Iraq
After spending 11 months in Turkey by the Covid, they finally opened the borders and we were able to enter Iraq by Kurdistan Iraki, and although the same police officer told us that with that visa we could go through all Iraq, it was not true.
Our goal was to cross the country and for that we would need another visa, we had to leave our bikes in Erbil, take a plane to fly to Bagdah and be able to get visas at the airport, a crazy solution, but it worked, then we would return in a taxi al Meeting our bikes, there to start the real adventure.
Iraqi Kurdistan differs a lot from the rest of Arab Iraq, Kurdish is spoken here and do not teach Arabic in schools, only older people speak. It is a richer but also more expensive region, where wealth if you notice on the prices of things, gasoline is worth more than the rest of the country.
After going through the Kurdistan on the mountain roads, we entered the Arab Iraq and headed to Mosul. When you cross the River Tigris you see the desolate mosul in totally devastated ruins and you impress you to see people doing their daily life in small premises and on their roofs the building destroyed by pumps and bored by bullets, the rubbish Hanging of the miraculously standing buildings, and you do not stop thinking that you can come down at any time. And what even more surprises you is to see the smile on their faces, the children playing among the ruins as if nothing had happened.
Here we met Safwan a motorcycle fan and as it could not be otherwise in Iraq, he owned a very popular Moto Gold Wing here, that, without enrollment as almost all the bikes that are in Iraq. He welcomed us at home and made a guide for the Ruins of Mosul.
You are impressed to see how the city is. We were in the west part of the tigris where the Isis resisted until it fled to Syria, we walked over the debris knowing, that under us there are hundreds and hundreds of buried families, and they are still there without knowing if someday they took them out of debris. It is estimated that it will take more than 10 years to clean the city of all the explosives that are still left. We headed to Kirkur city, a few days later we would arrive in Bagdadh, a chaotic city with a traffic that is crazy, where each one goes where you want the traffic lights do not work, the asphalt Sunned by the weight of the trucks, in a city where the 50 degrees are easily out of summer and 40-centimeter furrows are formed, when your wheel goes into there is hard to leave.
A totally militarized city during the road trip There is a military control every 10 or 15 kilometers as much, which makes it very slow to move forward. This was all Iraq controls and more military controls, although the police and the military treated us great, they invited us to sleep where they were in their checkpoints or in their barracks and they fell to us, they asked us to take pictures with us and almost always with very good attitude.
You always have to get to the control posts slowly and with the rise visor, because the number of daesh attacks performed with motorcycles against the barracks and checkpoints it makes them very nervous and attentive, the same happens in the gas stations, you can not enter with Motorcycles is prohibited, you have to park outside and enter with a carafe to refuel gas, due to the number of bomb bike bikes.
One day we took a route out of military control and we found out a few days after the day before I was kidnapped a boy friends that we met and welcomed us at home.
In the end we were 40 days and 4,500 km trails in Iraq, and not as we thought at the beginning, which would only cross the country to enter Saudi Arabia. We were surprised by the kindness of their people, and despite the difficulties to travel through the country is a place that without doubt we returned one day.
The borders to advance was very complicated, Jordan closed by the number of kidnappings and attacks on his journey, that of Saudi Arabia only opened for transport, and Kuwait’s with many doubts because from the invasion and war of the Gulf remained closed. Surprise, they inform us that they have just opened it to tourism and despite the recommendations not to go on that road due to the danger of terrorist attacks, we have no choice but to go out there, so there that we go, with uncertainty in case after going through that part where the Tigris and the Euphrates come together do not let us in and have to return again. We arrived at the border, it was a chaos an organized disorganization and after 4 hours we got out of Iraq. We arrived at the Kuwait border and tell us that we are the first bikes that pass this border since it was closed by the invaded from Iraq.
They make us dismantle all the luggage of motorcycles until they are totally empty. They go through some scanners, luggage and motorcycles. We with the Fully Prohibit Dron in these countries…
