Road to Tokyo

6 days and 808km (Total: 51 days and 10,780km)

Crossing the border into Iraqi Kurdistan was long but easy. On the Türkiye side we exchanged a lot of different papers with a lot of different people. On the Iraqi Kurdistan side we waited for an hour whilst they cleaned the passport office and then paid $35 to temporarily import the bike. After about three hours we finally passed into Iraq and merged straight onto the highway towards the capital of the Kurdistan region, Erbil.

The roads are total madness. People driving the wrong direction on motorways at 60kmph, cars slipping over oil spillages, and roads suddenly switching between asphalt, gravel, and sand, randomly interspersed with speed bumps that have no markings. I was lucky to learn early on that putting on your hazard lights doesn't mean something’s wrong, or saying thank you to the car behind you; instead, quite ironically, it invites them to a race. It's chaos. I suppose the police, understandably, care more about who is on the roads rather than what they're doing on them.

For the next two days we stayed in Erbil and fell in love with the city. It has no red tape, just a free-for-all that seems to self-regulate itself through basic commerce and trust, with no ego and even less tourism.

The city runs entirely on cash and it's the cheapest country we've been to so far — a substantial meal for two easily costing €5. But the reason we fell in love with the place isn’t the price but the fact that everyone was so kind and genuine. Someone selling falafel on the street corner didn’t seem like they were doing it to make money; they were doing it to feed a friend.

It was on our second night that we felt this natural force first hand. We wandered into a restaurant and asked for a rice dish we saw on the menu. The owner said something in Kurdish and a man sitting at a table stood up and translated “they don't have any rice left” before adding “but don't worry I know a great restaurant, I'll take you there.”

We got into Anand‘s car and drove across Erbil as he told us about his previous life in Portsmouth before returning to Kurdistan twelve years ago. When we arrived at the restaurant he ordered loads of food, paid for it, and left saying “enjoy your meal, you are our guests here.” For the next ten minutes we were speechless — mostly due to Anand’s generosity but also the enjoyment of the food. But we soon had to get used to both as this wasn’t a freak event.

The next day we left Erbil and rode somewhat aimlessly in forty degree heat. A decision we regretted two hours in as the wind hardened and the sun started to fade in the hazy air. We stopped outside a tiny grocery store with empty shelves and asked a local where we could buy food and pitch our tent. He spoke good English and told us we should go to Ranya — a bigger town thirty minutes away. Hunger didn’t allow us to wait around so we said “spas” (thank you), waved goodbye, and were off.

Within two minutes of arriving into Ranya we had a crowd of twenty locals around our bike. Within five minutes two local women had given us their phone numbers in case we needed anything. And within ten minutes we had a young man phoning his mum to ask if their family could host us for the night. It was overwhelming but comforting. I've never felt so welcomed and safe in a place where you're a total stranger.

We took Halo up on his offer. An hour after arriving into Ranya with no plans, and we were showered and sitting on the floor with a Kurdish family eating bread, beef, chicken, olives, tomatoes, cheese, okra soup, and four glasses of different drinks (non alcoholic of course). The family were eating with us but kept putting all the food in front of us before touching anything themselves. It was such a special moment. Starting the morning riding aimlessly had worked out.

After dinner we were expecting to learn the word “goodnight” in Kurdish, but actually the evening had just begun. Halo took us and his seventeen year old niece named Sara (who had learnt English from youtube but had never met a foreigner before) into town where I got a haircut, we ate ice cream, did some shopping, and joined a game of “Okey” (like Rummikub) with his friends. Halo refused to let us pay for literally anything... including my haircut. “Please, you are our guests here in Kurdistan, you do not pay.”

When we got home at 2am, his mum had washed our riding gear (despite us warning her gravely of the smell) and had laid out two mats for us to sleep on. We could hear the dad (a police officer on the Iraq/Iran border) snoring in the room next door where we had eaten dinner, also on a mat next to the mum, Fatm. Sleep did not trouble us that night, as we let our minds digest the day’s events and reconfigure their understanding of kindness.

The next day we made bread with the neighbours.

We went for a drive through the mountains with Halo and Sara.

We ate bbq'd fish at a local restaurant.

And we finished the day drinking more tea and pistachio coffee on the street with random locals that treated each other, including us, like friends even though they had never met before.

The mum had asked us to stay for lunch the next day so she could make us a traditional Kurd Kofte (like meatballs). Our instinct was to say “thank you but we need to get going” but then we realised that, actually, we didn’t. We had just had the most happy and memorable forty eight hours of our lives — why the rush?

Little did we know that after we had said yes, Fatm had invited round two more of her children and their entire families to stay the night, ready for Kofte preparations early the next morning! So that night there were ten of us sleeping on mats. The next morning we met more of the family, hung out with the kids who enjoyed practising their English, and helped pack different meat mixtures into hundreds of flour balls before they were boiled in a tomato-based sauce. The food was incredible. The mum asked one more time if we’d stay another night but it was time to leave.

We had only been with the family for two nights but saying goodbye was tough. Really tough. Halo and his mum drove with us to the first petrol station (I finally managed to not let him pay for something), with lunch and tea packed by his mum, and waved us goodbye by touching their eyes and heart. The wind through my helmet always makes my eyes water but there was certainly more than usual this time.

It was a short ride that afternoon as we headed back on route to Japan. We were stopped at military checkpoints several times but they would only check our passports, asked if we were carrying drones, and then take selfies with us (and their machine guns around their necks). We also stopped for tea in a small town which a local paid for whilst offering us to come stay with his family for the night. Something we were getting used to, for better or for worse.

The sun started to dim and we needed a place to stay. At the beginning of the trip, not having a place to stay the next night was a bit scary. By this point we were comfortable asking ourselves “where should we stay tonight?” about an hour before it gets dark. At the next military checkpoint we asked a Peshmerga (Kurdistan Region military officer, which translates as “Those Who Face Death”) if we could pitch our tent on the grass next to them. They wrote something back which Google translated as “no problem, take it easy” and we settled in for the night, despite Halo calling me to tell me his dad’s friend would like to host us in a village nearby. However, by that point, we were ready for bed.

The following day we were on the road early and heading back towards Türkiye. During the short ride we had two Kurds buy us tea, another buy us ice cream, and another offer us to come stay with his family. Instead, we chose to stay in a hotel that night so we could be on the road early the next morning without being rude.

And that's what we did to finish our trip in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Crossing into the region was long but easy. Crossing out of it was short but hard.

Riding through the Kurdistan region of Iraq has been a deeply special experience. The food and landscapes deserve their own applaud, but it's the people that stood out. On the outer layer, Kurds care about their reputation and want it to be shaped accurately by themselves and not by western media. A layer deeper and you find a community infused with a religion and history that makes them authentically put other people first. And on the deepest level you realise this is a community that has been at conflict with its direct neighbours for so many years that they welcome outsiders. It's the first country we've travelled through that I’m already excited to see again.

Next stop: back on route, East.