as possible. I went with one other British girl from my class at Damascus University and two Norwegian girls i’ve also met out here.
So our first glimpse of Iraq was of the mountains rearing up behind the Turkey/Iraq border. We spent a while looking at these mountains because there was a long queue at the border and despite our taxi driver managing to persuade someone to let us push in further up the queue (queues are a much more fluid concept in the middle east) we had to sit there for a good couple of hours. Most of the traffic appeared to be large trucks and lorries carrying various cargo. Once across the border we were invited to have tea in the office while our passports were dealt with and taught our first few Kurdish words (we couldn’t expect everyone here to understand Arabic). First impressions of Kurdistan were that it’s much greener than Syria and the houses are a lot more colourful. Many are painted in bright colours ranging from red and purple to bright green or yellow. At first we took a winding road through rock littered mountains then emerged out on to flat field plains and zipped along a highway flanked by telegraph poles, passing several sheep herders with their flocks. Somewhat of a juxtaposition of old and new.
Dohuk was our first point of call and it’s a fairly nice city. One of the main attractions (at least it’s popular with the locals) is Dream City, the theme park, which unfortunately was shut when we arrived! I was looking forward to a roller coaster ride! It was the middle of winter though and I suppose they weren’t really expecting hordes of tourists.
Arbil, the “capital” of Kurdistan, is another promising city. Certain areas of the city have undergone serious redevelopment; there are some lovely parks, a beautiful and huge bright blue mosque and central squares lined with fountains that are lit at night.
The old bizarre and citadel still remain but the quirkiest thing was definitely a larger-than-life statue of Popeye (yes as in the sailor man who eats spinach). It’s so well known that when we stopped someone on the street to ask directions to our hostel we were told: “continue straight on, take a left after the Popeye and it’ll be on your right”. Not until we passed said Popeye did we realize that we had not misunderstood his Arabic, there really was a Popeye. This all said, a large area of the city resembles one massive building site and this isn’t the case just in Arbil; it’s the same in many other parts of Kurdistan. I think in 5 years time many places will look extremely different and if relative peace and stability remain this area could become a very popular travel destination. Perhaps great for the economy and positive publicity for a country that’s had a lot of negative media coverage over the years but maybe not so great for those who like to travel off the beaten track or enjoy their scenery unaffected by swarms of people scurrying all over it. My advice, if you’re in the area and want to experience this amazing place, go visit soon! Although if you do, ignore everything the lonely planet says about this region – most of it’s wrong and seriously in need of an update!
On our way to Arbil we’d stopped at Lalish – the holy pilgrimage site of the Yazidi sect. Many people stop here, visit the temple and find out a little more about this small, previously persecuted group of people. There are only about 500,000 Yazidis in the world and their beliefs are a strange mixture of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. They believe they are descendents of Adam, not Eve (not entirely sure how this works?!), the sun is very important to them and all Yazidi graves face West and as well as God they pray to Malak Taus the Peacock Angel. Malak Taus is the fallen angel who according to their beliefs was later pardoned but their worship of this figure leads many to believe the Yazidi are devil worshippers and according to the people we spoke to this is not true. Anyway, normally it would be a beautiful and fairly interesting place to visit but we arrived while it was still pouring with rain and the place was pretty quiet. You have to take your shoes off and leave them outside before stepping over the threshold and much of the site is outside so we found ourselves wading through ice cold water to reach the temple. There was no electricity in the temple either so we were shown around by the light of a tiny torch and descended the steps into the underground cave where they have holy water used for baptisms in complete darkness! Our poor taxi driver was dragged along with us and I don’t think he could decide if we were amusing, annoying or just completely nuts! After some tea, defrosting our feet and a (somewhat lengthy) history lesson we decided it was time to collect our soggy shoes and move on.
The highlight for me was our trip to Amedi. High up in the mountains north of Dohuk, near Sulav, there is a plateau on which is perched the city of Amedi. The weather on the day we traveled here was indecisive to say the least and hovered between downpours of rain from heavy grey clouds rolling in over the mountains and outbreaks of bright sunshine piercing the laden sky and streaming down in ethereal rays. This made for some majestic scenery and we had a fantastic view from our elevated position over the rolling fields, rivers, forests and mountains.
Despite the various drawbacks there are to living in this city the spectacular view the inhabitants have from their living room windows certainly ought to bump them up a bracket or two on the property market!
As we were meandering around exploring the town, slightly dazed by our incredible surroundings, we were stopped a couple of times by concerned passersby to check we were not lost. One such passerby spoke no Arabic but did speak Swedish so my two Norwegian friends chatted away to him in Norwegian and they understood each other no problem. Later a woman who was hosing down the driveway in front of her house exchange pleasantries with us and then beckoned us into the house. It had begun to rain and we have become very used to being invited in for tea by almost anyone we meet in this part of the world but still, we’d literally spoken about 3 words to this woman and known her for 20 seconds. The fact that we spoke very little Kurdish and her likewise with Arabic meant that when she turned and marched into the house we had few options left but to follow her. After sitting in the living room wondering what exactly was going on for a few moments her daughter (who spoke English) emerged from another room. Very quickly we found out that she was leaving Iraq soon to marry her cousin in Norway who is living in Oslo which is where both of the Norwegian girls I was with live and study at university! Pretty cool coincidence. So that was it. We spent the entire day with this family, were fed several delicious meals, met some of their extended family, fed their pet squirrel, did some baking in the afternoon and did a lot of tea drinking and talking. It was interesting to hear first hand stories of what life was like during the various wars in the country. This family had lost one son at the age of 18 who had been ill his whole life since being disabled and blinded aged 7 months after being caught in a chemical gas attack. Another son was permanently paralysed from the waist down due to an accident when he was a soldier fighting during the Kurdish civil war.
The family also explained to us that many people emigrated to Scandinavia during the conflict so it’s very common for people here to speak Swedish or Norwegian if they spent several years living there themselves or have family living over there. When it got quite late in the evening the family insisted we stay the night with them but we politely refused. We already had an arrangement with a lovely guy in Sulav who’d rented us a house for the night for the same price as a hotel room would have cost and when he’d given us a lift up to Amedi in the morning he’d been very concerned about us and said if we had any problems or needed a lift back to call him and he’d be with us in 5 mins. That had been about 10 hours ago so we didn’t want him to think we were lost in the mountains somewhere! We exchanged contact details with the family, said our goodbyes and were packed off with a goody bag of the cake we’d made earlier into their sons car so he could take us back to Sulav. When we arrived it was pouring with rain and extremely cold but the owner of the house had turned all the heaters on for us and there was a welcome sign flashing over the door!
I could go on about many other examples of the generosity we were shown during our time in Kurdsitan, (for example on our last night in Dohuk we asked our taxi driver if he could recommend a good hostel to stay in and ended up staying in his house with his family) but I think you get the idea. There was only one worrying incident during our trip when we were passing through some check points on our way to Arbil. Security was slightly heightened because there’d been an important press conference or something there the day before and the main road into the city was shut and cars were being sent down a diversion. We were sitting at the checkpoint waiting while our bags were searched, our passports were checked and answering questions about why we were there (all standard procedure) when two jeep loads of soldiers in mis-matched camouflage uniform, all wearing black balaclava masks and holding machine guns jumped out and surrounded the checkpoint. The thought crossed my mind that this was a road block rather than a check point and we were about to be kidnapped (perhaps I’ve been watching too many films recently!) but the officer checking our bags didn’t react at all and although several people stopped what they were doing no one seemed particularly alarmed. Our taxi driver told us to just stay in the car and said it was all fine. Everyone went on with their business and we decided that just because masked men with guns had turned up didn’t mean we should jump to conclusions. Ten slightly nervous minutes later and we were on our way, none the wiser about who anyone was or what was going on but unscathed by the incident.
Like I said, overall during our time here I have never felt safer or better looked after in my life and I would love to return at some point in the future. When it was time for us to leave the country it turned out our taxi driver had some good contacts. His brother works on the Turkey/Iraq border so this time there was no queuing what so ever, we were sent to the front of all the queues and the Turkish driver who was taking us across the border was given a stern talking to and told to take good care of us or there’d be trouble! He had apparently tried to buy Iraq’s entire stock of cigarettes and they were hidden under the seats, in the lining of the doors and in the boot. The legal amount you’re allowed for personal use is two packs each and I think our driver was hoping that border guards would attribute 8 of the packs to us. Anyrate he told us “if politics asks it’s only your smoking”! Great. This is really common though and the brother of our taxi driver assured us that if anything happened it’d be our Turkish driver who was in trouble not us. Back in Turkey with no trouble we got on the bus to take us to the Syrian border but so did a large number of Turks who appeared to have done the exact same thing our taxi driver just had. Every checkpoint the bus got stopped and everything in the hold was unloaded and checked. Rather frustrating as it meant the journey was a lot longer than it should have been but I have to admit these guys had a good system going and certainly looked out for each other! Every time one person was singled out because they found something suspicious or thought he was carrying more than his allocated amount several other guys would rush over and insist it was theirs as well and that there was no problem here and make a big enough scene that in the end the officer would give up and let them all back on the bus! We made it back to Syria though and it would take a lot more than delayed transport and cigarette smugglers to put me off going back to this amazing region!
