Iraq – America's Finest Ambassador

: For years, getting your hands on an Iraqi tourist visa had been a very difficult endeavor. (Keep in mind that I’m talking about what’s often referred to as “Federal Iraq” here. The visa policy for the Kurdistan Region up north had already been much more open for probably the past fifteen years). In fact, I don’t think that they were very often granted unless said tourists were coming on an organized tour with a governmentally recognized tour company. Well, that all changed in March of 2021 when they lifted the old visa policy and started offering visa on arrival to citizens from 30-something countries around the world, US included. The visas could be obtained for $77USD on arrival at the airports in Baghdad, Najaf and Basra. From what I read during the planning phase of my trip to Iraq, pretty much everyone whose blogs I looked at had all arrived in Baghdad. My plans were a bit different. I wanted to start in the south in Basra and work my way north through Baghdad and end my trip in Erbil in the Kurdistan Region. Shown here on this map is roughly the route I took during February and March of 2022

Basra

: After leaving Egypt the afternoon before, I flew to Doha, Qatar, where I slept on the floor in the airport and woke up around 6 the next morning to catch my flight here to Basra International Airport

: Some helpful advice seen in the airport right after getting off the plane

: So, when I first made the decision to visit Iraq, I was leaning towards taking an official tour with a totally mapped-out 10-day itinerary but ended up changing my mind. I didn’t wanna be carted around from site to site at somebody else’s pace and all that sorta shit. I wanted something more authentic and chill. So, what I decided to do was reach out to a bunch of people on CouchSurfing in all the cities I planned on visiting to see if anyone wanted to hang out while I was there. Turns out, most of the people I contacted were college students who worked as tour guides on the side. So, basically, I would be taking a few tours after all, but was on my own getting from city to city and stuff like that. Anyway, this one guy named Abbas from Nasiriyah had been the most helpful to me in the planning of my trip. When I told Abbas that I’d be arriving to Basra, he told me that the government officials that work in the visa office in Basra International Airport were corrupt and might try to take my money. I took what he said with a grain of salt, figuring that as an experienced traveler, I could find a way around paying. He told me I probably wasn’t going to be able to get out of it. Unfortunately, as I sat here, I learned the hard way what he meant.

: So, there was only one plane-load of people that these visa guys needed to deal with when I was there and they left everyone who needed a visa sitting around in this room for 2-3 hours while they stood around and chatted

: Some of the other people who’d been sitting around waiting for visas had been a bunch of Chinese people who worked in the oil industry and, from the looks of it, took covid very seriously. Every last one of ’em was dressed like a fuckin astronaut

: As I sat there twiddling my thumbs, I took notice of this “Entery” sign

: I also noticed that out of all the officials there, the word “POLICE” had been misspelled on the uniform of only this one single guy whose uniform read “POLIEC”

: So, it turns out that the scam here is that the officials will not let tourists leave the airport until they’ve paid something they refer to as a “hotel fee” that costs $60USD. And that’s in addition to the $77USD cost of the visa on arrival. As you might be able to see, the receipt they give you for the hotel fee is a receipt from the Manawi Basha Hotel which is a real hotel that exists in Basra, but this fee has nothing to do with that hotel and will not be applied in any way, shape or form to you being able to stay at that hotel. The money goes directly into these guys’ pockets and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. At first I refused and they just left me sitting there in this visa room. I even called my guide Ahmed and had him talk to them, but they weren’t gonna budge. I could pay the extra $60 to enter or I could buy another plane ticket and fly out of Basra without ever entering the country. My options were clear. I eventually gave in and paid, and was handed this piece of paper as a reminder of how they bent me over and fucked me in the ass as soon as I got off the plane. Nice first impression of a country, no?

: Walking out through the 70s-ass lobby of Basra International Airport

: The first thing I noticed on the highway leading from the airport to the city (aside from the good quality of the roads) were the pictures of all the young men fixed to all the light poles. I asked my guide, Ahmed, who picked me up from the airport what they were for and he told me that they were all the local guys that died fighting ISIS

: And then also throughout the city, you see these sort of posters that say “ash-shahiid al-batal” (which is like “the hero martyr” and then the person’s name and the date they died. This particular fighter died on April 26, 2015

: Delicious lunch with Ahmed along the river. Ahmed was a nice-enough guy, but did not speak very much English which, as a professional guide, might hafta change if he wants his clients to have a deeper understanding of his city. I feel like there were a lot of misunderstandings between us as we switched off communicating to one another through my shitty Arabic and his shitty English. Don’t get me wrong, I had a pleasant time in Basra, but don’t feel like I learned all that much

: Ship in Shatt al-Arab that got bombed out in Saddam’s time and has remained there on its side since

: I asked Ahmed who this guy was on the window of gym next to a gas station we stopped at and he said, “I think his name is Arnold.”

: I liked a lot of the names of the fast food restaurants in Basra

: Look familiar?

: How ’bout this one?

: I had an awesome Oreo milkshake here at Nook Cafe in Basra

: Walking along the corniche of Shatt al-Arab for sunset

: Saddam’s yacht. I think this is the boat on which the video for Jay Z’s “Big Pimpin'” had been filmed

: We’d gone out on one of these boats for a short ride to watch the sunset

: Bunch of BMX bros doin tricks on their bikes. Typically not the sort of scene that comes to mind when I think of Iraq. Watching these guys do their thing definitely shattered a stereotype in my mind

: Grabbing a couple quick bowls of chickpeas

: Lookin down on the city from the roof of a hotel

: Visiting the Next Level gaming center which had just opened up in Basra. I think the original one had been open in Baghdad for a couple years already. They had all sorts of video games and pool tables and stuff there

: The owner of Next Level asked me to do some promo on his Instagram page for the place and in return gave us a pair of pistachio-flavored ice creams

: After Next Level, Ahmed and I went to meet some of his friends at this restaurant. I can’t remember the name of it. All of Ahmed’s friends were very welcoming and a few of them spoke really good English, so I had a pretty good time hanging out with these dudes for the night

: This is a photo of the guy in the yellow shirt from the photo previous with some US military generals sometime after the infamous 2003 invasion in search of WMDs

: The kid in the white shirt taking this selfie was named Yousef. He spoke perfect English and had studied or was studying to become an engineer. He wanted me to take him with me back to America. He was a nice dude, he…

: …gave us these donuts on the house

: Me and Ahmed at the fish market the following morning

: Fish mongers

: Rotten fish. In Egypt, I know the dish of rotten fish is called “faseekh” but I’m not sure what they call it in Iraq. The idea though is to leave the fish out to rot for about thirty days and then it’s consumed thereafter. They say that there’s always the risk of botulism, but the taste is apparently so good that some people are willing to risk it all just for one more bite. Definitely not for me, but to each their own

: One guy in one of the fish stalls offered me a cup of tea and was pointing out on this poster all the fish that he sold from his stall. I saw the words “mullet” and “vagina” right by each other and couldn’t resist

: Goat head soup, anyone?

: Fruit vendor

: Fez boy

: I found a guy selling some of the old bills with Saddam on ’em and snagged me a few

: Man posing proudly in front of the banner for his restaurant

: Chicken coup in the market

: Another chicken coup, complete with Imam Ali decor (more on him later)

: I saw this shirt and thought it was really lame and that no one would ever buy it, but two minutes after taking this picture I saw a guy in a nearby stall at the market wearing one

: After the market, we went over to the Basra Museum which was built into one of Saddam’s many mansions he had all over the country. This is the ceiling in the foyer

: I’m no history buff and had a hard time paying attention to anything I was seeing and reading while in this museum, but my attention was caught by this here series of ancient Mesopotamian dildos

: I was equally enthralled by these ancient sex toys resembling human fists

: What Saddam liked the locks on his doors to look like

: I was chillin out on Saddam’s balcony when I took notice of this woodwork up above. Don’t those wooden things remind you of breasts?

: After the museum, we went over to the old part of Basra to check out some other museums

: The door leading into this museum featured a nice pair of knockers (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). The knocker on the left, the one that Ahmed is touching, is smaller than the one on the right and as such would make different sounds when used. So, I think the smaller one was used by women guests and the bigger one by male guests. And whoever was inside, when they hear the sound of the women’s knocker, a female from the house would answer the door. If a male knocker sound was heard, one of the men would come open the door

: Speaking of knockers, doesn’t this old bell in the museum kinda look like a robot with big boobs?

: Building we explored in the old city

: Painting from an art gallery we went into

: Art gallery manager drawing on the dirt on that window there

: The tiles I was standing on out on that second-floor balcony from the photo previous

: In the south of Iraq, there seems to be lots of support for Iranian-backed militias. As such, there were quite a few billboards mourning the death of Qassim Suleimani, whom the US blew up a couple years back as he was leaving the airport in Baghdad

: Here’s a billboard of Mr. Suleimani blowing up the Capitol building

: I went here and got drunk on Nutella

: Bull Burger. Being from Chicago, I know that logo quite well. I love how copyright laws don’t apply here. Forgot the name of that dish Ahmed and I were having during our last meal together, but it was pretty good

: -Fancy some coffee? -Oh, don’t mind if I do!

: The best way to get from city to city in Iraq is not by bus, but by shared taxi. One passenger in front, three in back. Depending on the distance between the cities and whether you sat in front or in back (I took the front seat every time), I’d pay somewhere between like 8 and 15 dollars for a ride. This is where I said goodbye to Ahmed

Nasiriyah/Ur

: Here at this oil refinery between Basra and Nasiriyah, you can see the flames at the top of the oil rig. What they’re burning there is the natural gas that comes up with the oil. They call this action “flaring” and the chemicals released into the air from this action are said to be the cause behind the unusually high cancer rate in the Basra area. They say that the natural gas Iraq burns from flaring would be enough to power three million homes, but they say they don’t have the funds to build whatever they’d have to build to collect it instead of just burning it off. That logic makes sense at first until I also learned that Iraq spends billions of dollars each year importing natural gas from neighboring Iran

: Decor on the walls in the hallway at my hotel in Nasiriyah

: My complimentary water at the hotel. Instead of in bottles, a lot of water in Iraq comes in these typa containers

: On the right is my guide Abbas and on the left is his friend, Sajad, who also works as a guide. And they’re also both studying to be pharmacists. If you care to contact them to inquire about their services, their respective Instagrams are abbas._.00 and slimgody . Both of these guys are very intelligent and passionate about knowing their own country inside and out. They both also aspire to travel around the world once they’re done exploring every nook and cranny of Iraq. And yes, they’re both fluent in English. I’d have to recommend Abbas over Sajad because Abbas is my guy and helped me out, but you’d definitely also have a very very good trip if you were to hire Sajad

: Abbas took me to this parking garage that used to be a movie theater owned by Jewish people. He said that when the Jewish people had left, since movies are considered haram, the Islamic people in Nasiriyah thought it was a good idea to just hollow it out and park cars in there

: First time I’ve ever seen an M&M-flavored drink. Sajad warned me not to buy it. He said it sucked, but I was curious and had to check it out for myself. He was right. It wasn’t as good as…

: …good old-fashioned chocolate milk.

: The three big words on this sign say something like, “Scared people don’t make freedom,” – “freedom” being the word in red. I really can’t write about this subject authoritatively, but just need to mention it here. Abbas and Sajad said that a couple years back they had been part of a huge months-long protest calling for government reform and for less restrictive rules imposed on society by all the local powers that be. Here in Haboubi Square which had been the center of the protests where Abbas and Sajad had lived in tents for months alongside other protesters fighting for the same things (some of whom ended up getting killed), they cried the day that this sign was hung over the square

: The next morning, we headed out to visit the ancient city of Ur. Here’s a guy I saw on the side of the road in Nasiriyah selling live fish out of that makeshift pool

: In between Nasiriyah and Ur is Nasiriyah Central Prison which is a maximum security facility built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 2008 for $49million USD. According to Abbas, it is the prison where a lot of captured ISIS fighters and other alleged terrorists are locked up waiting to be hanged

: The Ziggurat of Ur was constructed in the 21st century BC, but had a new brick facade laid over it under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s

: Gettin ziggy wit it

: Abbas lookin out into the great wide open

: Me and the man discussing what sort of conversation we’d be having if we’d been standing atop the very same structure 4000 years ago

: I could just be pullin this outta my ass and I’m sorry for giving anyone the wrong information if I am, but I think I remember Abbas telling me that this building had been used as a sort of courthouse to resolve conflicts in the ancient civilization of Ur. Sorry, I’m not too good at historical stuff

: Ancient writing on one of the bricks in the building shown in the photo previous

Chibayesh

: After visiting the Ziggurat of Ur, Abbas and I started heading towards the town of Chibayesh to visit the surrounding marshes. Here’s a motorcycle-driving baby I saw along the way

: I think that this kind of boat is known as a “mashoof”

: Me, Abbas and Haider, the boat driver. One thing I asked Abbas during this trip is if it was common for parents to help arrange the marriages of their children in and around Nasiriyah. He said it was probably about half and half. He said he personally wants to find and marry someone he loves and can get along with whereas his brother chose the traditional tribal way, having their mom find a wife for him. I then told Abbas that I tried asking Ahmed the same question back in Basra. And Ahmed didn’t understand the question. His response to me was that, “No, I don’t want to live with my parents. Because I want to have sex with my wife in the kitchen.”

: Laying out the picnic blanket inside this structure on a little island in the marshes

: Haider cookin up some fresh fish for lunch

: This fish prepared this way is referred to as “masgoof”

: Sajad and a couple girls came in another boat driven by Haider’s dad

: Time to dig in

: Now, no one was currently living on the first little island-thingy that we visited, but that’s not the case for the second island-thingy we were going to visit which had been populated by a family with a lotta kids

: The crib. While I was there – and I neglected to take a picture of it – they showed me this device they use to go fishing. It was this sort of battery-like thing hooked up to wires that they throw in the water around the boat and it electrically shocks to death all the fish in the water around them as far as…I dunno…a couple meters away, maybe?

: Ducks

: Island kids giving me weird looks

: Livestock

: Haider pushing the boat away from the island as we made our departure

: Water buffalo

: We stopped back into Chibayesh town to pick up some food for dinner. While we were on the shore, a group of kids wanted to show me the toys they were playing with. It was basically a plastic bottle with a little sand in it, tied to a plastic bag which served as a parachute

: The game was to just throw it in the air and watch it float back down to the ground

: A parachute toy of the past hung up on the powerlines?

: Pile of dead-ass fish

: Fire burning in the distance

: Heading back out to go camp on the same island-thingy where we ate lunch. According to wikipedia, “Al-Chibayish was home to about 11,000 people in 1955. Al-Chibayish’s population dropped to less than 6,000 by 2003 as a result of Saddam Hussein’s draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes and his associated campaign of violence against the Marsh Arabs, during which Al-Chibayish was attacked by military helicopters. However, the population recovered and quintupled between 2001 and 2009, when it reached an estimated 30,416 people.”

: Chicken dinner bein roasted over the fire. While we were chillin here, Haider the boat man told us that there’s a local guy who lives around there named Nabeel. And legend has it that Nabeel has a penis that is over a meter long and that all the local people go and knock on the door at Nabeel’s house asking him to see it. Of course, the rest of the night, any time we heard a frog jump into the water or the sound of a water buffalo splashing about, we joked that it was Nabeel coming to get us with his big huge monster dick

: Haider ended up sleeping in his boat, Abbas & Sajad shared a tent and I slept…

: …out here. My original plan had been to sleep inside that structure thingy where we ate lunch and that’s exactly where I set my stuff up when we got to the island around sunset. However, when I went to go get something from my bag a half-an-hour later, my bag and all my sleeping stuff were completely covered in the biggest cockroaches that I’d ever seen. I went back and told the guys and they said it’d be better to move my shit out there. So I did. And thankfully that was it for the cockroaches. But…

: …the next morning, I woke up to find all my shit the absolute wettest any of my shit has ever gotten from condensation while camping.

Najaf

: Had to pick up some chocolate milks for the ride from Nasiriyah to Najaf

: Trunk rider

: The driver of my shared taxi from Nasiriyah to Najaf was a man of very few words, but a kind man that looked out for me. Here about halfway through the ride where we stopped for food, I had no idea how to order and he must’ve taken notice of this. So, (wordlessly) he indicated I follow him to a table. He ordered a bunch of food for us to eat and didn’t let me pay anything. And then when we got to Najaf, once all of the other passengers had gotten off at the normal drop-off point, he took me to and dropped me off at the front door of my hotel

: Painted on the wall a bit down the block from the hotel where I was staying in Najaf. Just for the record, I did not have a guide here in Najaf. I was on my own

: Doin the peepee dance

: Breakfast the next morning in Najaf

: In Najaf they got this cemetery called Wadi as-salaam and it’s said to be the biggest in the world. It’s about 2.3 square miles and contains about 8 million dead bodies. So, back before I said goodbye to Abbas and Sajad, they told me that this hotel right here (it’s not the one I was staying at) is the best for getting a good view of this massive cemetery. They said the way to do it is to just walk right in like you’re staying at the place, get up to the top floor and then find the staircase to the roof and go check it out. So, my plan was to do just that. When I walked in I acted like I belonged but got a suspicious look from the guy at the front desk. A couple minutes later I was up on the roof looking out over the cemetery about to take a picture when I was caught by security and brought back to the lobby where I got bitched at and threatened with a call to the police by the manager. He eventually let me go, telling me to never come back to that hotel.

: A bit down the street from the hotel I just talked about is the Imam Ali Shrine which is one of the holiest places in the Shia branch of Islam. The entrance to the right here is for the men and the women go to the left for initial security screening

: The outer area around the shrine where it’s still okay to have your shoes on

: Before you enter the shrine proper at this point and go through another set of metal detectors, you gotta take your shoes off. Now, there are counters where you hand some people your shoes and they put them into a little cubby with a number on it and then they hand you a little chip with the corresponding number on it and that’s where I originally went, but for some reason the guy turned me away. So, I ended up just leaving my flip flop sandals here with those belonging to a bunch of other people

: Imam Ali Mosque

: When I went back out after visiting the mosque, my flip flops were no longer in the place where I had left them. I didn’t think anyone would steal them because they’re shitty ones I got while traveling like five years ago, but they were clearly gone. So, I couldn’t leave this place without footwear, so I’d been walking back and forth for like ten minutes lookin around when I felt something plop on the top of my head. I reached up and felt it and it turned out to be a massive bird dump. So, long story short, about five minutes later, I found my flip flops, left the shrine, and took a cab back to my hotel where I jumped in the shower for a quick rinse-off before my 12 noon checkout time

: After I showered the shit off my head and checked out of the hotel, I was walking down the street planning on going to this falafel place I ate dinner at the night before so I could grab a quick lunch before taking a shared taxi to Karbala. When I got there, much to my dismay, I saw it wouldn’t be open for another couple hours. I kept walking down the block with no particular destination in mind. A man had been walking towards me and I stopped him to ask (this whole exchange was in Arabic) if he knew of a falafel place. He said he did and started taking me to the place from where I just came. I stopped him and told him I just checked that place and that they’re closed at the moment. He acknowledged me and then said he had an idea. He hailed the next taxi that came by, told the driver the name of a restaurant and told me to get in. He then handed the driver the money for the fare. I told him no, that I’d like to pay. He insisted and said ahlan wasahlen. I was then driven to this restaurant which was very busy at the time where…

: …I ended up having one of the best meals of the whole trip

Karbala

: When I arrived in Karbala from Najaf, I walked a couple miles to my hotel from where the cab driver had dropped me off. This is just one street scene along the way

: After I got settled in my hotel, I had a couple hours’ rest before getting back up to go visit some more holy shrines, this time the Imam Husayn Shrine and/or the al-Abbas Shrine. Anyway, during my rest, turns out a pretty bad dust storm was blowin into town. This is what it looked like. Also, that lady in front of me is reaching back and giving my camera the middle finger

: Inside of…I think this was al-Abbas and not the Imam Husayn shrine, but I’m not sure

: Went out for pizza to this restaurant after a brief visit to the shrine. I overheard a few of these guys talking and they said they thought I was Russian. When I was leaving, I straightened ’em out and…

: …the guy in the yellow shirt wanted to come back to America with me. I told him okay, but only if he’s willing to go in my bag. He said that that works for him. The cashier sitting down on the left told me I shouldn’t take that guy because he’s “da’ahsh” or “an ISIS militant.” And the guy in the yellow shirt said, “No way! Not me!” And the rest of the guys made fun of him and laughed at his expense while I said goodbye and left

: By the time I got back to the hotel, everything I was wearing had been left absolutely filthy from the dust storm

: Also, even though I’d been wearing a mask while outside, my nose had been bleeding just from breathing in all the dry dusty air

: Breakfast the next morning at my hotel in Karbala. All the south Asian employees at this place were dressed like inmates

: The next morning, the weather was much nicer. Before leaving town, I made a quick visit back to the shrines with the guy on the left who worked at the hotel and the guy on the right who was from Saudi Arabia and spoke pretty good English from years of working with Americans in the oil industry

: as-salaam aleikum

Babylon

: This is one of the most hilarious inventions I’ve ever seen. This photo was taken in the car of my driver from Karbala to Babylon, but I’d seen it in other cars as well. Like, a lot of the intercity taxis were not old broken-down pieces of shit. They were American-made cars from 2019 or newer and all had those annoying, dinging seatbelt alarms going off if either the driver didn’t have a belt on or if there was a person in the passenger seat who didn’t have a belt on. So, instead of just wearing the fucking seatbelts, Iraqis have these things that you can click into the seatbelt thing to trick the system into thinking that the driver and the passenger have their belts on when they really don’t

: A replica of the original Ishtar Gate – entrance to the ancient city of Babylon

: Modern reconstruction of what Babylon probably used to look like

: One of Saddam’s palaces overlooks the ancient ruins of Babylon. According to Wikipedia, “Hussein installed a portrait of himself and Nebuchadnezzar at the entrance to the ruins and inscribed his name on many of the bricks, in imitation of Nebuchadnezzar. One frequent inscription reads: ‘This was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.'”

: Portrait of Imam Ali at a small mosque I visited not too far away from Babylon. Earlier in this post, I promised more information on Imam Ali and although I’ll uphold that promise, I can’t personally provide that information because I don’t know what I’m talking about. But after reading several answers on Quora about who this man was and why he’s so beloved in Shia Islam, I discovered this answer from someone in the know who succinctly explains in layman’s terms exactly who Imam Ali was… https://qr.ae/pG6Cuc

Baghdad

: I’d originally planned on spending three days in Baghdad and seeing a bunch of stuff and then doing the same thing in Mosul a few days later, but by this point in the trip I’d become so mentally exhausted that I really couldn’t handle any more sightseeing and cancelled the tour I had set up here and in Mosul. The photo of this meal from the hotel I stayed at (the prices of hotels here seemed to be four times that of every other city I visited along the way) is the only photo that I ended up taking in the capital of Iraq

Samarra

: Through the guide that I was going to use in Mosul (Instagram: othman_anees), I hired a private driver to pick me up in Baghdad, make a brief stop in the city of Samarra to visit the Malwiya Minaret and then to take me up north through Mosul and over to the city of Erbil which is the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region. I think the cost was like $120USD or something like that. Here is a photo of my driver, Waseem, heading towards his filthy-ass Obama that had gotten just as dirty as I had during the dust storm the other night in Karbala. I said “Obama” because that’s the word that Iraqis seemed to use when referring to their American-made cars. “I drive a 2020 Obama,” for example. Or Waseem might say somethin like, “Ahn-dii Obama soh-dah,” which would be, “I have a black Chrystler.”

: Marlboro-lookin Kleenex container in Waseem’s ride

: A bunch of people have asked me since I got back if I felt scared at all while I was in Iraq – if I was afraid of getting kidnapped or getting my head chopped off or whatever. And the truth is that I did so much research before coming that I felt now was as safe of a time that you’ll ever get to take an independent trip across Iraq. And true to my research, I did end up feeling safe the entire time. Everyone I met went out of their way to make sure that I had everything I needed as a guest in their country. Of course, I’m not an ignorant retard and know that there are people there that would like to do me harm, but it’s a calculated risk. I rolled the dice and came out clean on the other end. If there was one thing that genuinely scared me here though, it was the driving. So, when they ask me, I tell everybody that if I was going to get killed while I was visiting Iraq on this particular trip, it wasn’t gonna be at the hands of terrorists, it would’ve been on the roads here. The intercity taxi guys regularly drove 100mph and it wasn’t unusual to see shit like this truck flipped over in the middle of the highway as I made my way across the country

: Three classic Iraqi icons as seen at one of the many military checkpoints they got along all the highways over there – the national flag, a portrait of Imam Ali and the Malwiya Minaret which I was about to go see

: The Malwiya Minaret (meaning the “twisted” minaret, or the “snail shell” minaret) is one of the images that really stood out to me when I first started looking into visiting the country over ten years ago. I thought it would be so cool to climb and, although my plans to visit got put on the back burner indefinitely, I never forgot about this place

: The Malwiya Minaret is made of sandstone and was completed in 852AD. It stands at 171 feet (52m) tall and visitors can walk up the spiraling ramp around the side that doesn’t offer any handrails along the way to keep you from tumbling off the side

: Wedding cake lookin ass

: Me and my driver Waseem. I tried to convince him to come to the top with me, but he got spooked after a couple minutes of walking up the ramp, turned around and told me he’d wait for me down at the bottom

: This is what the view looked like from the spiraling staircase

: At the end of the spiraling staircase, you gotta climb up this little tunnel to get to the top

: View from the top

: Local guy I met up there and chatted with for awhile

: When I came back down, this reporter guy spotted me and wanted to interview me for his television program. I obliged

Mosul

: Only photo I took while driving through Mosul. Great to see people out and about everywhere and life going on like normal, but buildings all over the place were riddled with bullet holes, leaving a clear reminder that it really hadn’t been that long ago when ISIS was in town

Kurdistan Region

: The checkpoint dividing Federal Iraq and Kurdistan Autonomous Region

: Chillin near the Citadel of Erbil

: These two bros had both recently gotten nose jobs and were takin a bunch of photos of one another with the bandages on their faces

: A nod to the Peshmerga

: I’d been craving Mexican food for a couple weeks, so I found a place in Erbil that serves it. Wasn’t bad but the portions were disappointingly small for the price I paid

: Out to dinner at a falafel restaurant for my first meeting with Kurdish guide, Mustafa (Instagram: mustafa_khursheed_)

: Outside the restaurant, a woman came up and asked us for money. Mustafa asked her if she was hungry. He told me, “If people are hungry, I will buy them food. If they come up and ask me for money that they might go and spend on other bullshit aside from food, then I turn them down.” In this case, the woman actually was hungry and he ran back in the restaurant to put in a falafel order for her

: Desserts at another place while we discussed plans for the next day’s excursion out to the countryside. Ya see, one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Iraq was to climb Mt. Halgurd (3607m) which is the tallest mountain fully within the country. But about 3-4 days before my arrival to Kurdistan, the mountain guides I’d been in contact with told me that Halgurd had recently gotten dumped on by a ton of snow and it wouldn’t be cool to make a summit attempt for at least a couple weeks afterward. This was a major bummer and I didn’t have any backup plans at the time, but reached out to my guide Abbas back in Nasiriyah and he referred me to Mustafa. Honestly, even though I really woulda liked to have climbed that mountain, I’m glad the way things worked out. We ended up having a pretty good time together

: Some royal decor in the lobby of my hotel

: Mohamed, a guard outside a hotel I met while wandering around looking for a place to get a massage with a happy ending. He told me that his father had been a soldier but that he never wanted to take the same route. He said that he had a political science degree and wanted to do international work with politicians and NGOs but that opportunities are very limited which is why he ended up taking a job as a security guard for $400USD a month while, he said, some of his classmates who did end up getting political-type jobs earn around $2000 a month

: Very good Thai massage. Ask for Emmy. She knows how to leave her customers satisfied 😏

: Hey bro!

: Let the field trip begin

: Snack shop

: Jacker chips with extra wank sauce

: Gettin more into the mountains

: I love seeing this brand pickup truck. This one and “GREAT WALL”

: Mustafa and his buddy Mohamed who served as our driver. Both of them are architecture students due to graduate this upcoming spring

: Mustafa peepin the view

: Now that’s what I call a gorge!

: Bosses

: Back-2-back

: Headin towards Bekhal Waterfall

: Little touristy summer resort area around the waterfalls

: Bakhal Waterfall

: Just a little bit of hiking down into what I believe had been Rawandiz Gorge

: Little bit deeper in

: What a beautiful spot

: Flexin

: Lunch with the guys

: Mustafa explaining to me the flag of Iraqi Kurdistan. The red represents the martyrs and all the “blood tax” they’ve paid to save their lands. The white is for peace. The green is for the nature, the mountains and the landscape. The sun symbolizes life and has 21 beams radiating from it to symbolize the 21st of March which is “Newroz” or New Year on the Kurdish calendar