“What do you think Johno?”
Paul and Leigh both stared at me intently, as if I was some authority on trusting strange men in the Iraqi countryside in the middle of the night.
I weighed up the risks.
“Okay,” I said, looking up, “let’s do it”
Sulaymaniyah Bazaar
We had spent the day in the British Embassy, based in a Five Star Hotel on the outskirts of Erbil, making the most (some would say abusing) the restaurant, Wi-Fi and bathrooms. Unfortunately we had been kicked out as darkness fell due to Embassy rules that only allowed Embassy staff to stay overnight and the fact that the cost of an actual hotel room could have kept us in Ronaldo’s place for two weeks.
As we drove out of the heavily fortified gates and back into the blackness of the Iraqi night the scraping sound that that been occasionally coming from the front of the car became constant; something definitely wasn’t right.
Upon pulling over and jacking up the car we immediately saw the problem: one of the front suspension parts had failed making the front passenger wheel rub on the suspension bolts. We needed to get it fixed before our planned border crossing into Iran the following day.
Partially because we were out of town and near the Auto-Bazaar already and partially because we couldn’t face spending another night at Ronaldo’s place in the city centre we decided, maybe somewhat rashly, to camp somewhere in the Iraqi countryside.
It was almost 1am when we found somewhere that would have to do. A large stretch of wasteland, away from the main road and covered in spiky thorn bushes. We pulled down the tents from the roof, found some bush-free patches and were just about to settle down when an old man on an underpowered motorbike rode up out of nowhere.
After a short conversation he got on his phone, started saying something about, “Inglisey” and then motioned for us to follow him.
If you’re reading this on your laptop on the toilet in suburban England and see that we were considering following a strange man off into the Iraqi night you might be forgiven for thinking words like “foolhardy”, “reckless” or “stupid bloody idiots” but when you’re tired and hot and have nowhere appealing to sleep the choices aren’t so easy.
Torture scenes
We had spent the last few days down in a town called Sulaymaniyah, a city of about a million people famous for housing a headquarters of the Ba’ath party where many enemies of Saddam Hussein’s regime were brutally interrogated. We visited the battle-damaged compound and saw the harrowing cells with sculptures of various tortures and messages from the prisoners scratched into the wall with their fingernails.
After cheering ourselves up a little by posing like little boys for many pictures on the old tanks and other weapons we left the city headed back north, ready to spend a final night in Erbil before leaving for Iran the next day.
The drive was extremely hot and before long we discovered that the radiator damage we took in Turkey hadn’t fixed itself at all: the radiator was leaking quite badly, maybe a litre of water an hour. If we didn’t get it fixed it would probably only get worse, especially as the hottest parts of the trip were yet to come.
We spent the rest of the drive wondering where we would be able to find a replacement radiator for a 1992 Fairway Driver black cab in Kurdistan. The only upside of the day was the friendly shopkeepers who refused to let us pay for our drinking water on the road back to the city.
With the help of Ronaldo from the hotel and a very nice taxi driver we found the auto-bazaar the next day and started the search in earnest. The place was a sprawl of garages with wrecked cars on top of each and oil-covered men and boys welding, hammering and sweating. In short, Leigh loved it.
The first mechanic picked up the radiator with one hand and squinted along the lines before returning with a similar sized new one, albeit with the attachments and fixtures. That presented no problem though as he simply welded and cut it to the exact specification of our old one, all by eye. It was quite impressive and a few hours later we had a brand new, perfectly working radiator again.
After the unexpected delay and another, hopefully the final, night in Ronaldo’s hotel we got up early and visited the Embassy in order to get some witness signatures for the record. After a thorough search for car-bombs and a short-explanation we were chatting away with the staff, tucking into the free food. Apparently a few days earlier they had thrown a big party for the Queen’s birthday that was attended by Former UK Prime Minister John Major and the President of Iraq, amongst others. “It’s such a shame, we would have loved to have had you here, it would have been perfect” said the Consul with genuine regret. We tried to not labour the point that we had emailed them a week previously and they had never got back to us...
The day was a welcome break and we relaxed in a friendly air-conditioned setting whilst we waited for various journalists to arrive and do their thing. By the time we left we had probably done five or six interviews and were thoroughly tired of explaining how we came up with the idea and where our favourite countries had been.
View from the Embassy
When we had mentioned we were crossing the border the next day one of the staff had asked us, “Do you have the special permits?”
“Oh yeah, we have the visas”
“Yes, you may have the visas but do you have the special permits?” she asked in the tone of a schoolteacher, “You will need special permission or they won’t let you across”.
She went on to tell us that we wouldn’t get across the border as no foreigners were allowed (“even Top Gear didn’t get across” - apparently having a BBC film crew with you makes it harder to get into Iran, who’d have known?) and that even if we did we would be picked up by the Iranian Secret Police for being spies.
After all the hassle and costs of getting our visas we respectfully thanked her for her advice and told her we would go and have a look anyway. The drive was maybe half a day as opposed to at least a two-day detour back through Turkey if they did refuse us.
So when we left the Embassy, unsure whether we’d be able to leave the country the next day, and the suspension broke we weren’t in the best of moods. When the random man on the motorbike told us to follow him into the dark we all thought, “Why not, how can our day get much worse?”
The beginning of the end
The motorcyclist led us out of the wasteland and up a dirt track into the lights of a village. As we approached a small hill he raced off around the corner and when we caught up we saw that he had met up with another guy. As we got closer still we saw he had an AK47.
He motioned for one of us to get out.
“SHOTGUN NOT!” Leigh and I both shouted. Paul cursed for losing our version of “Bagsy not me” and opened his door.
He walked down the track with the potential captors, constantly looking over his shoulder at Leigh and I trundling along a safe (by safe I mean completely unsafe and well within the range of an AK) distance behind.
He took us into a courtyard where a tall man who looked suspiciously like Jeremy Clarkson but with a shock of white hair was flanked by another rifle-wielding man. After a short conversation the three men motioned for us to follow them down another track, all the time Leigh and I were nervously making jokes about Paul being the sacrificial team member.
They took us to what seemed like a deserted house and ushered us inside. Breaths were held as they showed us from room to room and eventually to one full of beds. They quickly said their goodbyes and then we were left alone, seemingly having been given a free place to stay.
“I don’t care if they do kidnap us” shouted a voice, “this room has air-conditioning!”
Trip stats:
Days on the road: 102
Current distance: 13,000ish miles
Tanks of fuel used: Sixty-seven
Meter reading: £23,500ish
Countries visited: Twenty-nine
Tax money eaten: Lots
