Author archive
24 October 2019
Killing time Today I fly to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt at 2120. I have time to kill after checkout till the flight. So it made sense for me to use my nice room to the max, till check-out. Since Istanbul is now quite familiar to me, it isn’t a wasted day in the marvellous […]
23 October 2019
Leaving Sulaymaniyah for Istanbul Shah organised a driver to take me to the airport between 0030 and 0100. He turned up fine, to my relief, and I was dropped off at the airport at 0100, which was 2h30 prior to my 0330 flight. There as an initial security screening in a container-like shed at the […]
22 October 2019
Museum fail Having done more than what I had intended yesterday, I’m relatively free today. My plan had been to go to Amna Suraka and the Museum today. But now, I only have the latter to attend to. I walked to the Museum getting there around 0940. The opening time is 0900. While it was […]
21 October 2019
Planning the day Today I wanted to go to Halabja and Ahmadawa waterfalls near to it. Manouk from Netherlands wanted to go to Halabja but wasn’t fussed about the waterfalls. But she really wanted to go to Amna Suraka first. Over my breakfast of tea and local pastries we checked with Shah by phone, who […]
20 October 2019
Like yesterday, I woke up at 0300 due to sleeping early. But fortunately I was able to fall asleep again until 0645. I packed and headed out to repeat yesterday’s breakfast of the burek-like pastry with a touch of hot water/syrup. That wasn’t quite enough for me so I ordered a foldover cheese pizza which […]
19 October 2019
Interesting breakfast With a departure time with Khalid of 0800, I headed out for breakfast at 0715. It was drizzling. Not many places were open. Kebab would seem to be the popular breakfast perhaps in an hour’s time but right now, all I could find were some pastries. I ordered one of the large pastries […]
18 October 2019
Moving to Duhok Today I move to Duhok (also spelt as Dohuk). It is close to the Syrian and Turkish borders and at this time, Syrian refugees are streaming in to escape from Turkish attacks in Syria under the Spring Peace operation. The information provided by my NGO contacts suggest that Duhok is safe. After […]
17 October 2019
The plan for the day was to make a daytrip to Rawanduz from Erbil. The information available suggested that I take public transport in the form of shared taxis to Soran and then change to a private taxi. After breakfast, I headed out around 0830 to hail a taxi to the shared taxi station. I […]
16 October 2019
First taste of Erbil I wandered out after a leisurely breakfast for my first taste of Erbil. I found my way to the citadel area about 20 mins walk away. The route from my hotel was through areas selling unattractive things like hardware. Around the base of the citadel was the city’s main square and […]
15 October 2019
Preparing for Iraqi Kurdistan My flight to a new adventure starting in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan departs at 1835 this evening. I thought I could do a bit of sightseeing this morning. But this is a familiar city and I’d just be largely repeating myself. And I have two late night departures coming in the next […]