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The beauty and tragedy of Iraqi Kurdistan
It's "a Middle Eastern Montana with ruins: a cooler, welcoming tableau of crisp mountain streams and scrappy peaks."
Each week, we spotlight a dream vacation recommended by some of the industry's top travel writers. This week's pick is Iraqi Kurdistan.
(Image credit: Courtesy image)
Iraqi Kurdistan could become a great travel destination — "if people would only stop confusing it with the Iraq they see in the news," said Tim Neville at The New York Times. That might be a tall order, given Iraq's bloody recent history. But the semiautonomous Kurdistan region, in the country's northeast corner, is nothing like battered, dusty Mosul. It's "a Middle Eastern Montana with ruins: a cooler, welcoming tableau of crisp mountain streams and scrappy peaks." The local tourism industry was dealt a near-fatal blow in 2014, when ISIS pushed into the region. But following the jihadist group's collapse, Kurdistan is again becoming a place where a traveler can ride a gondola to ski slopes or kayak on a calm mountain lake. What's more, "you can stroll around Erbil, the regional capital, concerned with only how to decline, politely, invitations to drink tea."
I spent a week exploring the region last spring with Balin Zrar, a charismatic, chain-smoking guide from Kurdistan Iraq Tours. At Erbil's bustling bazaar, I stuck my nose into sacks of za'atar and sumac and watched two teen lovebirds — "she in a hijab, he in jeans" — kiss behind a tree in a park. We also visited Mar Mattai, one of the world's oldest Christian monasteries, which clings to the side of a mountain. "On a clear day a visitor can stand against its fortress-like walls and discern far below the winsome farmlands of Upper Mesopotamia." Outside the city of Dohuk, I walked the battlefield where in 331 B.C. Alexander the Great routed the forces of Persian King Darius III, a victory that allowed Alexander to build an empire stretching from Greece to Pakistan.
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Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
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War will always haunt Kurdistan. My whole trip oscillated between "breathtaking beauty" and "heartbreaking anguish." We danced in shin-deep water at the Gali Ali Begg waterfall, then visited the city of Halabja, where in 1988 Saddam Hussein murdered as many as 5,000 Kurds in a chemical gas attack. Standing in the husk of one of Saddam's lavish palaces, I gazed across endless peaks stretching toward Turkey. Later, I met the 25-year-old founder of a kayaking club who hopes to one day open an outdoor shop in Erbil. "When there is no war in my country," he said, "Kurdistan is the best place."
