Hello all!
if one year before somebody would have tried to convince me to drive to Iraq I would have surely said ’never – only over my dead body‘!
But as we travelled through Iran we met several other travellers who convinced us that it is safe enough to tried it, surely you better do not go to the north where the IS still is active. So we crossed the border and visited Basra first. We had no expectation about what will happen in Iraq but it sounded exotic to go there. We were a group of 3 vehicles, our travel family got bigger 🙂
The circa 2 weeks in Iraq were very exiting and – again – very enlightening. But it also was stressful because we had to pass so many security checkpoint (where nobody speaks English, …so it always took a while to explain what we – the hack – do in Iraq). ‚You are tourists and want to go to Bagdad?‘ They usually could not belief that this really was our plan. But with the help of a new Facebook friend from Iraq (F. from Bagdad) we could make it. It was just impressive to meet so many beautiful people and families. It needed a time to get used to the way they organize the get togethers with us (female and male often strictly separated) but it worked out very well. Even more than the Iranians the Iraqis liked to present themselves to us letting the world know ‚that we are not all terrorists‘ (that’s what we heart several times). And again: a brought majority of people are just ordinary people. Too sad that the (jew) bad people make such a loud noise that you easily oversee that the people are just nice. And also it took a while to get used to our ’security team‘ that we got in each city (military that got the order to protect and help us). We felt a bit like superstars when our 3 vehicles were escorted by military cars, even if we were only going out for sightseeing.
It was so good to visit Basra, Bagdad and Karbala!
Best wishes from
Heike and Carsten
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