Van Life Iraq

"Leave me alone. We're sleeping."

I was already in my pyjamas and half asleep inside the camper when somebody started knocking on the window.

For a few seconds I had no idea what was happening.

We had spent the whole afternoon visiting the Qiz Qapan rock tombs and had decided to stay there for the night. Dinner was finished, everything was packed away and I had already started falling asleep.

Then came the knocking.

I was disoriented and not particularly interested in talking to anyone.

"Leave me alone. We're sleeping."

Then I understood who was outside.

Iraqi Army and Peshmerga forces were standing beside the van.

That woke me up.

They wanted our passports. More importantly, they did not want us sleeping there.

A few minutes later they heard noises somewhere in the nearby rocks.

The conversation changed immediately.

We were leaving.

That became the strangest night of a 1,638 km, one-month road trip across northern Iraq in 2018.

Most of the journey was nothing like it.

Most days were mountain roads, archaeological sites, villages, food, checkpoints and finding somewhere to park the van before dark.

But Iraq could change quickly.

Entering Iraq with my camper van

This was my third trip to Iraq.

I had first visited in 2009 and returned in early 2016. In 2018 I came back while doing a much longer van journey through Central Asia and the Middle East.

This time I had my house with me.

The camper had a small kitchen immediately behind the cab. Two gas burners were built into the wooden worktop. There was a sink, cupboards, hanging pans and enough space for food.

It was not huge, but I didn't need much.

I could drive somewhere remote, stop for the evening, cook and sleep without needing to return to a town.

The journey began at the Iranian border.

From there I went through Bakrawa, Halabja and the surrounding mountains before continuing toward Kalar and Khanaqin.

The final destination, weeks later, would be the Turkish border near Zakho.

Between those two borders I made an enormous detour.

Khanaqin and masgouf

Khanaqin was one of the places I particularly wanted to see.

The city interested me because of its mixture of Kurdish and Arab life, its old bridge and the sites around it.

And this was where I stopped for masgouf.

Several whole fish were cooking at the same time.

Each fish was held inside a large metal grill basket close to the coals. Their skins were already darkening from the heat. Fire burned underneath them and a huge pile of wood was stacked behind the cooking area.

A boy in a red shirt stood beside the grill while I photographed everything.

Masgouf is one of Iraq's classic ways of preparing fish. The fish is opened out and slowly cooked beside an open wood fire rather than simply dropped onto a grill for a few minutes.

I saw it, stopped the van and ate.

There was no schedule telling me I had to be somewhere else.

That was the advantage of traveling like this.

Kifri and into the mountains

From Khanaqin I continued through Kifri, Bawa Shaswar Dam and back toward Kalar.

Then the landscape started getting much bigger.

I went through Tazade village and into Sartak Canyon — the gorge on the photograph at the top of this page, where the van almost disappears under the rock walls.

The van looked large whenever I was living inside it. Put it at the bottom of these canyons and it almost vanished.

Northern Iraq is very different from the flat, dry image people often associate with the country. Once I moved into these mountains, I was driving through green valleys, narrow river gorges and rock walls that could rise almost vertically beside the road.

I continued around Bamo Mountain.

Sometimes the best campsite was simply an open piece of ground with a view.

We would stop the van, put a mat outside, open the little tent and stay there.

Mountain picnics are everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan. Families drive out of the cities, spread carpets and mats under trees or beside rivers, cook, drink tea and spend hours outside.

With the camper I was doing essentially the same thing, except my kitchen and bed had arrived with me.

Chami Razan

The route continued through archaeological sites and smaller villages.

I visited the Tomb of Sheikh Jibril at Shahbazi, the Darband Belola rock relief, Chami Dewana, Darband-i Gaur, Tepe Yasin, Bestansur and other places before eventually moving toward Sulaymaniyah.

Chami Razan was one of the landscapes that stayed with me.

There was green everywhere.

Trees covered the lower parts of the valley while enormous layered cliffs rose behind them. Small wooden shelters stood underneath the trees.

It was exactly the kind of place where having my own vehicle worked.

I could stop without needing a hotel, restaurant or transport back to a city.

When I had enough, I started the engine and continued.

Qiz Qapan

After Sulaymaniyah I went to Qiz Qapan.

We arrived during the day and spent the whole afternoon exploring the area around the rock tombs.

Qiz Qapan is cut directly into the rock face. Its façade belongs to an old funerary tradition found across the Zagros, where elite tombs were carved into cliffs instead of constructed as separate buildings.

By late afternoon we had already been there for hours. So instead of driving somewhere else, I decided we would sleep there.

This was normal van-life logic.

We had food. We had beds. We had already parked.

Why move?

By nightfall we were inside the camper and had changed into our pyjamas. Eventually I started falling asleep.

Then someone knocked on the window.

"Leave me alone. We're sleeping."

I was really half asleep.

Then I saw the uniforms.

There were Iraqi Army and Peshmerga forces outside.

The Peshmerga are the armed forces associated with the Kurdistan Region, while Iraqi federal forces were also operating across parts of the wider area. During this journey I passed checkpoints controlled by both.

The men checked our passports and told us the place was not safe enough for us to remain overnight.

While we were talking, there were sounds and voices somewhere in the rocks.

They reacted immediately.

Flashlights came out. Weapons came up.

The relaxed conversation at my camper window was finished.

We had to go.

So there I was, a few minutes after being almost asleep in my pyjamas and telling armed men to leave me alone, now driving through the darkness behind them.

On the way back toward the main road I heard shots.

They were shining flashlights toward the fields and darkness around us.

I did not know who was there. I never saw anyone. I still don't know exactly what happened.

I just followed the escort.

Eventually they brought us to somewhere they considered safer, close to a petrol station.

We parked.

And went back to sleep.

Still in our pyjamas.

The next morning, back on the road

The next morning I started the van and the road trip continued.

That was another strange thing about this journey.

One night could suddenly become complicated and then, after sunrise, I was back to making breakfast, packing things away and checking the map.

Same two burners. Same pans. Same bed. Different place outside the window every morning.

Erbil and into Rawanduz

After Koya and Erbil I continued north and east toward Dwin Castle and Rawanduz.

This became one of my favourite driving sections.

The valleys became enormous.

A river ran at the bottom while rock walls climbed steeply on either side.

From above, roads sometimes looked almost impossible.

Then I would get back into the van and drive them.

Near Bekhal the road ran directly between the river and the cliffs.

There wasn't much room for anything else.

Rock on one side. Water on the other. Van in the middle.

This was exactly why I wanted to travel Iraq with my own vehicle.

The road itself was part of what I came to see.

Akre

Eventually I reached Akre.

The town climbed into the mountain.

From above, houses were packed closely together around a mosque with a large dome and tall minaret. Green trees filled many of the spaces between the buildings, while mountains enclosed everything behind.

You don't really understand Akre by looking at one building.

You have to look at the whole slope.

The town and mountain are almost the same landscape.

Lalish, Alqosh and Mosul Dam

From Akre I continued through Sennacherib's aqueduct at Jerwan and the Neo-Assyrian rock reliefs at Khaniss.

Then Lalish.

Then Rabban Hormizd Monastery and Alqosh.

I also went toward Mosul Dam.

I had visited Mosul itself separately, without the camper van, so this section of the road trip remained focused on the countryside and northern route rather than entering the destroyed Old City.

From there I continued through Dohuk and farther into the mountains.

Amedi and the Turkish border

The final stretch took me toward Gara Mountain, Sulav, Amedi and eventually Zakho.

By then I had spent a month living inside the camper.

The trip had moved through Kurdish-controlled areas and places controlled by the Iraqi federal authorities. I had crossed dozens of checkpoints, parked beside archaeological sites, cooked inside the van and slept under some enormous mountain walls.

The odometer for my Iraq route came to 1,638 km.

But the distance is not really what I see when I look at these photographs.

I see the kitchen with the pans hanging above the sink.

The masgouf burning beside the wood pile in Khanaqin.

The van looking tiny underneath Sartak Canyon.

Green water far below Rawanduz.

And that dark road after Qiz Qapan, when a normal night sleeping in the camper suddenly turned into me following an armed escort through the Iraqi countryside.

Then I crossed into Turkey.

The van kept going.

More from that same van year: 24 hours trapped in the Pamir Highway's no-man's-land — or continue through my best travel experiences.