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Northern Iraq Part 2: Lalish (and a bit of Erbil)
By far the biggest highlight of my stay in Kurdistan was our visit to the small town of Lalish, which is the holy place for the Yazidi faith. The Yazidis have the reputation to be devil worshipers as they believe that God created the world and left seven angels in charge of it, the most important being Melek Taus, the peacock angel, whose other name is Shaytan, which is the name the Koran has for Satan. To cut a long story short Muslims think Satan fell from grace and the Yazidis think Melek Taus gained God’s favour. All a bit complicated but interesting if you look into it in depth.
We woke up confused that morning as we didn’t realise the time changes from Syria to Iraq so our phones automatically changed but our watches didn’t, so when our alarms on our phones went off in the morning there was mass confusion to the actual time. Eventually we got underway and we caught a taxi with some Australian girls we met the night before in our hotel. It was a bit squished but as Adam and Will are both skinny I got the front of the taxi all to myself and they were squished with the girls in the back. Win.
The countryside was interesting as you could see a lot of construction where ever you went as the country is very popular for investors at the moment. The rolling hills were also very beautiful, even at 150k/ph. Thrilling. During the journey I started talking to our driver, who luckily knew Arabic, and I found out that he was actually a Yazidi from Lalish which was extremely lucky for us. We eventually slowed up and rolled into Lalish.
The first strange thing about Lalish is that before entering the town you have to take your shoes off. Luckily it was quite warm at this point so it wasn’t too bad when walking around and it meant we got to air our feet after long drive from Dohuk. First of all we popped into the temple where we saw cloth being tied around the pillars. Ahmar our taxi driver explained that this was here for people to make wishes and that what the locals did was tie and untie a part of the material three times whilst making there wish and on the last tie they would make a knot so there wish would stay…. It gets stranger… We then explored inside the temple and found more things covered in material and also rooms filled with ancient jars, which were probably worth a lot of money, and pots of oil. Then we were shown some more traditions, all of which I shall label here:
- Throwing a coin into a hole: you get 3 chances and if you miss it means you’re unlucky.
- Throwing a rag onto a pillar: you get 3 chances and if you miss it means you’re unlucky.
- Putting loose stones in the street into a wall: you get one chance and if it doesn’t stay in the wall you’re unlucky.
- Hugging a pillar: if you can’t get your arms around it… you’re unlucky.
- Throwing 3 stones at one onto a pile of stones: one chance and how many you get to stay on means how lucky you are. No stones, no luck.
Apart from these traditions there were a few other small ones, such as not eating lettuce, stepping over the doorway (see above left) and not throwing away old bread but leaving it in a special room (see above right).
We were invited to lunch and to stay the night which we were definitely up for, though realising how cold it would be at night we declined the latter later on. Before lunch we’d sat down and had nargila with pumpkin seeds. They seemed to have a special technique for opening the seeds really easily which they tried to teach to me but I failed miserably. Then they swept all the seeds away and we quickly popped off to wash our hands in the stream that was flowing down from the mountain above.
The lunch we had was truly amazing: a mixture of tomatoey beans, pickled veg, cress, rice, chicken and lamb, served with bread. All pretty amazing. I got the usual thing with them thinking because I’m a big guy I need to eat more than other people, so it took them a while to realise that I was actually full and no I couldn’t eat any more…
After lunch we went up to the top of the hill next to the village where we were able to take photos of the village and the surrounding countryside which was truly stunning. The walk up to the top of the hill was a bit of a struggle. One of the locals didn’t make it and the others were ripping it out of me for being out of breath, even when everyone else was just as tired as me. Cheeky.
Eventually our day in Lalish came to an end and we headed off with out taxi driver and the Australian girls back towards Erbil, stopping off briefly at a place called Khanis where there were lots of prehistoric caves that people had lived in thousands of years ago which looked quite interesting. Unfortunately they weren’t accessible so we couldn’t look inside them.
We then went on our way, stopping off briefly in a small village where we bought a few cans of Turborg, a Turkish beer, which we all drank in the car, including our driver Ahmar. Legend. We then watched the sun set over Iraq whilst speeding along the road towards Erbil.
In Erbil the hotel which was recommended by Lonely Planet was booked up so we went next door to another one called Kandil Hotel.
Never go to this hotel.
It was $17 a night which wasn’t bad, but the room we stayed in felt like a storage room with piles of blankets and mattresses in it. Our beds were all dirty and all in all it wasn’t great. It did have a working shower and toilet though which was lucky. The Aussie girls next door didn’t have any more luck than we did. They had a bathroom light that didn’t work and the guy at the desk started trying to feel them up and kept on coming back to their room and making excuses as to why he had to go in.
We escaped for dinner and tried to find somewhere in the Lonely Planet guide which just didn’t exist. We eventually found a place next to the hotel which gave us a table then put a screen around it so no one else in the restaurant could see us. Slightly weird. Apparently it was because we had girls with us. What was even more comical was that they’d put a toilet roll in the centre of the table for use as tissues.
Eventually after the food we settled down in our rooms and told the girls if they had any problems and to knock on our door if they did. We then played some gin rummy and went to bed ready for a day of traveling the next day to Suleimani.
