The city’s history of Rawanduz dates back to the seventh century BC and boasts several Christian villages and archaeological sites. Surrounded by majestic mountains, Rawanduz is home to the deepest gorge in the Middle East. Flanked by vertiginous rock walls, the Rawanduz River snakes its...
Our drive through Eastern Kurdistan.
The town of Akre, the capital of Newroz, lit up on Monday evening as fireworks filled its skies with over a hundred thousand people in the area to celebrate the Kurdish New Year by lighting fires. Despite the cold and windy weather, 2,723 torches were lit in Akre for the occasion as a...
We spent two nights in the breathtakingly beautiful little historic town of Akre. The town was built on the side of a mountain range at the edge of the Nineveh Plains by the Kurdish Prince Zand in 580 BC. It was traditionally a mixed town of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Nowadays, Akre...
Visitors to Lalish are required to remove their shoes and walk barefoot as a sign of respect for the holy site (even outside). As usual, we were not lucky with the weather, and our feet froze during the visit to the holiest temple of the Yazidis, dating back about 4000 years. It’s...
Our last stop today was an Assyrian archaeological site Khinnis, also known as Bavian (🎫 5000 IQD), facing the River Gomel Su. There are remains of rock reliefs built by king Sennacherib around 690 BC. It was made to celebrate the construction of a complex system of canals whose aim was...
Just some two kilometers off the main road surviving pieces of an ancient aqueduct may have fed into the lost Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The muddy road is only for off-road vehicles. The aqueduct is part of the larger Atrush Canal built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib between 703 and...
Just outside the small Assyrian town of Alqosh sits Rabban Hormizd Monastery, one of the holiest sites for the Chaldean Catholic Church. Some friendly locals brought us there a day before, but it was closed (every Friday). So today, we hired another local man with his Toyota (20000 IQD)...
In the afternoon, we drove to the Alqosh, a small Assyrian town in the Nineveh Plains just 45 km north of Mosul. You will not find here a single mosque because the locals are Assyrians who mainly adhere to the Chaldean Catholic Church. We walked the old town around the tomb of the Prophet...
Our next stop was supposed to be Halamata Cave – an archaeological site near Duhok. The caves contain the Assyrian relief carvings known as the Maltai reliefs. The reliefs all show a procession of nine figures (the Assyrian king worshipping the main divinities in the Mesopotamian...