Aaron's Worldwide AdventuresYou know that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer adopts a section of the highway? He decided he wants to have double wide lanes for a leisurely driving experience, except it creates complete and utter chaos on the roadway… That’s what driving in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region is like! I, for one 24 hour period, rented a […]
Picture this. You’ve rented a car and you’re going for a little joyride in northern Iraq. You pass the turn off for Saladin’s Fortress, which, these days, finds itself surrounded by land mines. And then you turn onto one of Iraqi Kurdistan‘s premiere sights…the Hamilton Road. Right about now you’re probably thinking…I drove all this way for a road? But […]
What’s Turkey’s most incredible sight that most people have never heard of? A wonderful little gem called Hasankeyf, that every visitor to Turkey’s Southeast should put on their map right now! Don’t worry, I’ll wait here while you do it…. See, I’d never heard of Hasankeyf either until I found myself looking for CouchSurfing hosts […]
If you’re planning on traveling overland from Turkey to Iraq‘s northern Kurdistan Region (Iraqi Kurdistan), I’ve got news for you! The days of being forced to use the taxi mafia to get across the border are over! Instead, you can travel across the border in style on a comfortable Turkish bus! How does it work? Get Yourself to […]
I’m fairly loose with my travel planning, but when I stopped by the bookstore before going to Turkey, a was flipping through a guidebook and saw this photo: So strange. Just a wall, sitting there in a field of debris. I knew I had to make to make it there. So I made my way to […]
Mention “Iraq” to anyone who reads the newspaper regularly and they’ll probably get a troubled look on their faces. It feels like at least once a week or so, I see a headline about explosions ripping through Iraqi cities as sectarian violence flares. The perceived danger alone is why people give me this strange look […]
I wasn’t planning on going to Erzurum. That is, until I found myself unable to get a bus from Amasya to my intended destination, Kars for the next 2 days thanks to gender-segregated bus seating… I looked at a map of Turkey and thought to myself, “hmmmm…what’s close to Kars?” Erzurum proved to be the […]
It was day 2 in Iraq and I was confused. I had a mission: To visit Amadiya (commonly called and even spelled Amedy or Amedi), famed for some fancy old gate I had spotted in a Lonely Planet guide. But I had a problem. I had no idea how to get there… See, cities in Kurdistan, three […]