Mar Thomas church It was a very foggy morning when we had breakfast at Baron Hotel’s rooftop restaurant.  There was a Taiwanese group there. The idea had been to go to Mar Matai (St Matthew) monastery out of town first before returning to see places closer to the hotel.  But with the dense fog, it […]

Getting to Samarra After the hotel’s simple breakfast, we walked to the Tikrit garage that had cars to Samarra.  Because we wanted to go to both Samarra’s mosque (which is closed for restoration) plus the one at Abu Dulaf, we couldn’t get a straight up fare. It was a hassle haggling with the various drivers.  […]

Above:  Taq Kisra. Travelling in comfort Today we travel in comfort from Karbala to Taq Kisra and then Baghdad’s Alawi Garage, using a car and driver.  Such a routing would be possible with baggage and public transport.  And once in Baghdad, we would try get a shared ride to Tikrit. Our driver arrived at the […]

Karbala to Babylon Today is the day we go visit one of the cradles of civilisation, Babylon. We left our Karbala hotel by foot around 0900, after breakfast, headed to the garage which had minivans for Hilla.  It was about a 30 min walk and we were fortunate to find a van that was nearly […]

Imam Ali’s shrine by day For a change, our Najaf hotel didn’t have breakfast available.  We shared an instant noodle and I poured some coffee into my muesli to complete the deal. It was around 0900 when we were ready to depart Najaf but had an hour till the hotel’s check-out time.  E had wanted […]

Nasiriyah to Najaf As we were somewhat ahead of plan, and in consideration of only a 3h ride to Najaf today, we took things easy this morning.  We left our packing till this morning and left the hotel at 1015 for the garage. We made our way through traffic to the garage and waited for […]

Getting to Chibayish marsh Today we go to the marshes of Chibayish to see the homeland of the Marsh Arabs.  We walked to the station which had cars to Chibayish and managed to get seats in a nearly-full van, which then left rather promptly around 0915. Just like in Yemen, passengers pay their fare to […]

Baghdad to Nasiriyah This morning, we left Baghdad after the lifting of the two-day curfew at 0001.  Bound for Nasiriyah, we arrived at the Alawi Garage at 0835 as there was plenty of information suggesting that this was the southbound garage for taxis. Unfortunately, despite corroborating different sources of information, it was the wrong garage […]