Monday really did end up being some sort of epic travel day. Our Ani tour guide, Celil, took us to the Kars airport. So we started the day in northeastern Turkey. We flew to Ankara, in west-central Turkey, where we caught our connecting flight to Mardin, in southeastern Turkey. (Sadly, we didn't make it to Batman, Turkey, which is near Mardin, although Brian and I were campaigning for it early in the travel planning.)
At this point, our travel plans became much more sketchy. Our plans were to catch a taxi from the airport to a bus that would take us to Silopi (the Turkish border town) in 3-ish hours, at which point we would get a taxi and attempt the border crossing. We were informed to expect anywhere from 2-4 hours for the crossing between Turkey and Iraq, and then we would have to hire an Iraqi taxi to take us as far into Kurdish Iraq as we could get, depending on how late it was. Since we landed in Mardin at 2.30 in the afternoon and the buses only ran a few times per day, we really weren't sure how far we would get. We had several cities scouted out: Zakho, the Iraq border town, was the worst case scenario and Dohuk, which was about an hour or so into Kurdistan, if we could make it that far. Best case scenario, but one that we thought was unlikely, was to get all of the way to Erbil, which is quite far into Iraq (3-4 hours). Erbil was also a stretch since, depending on which road the taxi driver chose to take to Erbil, we would drive through Mosul, which would be bad news bears.
So, we dove into the taxi melee outside of the Mardin airport and somehow ended up with a taxi driver who spoke no English, but did speak- wait for it- German. Heh. So, me and my puny little German skills went to work attempting to get us from the airport to the bus. Once he knew we wanted to go to Silopi, he offered to take us all of the way to Silopi directly in the taxi, which for sure would be faster than the bus. And, he upped the offer and said he'd arrange for us to meet a driver that would take us over the border into Iraq. After some Middle-Eastern-style negotiations that nearly sank my German knowledge and frayed my nerves (I hate conflict, even in the form of bargaining!), we agreed and hopped into the taxi.
The weather was very hazy, so we couldn't see much in the distance, but we drove past field after field of super-saturated green spring wheat. It was really beautiful. Suddenly, I noticed that there were what looked like lifeguard stations every 100 m the fields to the right. I thought it was interesting that they wanted to watch their wheat that much. Until the taxi driver explained that we were driving on the border with Syria. And that the stations were guard stations. And that the fields were mine fields. Yikes! There went my pastoral images of the scenery...
About 45 minutes in the drive, we pulled over on the side of the highway. For no apparent reason. And then we were joined by another taxi. Our driver and the other driver had a long discussion. At the conclusion, they offered to arrange for us to go wherever we wanted to go in Iraq- directly. We asked how much to Erbil. After another long conference, we were given a price, which was too much.
At this point, we're standing on the side of the highway along the border with Syria in 90 F heat, and I'm caught in the middle of a negotiation in German with a Turkish taxi driver and 2 of his friends and my friends. They are pressuring me to make a choice quickly since we have a long way to go, and Jessi and Brian aren't budging on the price. After 10 minutes of this, basically I almost had a meltdown. However, we pulled out in the end with a compromise. Until they wanted us to pay everything up front, when we were 45 minutes into a 10 hour ride. Thankfully, that was also negotiated to our satisfaction to pay some now and some upon arrival in Erbil (since we weren't sure if Jessi and Brian's Israeli visas would cause us to be turned away at the border). And we got the original taxi driver's name and number as assurance. Let me tell you, I never pictured that negotiations in German would be part of this vacation, especially since numbers in German are one of the things that I struggle with the most, but I guess I'm glad that I've learned as much as I have. (For a while, the taxi driver kept on correcting me when I would make a mistake. While we were negotiating. I could have killed him. Instead I told him that I had only been learning German for two months. At which point he backed down a little. And used smaller words. Thankfully.)
We then were transferred into the second taxi. We definitely did not have any language in common with this driver, but we hoped that everything was above-board and that we'd get where we wanted to go. After another 45 minutes drive, we pulled over again at the side of the highway and were transferred to another vehicle. Since no one spoke English, we sort of just followed our bags and assumed that things would work out. The van that we got into was quite decked out- blankets and pillows and such on the seats. And a bathroom-style deodorizer that was attached to the wall of the van and that would spritz us every 10 minutes for the next 8 hours. I tell you, that taxi driver was taking it to the next level!
We had a brief stop for tea and a snack in Silopi. Basically our driver ushered us into a tea place, ordered us tea and disappeared with our passports. We found out later that he was making copies of our passports and filling out forms that we would need for the crossing. (When you hire a taxi to take you across, they take care of all of the papers and shepherd you through the process, which is helpful.)
Once he was done with his errands, we got back in the car for the last little drive to the border. For the last few miles before the border, there were literally bumper-to-bumper semis sometimes 3 or 4 rows deep waiting to cross the border into Iraq. (Thankfully semis have separate lanes from cars...) It was really incredible! Hearing that this border is busy is one thing and seeing hundreds of semis sitting for miles waiting to go through the border is quite another. It looked like many of the semis were planned to camp out for days to make the crossing!
We made it to the Turkish border right around 6.30 pm, apparently when the Turkish side closes for dinner. After 45 minutes of so, someone finally returned from dinner to man the Turkish border station, which meant that we could get our stamps and proceed to the Iraqi border station! We crossed under the sign welcoming us to Iraqi Kurdistan just as the sun was setting. On the Iraqi side, the crossing was quite smooth. We sat in comfy leather recliners in a large hall while they looked at our passports and decided whether or not to give us 10-day travel visa. We got our visas and were in! This process was so much less painful than I was expecting- it probably only took 1.5 to 2 hours!
From there, we settled in for a long drive to Erbil. We had a slight confusion when our driver thought that we wanted to go to Mosul when we were just trying to make sure that we weren't, but we sorted it out. Our taxi driver and his driving buddy seemed to think that this was a big road trip- they stocked up on junk food and cigarettes and had a grand old time in the front seat. We had one random detour where they drove into a town, got out and went into an office, smoked a cigarette and talked with someone, and then came back out and continued on their way. I have to admit, at this point I was starting to get nervous every time we stopped, thinking that we were going to be handed off to yet another driver. Thankfully, we were in our last car of the day.
We stopped about an hour into Iraq for dinner at a sort of truck stop. And when I say dinner, I actually mean Kurdish feast. We had water, a salty milky drink that we found disagreeable, 6 or 7 plates of salad each, pickles, two types of soup (one of which was basically gravy), pitas, lamb and chicken kebabs, grilled veggies, probably a few things I am forgetting, and tea at the end. It didn't help that Brian attempted to order two lamb kebabs and one chicken kebab for the table, but we ended up with two lamb kebabs and one chicken kebab EACH. This was definitely my first meal at a restaurant in which I was served so many plates that they were stacked two deep. Luckily our driver guided us through the different foods, salting things that needed to be salted and demonstrating how to properly eat what we were given, including a bowl with a yogurt-cucumber mixture into which you poured water and added salt and stirred up to make a soup of sorts. It was all so surreal. Jessi and I were the only women in the place, which was rather painfully obvious, especially after a rather unfortunate incident in which one of the servers followed us into the women's bathroom and groped Jessi. Lovely.
After dinner, we hit the road with our chain-smoking drivers, who would pull over every so often to switch drivers. I was a little sad that we were missing all of the scenery driving in the dark, but to get to Erbil on the first day was really an even better scenario than we had imagined. We got into Erbil at 1 am. The hotels we had phone numbers for were full and our drivers were lost, so we ended up staying at a random hotel that we saw on the side of the road in Erbil. After basically being in taxis for 10 hours (after 4 hours of planes), we were so happy to find a hotel and sleep!
So, if you were following that, this means that we woke up in northeastern Turkey, flew to west-central Turkey and then to southeastern Turkey, drove along the Syrian border to Silopi, then drove from the Turkish-Iraqi border to Erbil. Our day's total travel distance was over 2000 km!
At this point, our travel plans became much more sketchy. Our plans were to catch a taxi from the airport to a bus that would take us to Silopi (the Turkish border town) in 3-ish hours, at which point we would get a taxi and attempt the border crossing. We were informed to expect anywhere from 2-4 hours for the crossing between Turkey and Iraq, and then we would have to hire an Iraqi taxi to take us as far into Kurdish Iraq as we could get, depending on how late it was. Since we landed in Mardin at 2.30 in the afternoon and the buses only ran a few times per day, we really weren't sure how far we would get. We had several cities scouted out: Zakho, the Iraq border town, was the worst case scenario and Dohuk, which was about an hour or so into Kurdistan, if we could make it that far. Best case scenario, but one that we thought was unlikely, was to get all of the way to Erbil, which is quite far into Iraq (3-4 hours). Erbil was also a stretch since, depending on which road the taxi driver chose to take to Erbil, we would drive through Mosul, which would be bad news bears.
So, we dove into the taxi melee outside of the Mardin airport and somehow ended up with a taxi driver who spoke no English, but did speak- wait for it- German. Heh. So, me and my puny little German skills went to work attempting to get us from the airport to the bus. Once he knew we wanted to go to Silopi, he offered to take us all of the way to Silopi directly in the taxi, which for sure would be faster than the bus. And, he upped the offer and said he'd arrange for us to meet a driver that would take us over the border into Iraq. After some Middle-Eastern-style negotiations that nearly sank my German knowledge and frayed my nerves (I hate conflict, even in the form of bargaining!), we agreed and hopped into the taxi.
The weather was very hazy, so we couldn't see much in the distance, but we drove past field after field of super-saturated green spring wheat. It was really beautiful. Suddenly, I noticed that there were what looked like lifeguard stations every 100 m the fields to the right. I thought it was interesting that they wanted to watch their wheat that much. Until the taxi driver explained that we were driving on the border with Syria. And that the stations were guard stations. And that the fields were mine fields. Yikes! There went my pastoral images of the scenery...
About 45 minutes in the drive, we pulled over on the side of the highway. For no apparent reason. And then we were joined by another taxi. Our driver and the other driver had a long discussion. At the conclusion, they offered to arrange for us to go wherever we wanted to go in Iraq- directly. We asked how much to Erbil. After another long conference, we were given a price, which was too much.
At this point, we're standing on the side of the highway along the border with Syria in 90 F heat, and I'm caught in the middle of a negotiation in German with a Turkish taxi driver and 2 of his friends and my friends. They are pressuring me to make a choice quickly since we have a long way to go, and Jessi and Brian aren't budging on the price. After 10 minutes of this, basically I almost had a meltdown. However, we pulled out in the end with a compromise. Until they wanted us to pay everything up front, when we were 45 minutes into a 10 hour ride. Thankfully, that was also negotiated to our satisfaction to pay some now and some upon arrival in Erbil (since we weren't sure if Jessi and Brian's Israeli visas would cause us to be turned away at the border). And we got the original taxi driver's name and number as assurance. Let me tell you, I never pictured that negotiations in German would be part of this vacation, especially since numbers in German are one of the things that I struggle with the most, but I guess I'm glad that I've learned as much as I have. (For a while, the taxi driver kept on correcting me when I would make a mistake. While we were negotiating. I could have killed him. Instead I told him that I had only been learning German for two months. At which point he backed down a little. And used smaller words. Thankfully.)
We then were transferred into the second taxi. We definitely did not have any language in common with this driver, but we hoped that everything was above-board and that we'd get where we wanted to go. After another 45 minutes drive, we pulled over again at the side of the highway and were transferred to another vehicle. Since no one spoke English, we sort of just followed our bags and assumed that things would work out. The van that we got into was quite decked out- blankets and pillows and such on the seats. And a bathroom-style deodorizer that was attached to the wall of the van and that would spritz us every 10 minutes for the next 8 hours. I tell you, that taxi driver was taking it to the next level!
We had a brief stop for tea and a snack in Silopi. Basically our driver ushered us into a tea place, ordered us tea and disappeared with our passports. We found out later that he was making copies of our passports and filling out forms that we would need for the crossing. (When you hire a taxi to take you across, they take care of all of the papers and shepherd you through the process, which is helpful.)
Once he was done with his errands, we got back in the car for the last little drive to the border. For the last few miles before the border, there were literally bumper-to-bumper semis sometimes 3 or 4 rows deep waiting to cross the border into Iraq. (Thankfully semis have separate lanes from cars...) It was really incredible! Hearing that this border is busy is one thing and seeing hundreds of semis sitting for miles waiting to go through the border is quite another. It looked like many of the semis were planned to camp out for days to make the crossing!
We made it to the Turkish border right around 6.30 pm, apparently when the Turkish side closes for dinner. After 45 minutes of so, someone finally returned from dinner to man the Turkish border station, which meant that we could get our stamps and proceed to the Iraqi border station! We crossed under the sign welcoming us to Iraqi Kurdistan just as the sun was setting. On the Iraqi side, the crossing was quite smooth. We sat in comfy leather recliners in a large hall while they looked at our passports and decided whether or not to give us 10-day travel visa. We got our visas and were in! This process was so much less painful than I was expecting- it probably only took 1.5 to 2 hours!
From there, we settled in for a long drive to Erbil. We had a slight confusion when our driver thought that we wanted to go to Mosul when we were just trying to make sure that we weren't, but we sorted it out. Our taxi driver and his driving buddy seemed to think that this was a big road trip- they stocked up on junk food and cigarettes and had a grand old time in the front seat. We had one random detour where they drove into a town, got out and went into an office, smoked a cigarette and talked with someone, and then came back out and continued on their way. I have to admit, at this point I was starting to get nervous every time we stopped, thinking that we were going to be handed off to yet another driver. Thankfully, we were in our last car of the day.
We stopped about an hour into Iraq for dinner at a sort of truck stop. And when I say dinner, I actually mean Kurdish feast. We had water, a salty milky drink that we found disagreeable, 6 or 7 plates of salad each, pickles, two types of soup (one of which was basically gravy), pitas, lamb and chicken kebabs, grilled veggies, probably a few things I am forgetting, and tea at the end. It didn't help that Brian attempted to order two lamb kebabs and one chicken kebab for the table, but we ended up with two lamb kebabs and one chicken kebab EACH. This was definitely my first meal at a restaurant in which I was served so many plates that they were stacked two deep. Luckily our driver guided us through the different foods, salting things that needed to be salted and demonstrating how to properly eat what we were given, including a bowl with a yogurt-cucumber mixture into which you poured water and added salt and stirred up to make a soup of sorts. It was all so surreal. Jessi and I were the only women in the place, which was rather painfully obvious, especially after a rather unfortunate incident in which one of the servers followed us into the women's bathroom and groped Jessi. Lovely.
After dinner, we hit the road with our chain-smoking drivers, who would pull over every so often to switch drivers. I was a little sad that we were missing all of the scenery driving in the dark, but to get to Erbil on the first day was really an even better scenario than we had imagined. We got into Erbil at 1 am. The hotels we had phone numbers for were full and our drivers were lost, so we ended up staying at a random hotel that we saw on the side of the road in Erbil. After basically being in taxis for 10 hours (after 4 hours of planes), we were so happy to find a hotel and sleep!
So, if you were following that, this means that we woke up in northeastern Turkey, flew to west-central Turkey and then to southeastern Turkey, drove along the Syrian border to Silopi, then drove from the Turkish-Iraqi border to Erbil. Our day's total travel distance was over 2000 km!
