2023-05-31. Dukan - Erbil

Iran - Iraqi Kurdistan - Turkey - Greece - Albania

Tonight it rained but at 2/4 of 6 the sun is already shining and I wake up.
I take a walk around the place, it's beautiful but it's a shame about the crap that's everywhere.
After a while, Lucas also wakes up, we have breakfast and say goodbye and that we will talk to each other to see if we meet somewhere else.

At 9 o'clock in the morning at 600 meters high we are at 30°C in the shade but the air is cool.
To go to Erbil I take a nice and little traveled road. I stop to make a very hot and sweet but very good tea. Right in front is a small mosque with a water dispenser for drinking, there are many places where you can drink filtered water for free and sometimes it is chilled and there are cups or tubes for one use.

Later on I take an even more local road and I meet a military checkpoint of fishermen who I guess are surprised that I go to Erbil this way and not on the national road, they ask for my passport and take it to their boss who asks to speak to me . They accompany me to a barracks and the boss asks me several questions, I go down again and when I'm downstairs with the guard who carries a Kalashnikov (how I wish I could take a photo) I ask him if they invite me to make tea and he takes me back up to the shack that serves as a kitchen while he warns the people above with the walkie-talkie. The soldier who is the cook serves me the tea, I thank him and tell him that the pot he has on the fire smells very good and he asks me if I want some, I say no and thank him again, I go down one more time and continue the route.

Arriving in Erbil (capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), I go to the center and stop in front of a shop that has a good awning that makes a good shade. The shopkeeper next door approaches and asks me if he can help me, I tell him that I'm looking for a hotel with a good price, he tells me where to go but a man passing by on the street takes me to the Harem Hotel, 30,000 IQD (€20) with shower, breakfast, parking, wifi and they have electricity 24 hours (now I understand because I have seen generators in many places). I use it to wash clothes.

I go out for lunch and enter a place where you can see tables inside with people eating, they tell me they have chicken with rice, perfect, but we start bringing more dishes: soup with beans, tomato sauce, another dish with vegetables with sauce, bread, water and melon. All together for 6,000 dinars.

I walk through the bazaar and on the street of mobile phone shops I go into one and ask for a SIM and when it costs, they tell me that the Fastlink is worth 5,000 for the card and 18,000 for 30 days with unlimited data. We put it on and it works the first time.

I walk to a park and sit on the grass in the shade and have a video conference with the family, what a difference in speed and without the need to turn on the VPN.
Before the sun goes down I head back to the hotel.