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Northern Iraq Part 1: A Long and Cold Journey to Dohuk
My next holiday came round quickly, and this one I had been waiting for. This was the holiday where I’d be venturing where many tourists would fear to go… Iraq.
Now whenever Iraq is mentioned people instantly think of Saddam Hussein, war and the quest for the “WMD”s. The fact is that Iraq is a gradually changing country, and as the birthplace of civilisation due to it’s geographical features it offers a lot to tourists from around the world.
Not all of Iraq is safe, and when I say I went to Iraq I strictly mean the Kurdish part of Iraq in the north where they have their own borders, government and security forces. Travelling around the main part of Iraq is not recommended due to hostility to Westerners, IODs such as roadside bombs, and the constant threat of terrorism. Northern Iraq, or Kurdistan as I shall refer to it from now on, is very different in that respect.
In 2003 when the combined force of the American and British army invaded Iraq and disposed of Saddam Hussein, Kurdistan was freed from persecution and the people there were grateful to the Western armies for removing Saddam’s regime which had tortured the Iraqi Kurds for a long time. This has made the people of Kurdistan love the Western countries for freeing them from this repression, making Kurdistan a very welcoming and safe place for people to visit.
Of course there is no denying that dangers still exist in such a country, but nevertheless it is a lot safer than visiting Iraq itself. Knowing this we all took precautions before leaving Syria. We all registered on the British Embassy’s “Locate” program so they could know where we were going and what we were doing. We also read up a lot about the country and made sure we knew what to do and say, such as not to call the country “Kurdistan” at the Turkish border as the Turks really don’t like that. We also took time talking to our friends who had been there the holiday before to find out about things to do and things not to do.
We left for Iraq on Thursday evening, stopping off at Bab al-Hara for a quick dinner before we left with our rucksacks at 9ish for the bus station. We arrived at the Pulman bus station just before 10 and tried to find a bus to take us to Qamishli in the north-east of Syria, unfortunately we hadn’t realised that there were a lot of people trying to move around the country at this time due to the forthcoming Eid al-Adha so it seemed that there were no buses left. However with a quick chat to some of the people hanging around shouting place names we found someone who sold us tickets to Qamishli for 700SP (just under 10GBP) which admittedly was 200SYP more than it should have cost but it was worth it.
The bus journey was pretty long, 9 hours in total, and we had a brief stop-off at 1:30am somewhere near Palmyra. We had the occasional film on the bus but we mainly just tried to sleep, which turned out to be near impossible with the uncomfortable seats and the freezing cold air that engulfed every exposed part of our bodies. I was sitting next to your typical Arab with the headgear and everything who started to talk to me in Arabic and asked questions about me which eventually led to a question about whether I was going to convert to Islam. To avoid an awkward conversation I simply replied “inshallah” (lit. God willing) and after that he left me to sleep, possibly hoping he’d recruited another member.
The last few hours I spent watching the sunrise over the bland deserted landscape that you can only find in north-east Syria. Eventually we turned into Qamishli bus station at around 7:30ish and we headed to the cafe where we indulged in some breakfast: foul bil leben. This is another recent love of mine which I have every lunchtime. It simply consists of foul beans, chickpeas, tahini, a bit of garlic and yoghurt and it tastes amazing. Will and Adam, my fellow travelers both needed to use the local toilets after the bus journey but wished they hadn’t. What was even worse was that the person outside the toilets asked them to pay for “keeping it clean”.
We left for the border at around 8:15 which was supposed to open up at 9an and close at around 3pm (hence the overnight bus journey) but we managed to get through it reasonably quickly (for a Syrian border crossing), paid $20 for the Turkish visa, then headed over to the bus station in the Turkish border town of Nusaybin where we caught a bus over to Silopi at the border of Iraq for 10TL (Turkish Lira). The ride was more comfortable that the ride up from Damascus to Qamishli but the scenery was just as dull. We also nearly got foiled by some cheeky taxi drivers when the bus stopped half way between Nusaybin and Silopi who told us that we were in Silopi and that they would take us over to Zakho, Luckily we didn’t believe them and eventually we arrived in Silopi where we found a taxi to take us over to Iraq for $60, which apparently is the standard fare.
Now you’d expect the border between Turkey and Iraq to be quite hard but we made it through in about an hour with a quick stop-off for passport control where Adam was questioned on what we were doing in Iraq, but apart from that it was all pretty easy and straight forward. We soon made it to the taxi station on the other side where we found a taxi to take us from Zakho to Dohuk for $30. As soon as we left the border town we could instantly see the change in landscape with vast hills and windy roads up to Dohuk.
Dohuk itself looks extremely modern with smooth roads, traffic lights and tall building blocks; not the kind of things you’d expect from a country plagued by war and repression. We checked into the Parleman Hotel in the centre and went off to change our dollars into Iraqi dinar. We then tried the local food which was not bad at all. Pretty much like the food in Syria except with better bread and better pickled vegetables.
We popped off to the internet cafe to let people know we’d arrived safely then had a quick look through the bazaar, which was packed full of people and was just like any sort of market you’d find in the Middle East. We then headed off to Dream City. This is a place we’d been looking forward to since planning our trip and we weren’t disappointed at all by it. Dream City is a theme-park in the middle of Dohuk with a roller-coaster, go-karts and several other rides along with an indoor arcade. It was 2000ID (1000ID = around $1) to enter and the roller-coaster was 5000ID. The roller-coaster also seemed to be an exact replica of the G-Force roller-coaster in Thorpe Park and it was really good, if a bit short. The go-karting was great fun too with very little safety in place: no helmets, no pre-karting talk and no seat-belts. It was truly thrilling!
We headed back to our hotel room to drop off some stuff before grabbing some dinner and we bumped into a guy from New Zealand staying at the hotel who’d already been traveling around Iraq and told us about one of Saddam Hussein’s ruined palaces he’d been to visit which sounded quite cool. We then headed out and had some really nice chicken with rice for dinner and we got talking to our waiter who was telling us about how he was an actor and he loved doing Shakespearean plays which was nice, then he told us he was from Mosul and asked if we were going to visit Mosul, which is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, so we said no, explaining this to him. He then proceeded to tell us that three of his friends had died in a car bomb earlier that day and then he had to go off as he’d started crying. Slightly awkward and upsetting start to our stay in Iraq but we’d expected to encounter things like that given the country’s current situation.
After the excitement of the day and the chilling reminder at the end we headed back to our hotel room, buying a few beers on the way, and chilled out in our room playing Gin Rummy before heading off to bed ready for our trip to Lalish, the home of the Yazidi people, the following day.
