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Northern Iraq Part 6: Gali Ali Beg, the Amidiya Sunrise and the Journey Home
The final leg of my journey begins with a trip to Gali Ali Beg: A place which is highlighted in Lonely Planet as being the highlight of Kurdistan…
We were more than slightly disappointed.
We woke up at 9ish and got ready for Ahmar to pick us up at 10, this involved showering and grabbing a quick bite to eat. Then we all hopped in his car and went on our way, with Adam and Will complaining about my snoring from the night before. We soon arrived in Gali Ali Beg which was admittedly an impressive road leading through the mountains, and we stopped off at the supposed highlight of it: the Bekhal waterfall.
This place was FILLED with Iraqi tourists, who all started to take photos of us, mainly because of Adam who is tall with long ginger hair, a rarity in the Middle East. The waterfall itself could be impressive if not for the dingy boats that fill the pool beneath it and the metal barriers and restaurant surrounding it. It kinda spoiled the whole “beautiful nature” aspect of it…
Ahmar then took us to Sulav in the mountains so we could complete our journey. For this he took us back to Lalish and took the route from there which had some stunning views of the mountains and beautiful cities on the way. We also got to see the sunset over the mountains on the way there which was stunning and eventually we rolled into Sulav and found the only hotel there.
The only hotel there was more like a squatter’s house. There was no key to the door of our room, which the owner of the hotel assured us was alright, the beds had stains on them which looked very suspect and the toilets… oh the toilets… there was only one that was working, even though it was just a hole in the ground, and a colony of spiders had nested above it with all the flies that had swarmed the toilet and strayed too high trapped in their web. Never pleasant…
We went to find a place to eat, taking our valuables with us due to the lack of a key, and got ripped off in a restaurant which, like a typical mountain restaurant, charged us double what it should have cost for our meal… But feeling fed we decided to go to bed early to wake up early and go to Amidiya in the morning. We fell asleep with my bed blocking the door so no one could get in…
Luckily we slept without problems, I had a bit of a freaky dream thinking someone was grabbing my arm through the window next to my bed. We woke up around 5:30ish and dragged ourselves out of bed and started a long walk along the road towards Amidiya which we could see in the distance.
Luckily along the way a car came past which we flagged down and it gave us a lift up to Amidiya so we could be there for the sunrise and we just made it in time. We had a couple of cans of beer left from the night before so we sat drinking them whilst watching the sun come up over the mountains surrounding the town and we managed to get a few nice pictures of it as well.
We then walked around the town and watched it slowly wake up, first with the bakers, then the people buying their bread for breakfast. We wandered over to the other side of the city and checked out Bab Mosul which is featured in the Lonely Planet guide and made quite a few nice pictures.
After being given some free bread by the locals we walked back down to the road and hitch-hiked back to Sulav. When back in Sulav we decided to do a bit of hiking in the hills behind it, as we’d heard it was quite nice. We walked up a path next to a river into the hills and then attempted to make our way up to a cave before getting freaked out by the thought of wild dogs, so we just relaxed half way up the hillside and had another beer.
Eventually we headed back to our hotel and Ahmar picked us up and took us to another waterfall on our way back to Dohuk called Aynseiri, or something like that, which was another tourist tap, but luckily we got there just before a bus load of people arrived and blocked the place up. We arrived in Dohuk and went and grabbed ourselves some Kurdish trousers from the market, which are ridiculously comfortable, and then went off to Zakho ready to take the final step in our journey back to Damascus.
In Zakho Ahmar paid for our lunch which was chicken schwarma and it was probably the best one we’d had since being there. We then said our goodbyes and gave him the rest of the money we owed him, then we caught a taxi across the border, this one being much cheaper, only costing us $45. The reason why we soon found out.
We stopped off at the duty free on the way through the border and we went inside and looked around. Adam purchased a large bottle of Jim Bean whiskey with a pack of cards attached and I managed to find a mug that said “I love Kurdistan”. We then headed back to the taxi and waited for the drivers. Eventually they came back from the duty free and told us that we had to say that the bags of cigarettes were ours and that we needed to tell the guards.
We of course weren’t having this and told them that we didn’t want to lie to the guards, unless of course they brought the price of our taxi ride down. They really weren’t impressed with this and started shouting at us in Turkish and someone nearby translated for us. It appeared that they’d brought religion into this and they were saying that Adam had brought alcohol into their car and it was against their religion.
In the end we just gave up. It came to the point where the bags were taken out of the car and we all said the cigarettes were ours and that was that, we were sent on our way. We soon reached another check point where the whole car was searched for smuggled goods. Unfortunately my camera bag was searched and they found my pack of vitamins I’d taken with me and cut the lid off so I could store money in there. They were quite confused as to what these pills were and I could feel a few months in Turkish prison coming along. Luckily we managed to persuade them that these pills were actually what it said they were and we continued on our way into no-man’s land.
We then reached the Turkish duty free and they went in and bought even more cigarettes, stuffing the other ones into every single crevice they could find in the car, including rolling up a few cigarette bricks in their prayer mat. Religious indeed… The funny thing is that the whole system seemed to be set up so they had lots of time before they went through the border check and they didn’t even hide that they were shoving cigarette bricks into the mud guards and into the lights…
FINALLY we got through the border and away from them and caught a bus from Silopi to Nusaybin, our trust in Turks somewhat destroyed from the border crossing. Sorry if this isn’t true but Silopi just looked like a complete dump, filled with people who would rip you off at the nearest opportunity.
We eventually reached Nusaybin and we got a taxi from the bus station to take us to a cheap hotel: Petrol Palace Hotel. This was actually quite a nice place AND it had free WiFi. We popped downstairs and grabbed a bite to eat from the place next door and they gave us a really nice schwarma, better than any schwarma we’d had in Iraq or Syria. We then went up to bed ready to get up early the next day and get a bus back to Syria.
In the morning everything went fine, we had a really nice soup for breakfast and they got to the border for when it opened. It was quite funny, we’d all decided to run down the track to the border and everyone else started joining in as soon as we started, laughing along the way. We got through the border quickly and without fuss, except being ripped off by taxi drivers on the other side, and we got to the bus station to take us home.
We got dragged into this bus company’s office and they sold us cheapish tickets back home. Unfortunately we didn’t realise this was going to be on something only slightly bigger than a mini-bus. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. Luckily we had two stops but I was wedged in the corner by someone who was wider than he was tall in the back of the bus with no way of falling asleep… Not fun.
9 hours or so later we got home absolutely shattered but with some brilliant memories of the landscape and some of then nicest people I’d ever met, but also some sad memories of places such as Amna Suraka and Halabja. I really hope I can return next year and spend more time there in places like Lalish and Dohuk.
(photos to be uploaded at a later date)
