Sulaymaniah

This is my first visit to Iraq for the first time in my life, I’m somewhat excited and a bit nervous because there has been not much information about that place, not on the Internet, not on anywhere else.

There is just like 6 or 7 airlines which fly to Sulaymaniah and the majors ones are Royal Jordanian and Turkish. Since Royal Jordanian could not meet the dates which I’m travelling, I have to stick to Turkish.

Upon arrival in Suly airport, there was a big crowd queuing up for immigration, the speed of processing visa and stamp is fairly fast, I think within 60 minutes, the immigration hall is all cleared up. By the time I got through it, my luggage is only one left on the conveyor belt.

Paid 20k IQD for taxi to the hotel, and upon arrival to the hotel, the hotel is locked and there is no one inside! Oh well. Hopefully our customer sent a driver to the hotel and he managed to wake the hotel personnel up. Slept for 3 hours and I’m on my way to the customer office.

The customer office is pretty far from the city, and it’s on a hill. So we get to see pretty nice scenery from there. Somewhere while ascending up the hill, we managed to get a glimpse of the city.

Twilight before the night falls.

Sunset in a city surrounded by mountains.

Mini Stonehenge in the customer’s office compound.

 

The whole city is surrounded by mountains like this. It is way very cold up there, I think it is about 10C to 20C.

After the war back in the nineties, this place is still in the state of rebuilding. People here are generally friendly.

I managed to catch the bus here while one of the staff brought me to the bazaar. We don’t need to pay the driver as soon as you go up the bus, what we do is that, we pass the money to the person sitting right in front, he will add his own fare and pass it onwards, until it reaches the driver.

If we do it this way in our country, I think the moment you pass the money to the person in front, the person in front will just put it in his pocket and forget about it.