Global Wanderer

31/3/24 – 3/4/24

I’d been told that the best way to get around in Iraq was to use the shared taxi system, which operate from garages around the country’s major cities. This approach worked well the previous day, when travelling to Hillah en-route to Babylon, and so I headed out of Baghdad, this time from the al-Nahda garage, going north towards Kurdistan. My car-mates consisted of three elderly women, a middle-aged man who happened to be an Iraqi oil-and-gas engineer who lived in Georgia, 2 younger Iraqi guys travelling with the elderly women, and 2 racing pigeons, who sat next to me in a cardboard box (and were very well behaved!).

My avian travel companions

The Kurdish people, located across parts of Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, are the largest ethnic group in the world without a homeland. The Turkish and Iranian government provide the Kurds in their respective countries with no autonomy, and in Syria their status is in flux due to the civil war. In Iraq, however, the Kurds have succeeded in setting up their own, autonomous quasi-state, in which they have: their own flag; their own language; their own parliament; their own military (the Peshmerga – which translates in English to those who face death, and were instrumental in the defeat of ISIS); and control their own border crossings. This led to a few interesting situations at the Kurdish border, where the Iraqi passengers in my shared taxi were required to log their national IDs with the border guards and receive a paper ‘visa’ slip, and I, as a foreigner, had to have my passport scanned (but not stamped – they did this on a separate Post-It note they found in their office!).

Side note: I have an old-style Australian passport, and passed through the Kurdish border with no issues. My friend Dale, who has a new-style Australian passport, went through the same border 2 days later, and was held up for some time – the reasoning being that the border guards had seen an Australian passport a few days ago (mine), and this one looked different, so they thought it was a fake! A quick Google search proved the passport was real, and Dale was eventually let through!

The taxi (a giant GMC pickup truck), dropped us off in the south of Erbil – luckily, Careem works well in the city, and I was able to cheaply make my way to the north, where I was staying at Vote Hotel for the next 3 nights. I can’t recommend this place highly enough – for a very inexpensive hotel, the service was incredible, and the staff at the reception were very friendly and helpful (saving me money on a cab fare to the airport, delivering cups of tea to my room after I arrived back at the hotel each night). I sent Dale a message with photos of the room, and he too decided to stay there when he got to Erbil – Vote Hotel deserves the custom!

By this point it was getting dark – a quick wander led me to a teashop nearby, where a group of Kurdish guys were watching the Man City – Arsenal game (a 0-0 draw was the best result for me and the other Liverpool fans in attendance!) Perfect end to the day!

After breakfast (on the top floor of Vote Hotel, with fantastic views out over the city), I headed towards Erbil’s core. The city is built around an ancient citadel on a hill, and there are long, arterial roads branching out in each direction from the centre point, creating an almost-perfectly circular city. I, located in the north-west, was about an hour’s walk out of the city centre – just a short leisurely stroll, really! 😉

Along the way, I came across the Jalil Khayat mosque – built in the mid-2000s, it is a new piece of architecture in Erbil – but does it remind you of anywhere else?

The minarets on this mosque are actually modelled on those on Istanbul’s famous Blue Mosque!

Erbil’s ancient citadel, one of the city’s major attractions, was unfortunately closed for restoration works, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t admire it from afar! Underneath the hill it is situated on are a great number of random shops and tradespeople’s stores, as well as Erbil’s central bazaar, full of great-smelling spice stores and fresh fruit and vegetables.

Erbil is deceptively big, and thanks to its relatively-straightforward layout, eyeing up Google Maps to get somewhere (oh, this is just straight down that street, and just one left!), makes you think it’s a just a hop, skip, and a jump, when really, it takes an hour. By the time I’d wandered through most of Erbil’s centre, the sky was getting dark, and I decided to head back to the city’s north, ostensibly in search of food. The walk, which took me an additional 90 minutes, took me past sunset, and meant I walked back past the Jalil Khayat mosque again, this time lit up in beautiful green!

I decided the next morning to visit Erbil’s Christian district, Ankawa – an odd place where bottle shops and churches are in abundance, and the population is majority Assyrian as opposed to Kurdish. To get there, however, I had to navigate Erbil’s conspicuous lack of pathways and sidewalks, walk through several building sites, and cross a 6-lane highway with no crossings in sight. A slight ordeal, to say the least!

Recent federal Iraqi laws severely restricting the alcohol trade had repercussions even in autonomous Kurdistan, and the bottle shops in Ankawa were forced to close in the daytime during Ramadan – but their advertisements were still on full display outside, and were quite funny to look at when you realised that yes, you were actually still in Iraq!

I came across a variety of churches in Ankawa, from a wide array of Christian denominations – Chaldean Catholics, Syriacs, Roman Catholics, and even Anabaptists – highlighting the district’s status as a Christian enclave in Muslim Kurdistan. I bought a shawarma at a busy street stall – no Ramadan fasting here! – and sat on the curb side, watching the traffic go past, marvelling at this strange little piece of Iraq.

My new Aussie friend, Dale, had decided to come up to Erbil a day early, and texted me to let me know he was on his way. Taking my advice, he was staying at the same place I was, so I headed back in that direction to meet him there. Unfortunately, thanks to a delay in leaving, and the hold-up at the border, he ended up rocking up at 10pm – no problem though, as Erbil is buzzing all throughout the night! We spent the evening walking through some busy night markets I’d spotted the previous night, and ate at a restaurant owned by a Kurdish guy who had spent the last 10 years in Norway (and had the passport to show for it!), but had decided to return home to his family. He sat and talked with us, discussing the differences between Australia, Norway, and Kurdistan, what our lives were like, what places we’d visited. The food was amazing, and at the end of it all, he refused to take our money, telling us that he’d enjoyed the conversation too much!

My last stop in Erbil? Peaky Blinders Shawarma, a little shop on one of the city’s busy market streets, named because the guys who ran the shop loved the TV show, and decided to name their store after it – go figure!

A few hours later, after a quick rest, I headed out of Vote Hotel to the airport, for my flight to Amman. Remember Lahore Airport’s security? Erbil was a whole different level – before getting close to the airport, I had to step out of my taxi whilst it was searched for explosives with a detector dog. Then, I was dropped off at a ‘Departures’ building, which was located a large distance away from the actual airport (but this was the closest any private vehicles could come). Here, a passport check and security scan was conducted, before hopping on a bus, which finally took me to the airport itself – check-in, yet another security checkpoint, and finally, passport control. I’m glad I left 3 hours before my flight!

Next adventure – Jordan!