Erbil First impression | Riding across Kurdistan | mE 25
okay let's go, bye bye, bye let's go, let's go to erbil today, morning my friends, okay guys so i'm trying to go to... i will try to go to erbil today, it's 100 kilometers but i will probably not reach it because i had my uh, i had my first puncture today, when i left the hotel i realized one tire was completely flat, so i had to fix it, it's already midday, 100k with a lot of climbing, i'm probably not gonna reach erbil today, but the plan is still to go to erbil wow you have the sheeps there and here a beautiful canyon, just to finish my explanations regarding uh, wow look at that what a beauty, yeah just to finish my explanations, so basically regarding my foot, i rested six days in soran, so now i have no more pain, and i have only one day riding uh to get to erbil, well just 100 kilometers, so it should be fine, and the other... but there is another weird thing now about going to erbil, i changed my plan because i'm gonna extend my visa, to stay longer in here in iraqi's kurdistan, so i decided to go to erbil in spite of going straight to slemani, but the issue is just yesterday when i woke up i checked the news, and like 12 missiles, 12 rockets landed in erbil basically coming from a country in the east of uh... of iraq, well so obviously uh coming from iran so... well it's a little weird to go to a city that was bombed just uh... just yesterday, but uh
well, let's say usually the safest place to be is uh is where the last bomb landed, usually the bombs never land twice at the same place... but anyway, no anyway the city was not really targeted, the rockets were targeting the american consulate that is in process of being built, so well i guess... i asked people in soran, and they told me it's completely fine, don't worry so i guess it should be fine but that's the thing, it's a little weird to go to a city that was uh bombed by the neighboring country just uh yesterday, but look at this beautiful beautiful canyon i'm riding through, okay let's continue our journey to erbil guys i have new friends many shops but no restaurants, i am looking for a restaurant oh wow i guess i'll have to stop, look at that guys what a view i think i found one finally look at that, english french english french france i am kurdish, nice to meet you but i want to eat i can eat i can put my bike here okay okay camera okay, okay okay uh can i have 2 so this is 6000 and can i uh battery, can i plug... okay, nice beautiful, i need to charge, let's see if i can charge a bit the battery
thank you can i charge battery charging, i can sit here, i can sit here, okay let's sit outside tiktok no, youtube youtube, what's your name, this and the soup appeared, very nice thank you very nice look at the soup wow it's awesome, always different, it's funny every city you go, every time the soup is different so i think i'm still 70 kilometers, it's almost three o'clock i'm still 70 kilometers from erbil, so i think i'll have to camp tonight, oh look at that awesome, two lovely kebabs very nice okay let's try the kebab for you, for you guys fantastic meat i'm gonna eat this, see you when i'm back on the road, okay i'm done with the meal i guess i'm ready to go i think i'm not gonna go far i'm just gonna go look for a place to stay for a place to camp around this city probably, and i will do most of the ride tomorrow because it's already like four o'clock, there's no way i can reach erbil today, and let's go okay i just went off-road to try to find a place to camp what a beautiful landscape, but my path is ending so i guess i might just stay here, there is a village just there what a beautiful place, there's the mountains there's a shepherd up there, with his sheeps and goats, and full of agriculture here and this way, somewhere this way i think that's the pass for tomorrow and that's erbil, behind that is erbil, okay guys, look at that, well, i just moved a little bit, it's very windy so i'm gonna make a wall to try to protect myself from the wind for tonight ah i don't really know if i'm gonna have a good night, you can see my bike is down there, but it's full of dogs, there's one there, and they're like five or six just here and there is one just here, well what the hell what a beautiful place for camping, i'm still monitoring the dogs maybe it's not going to be a very quiet night they are all regrouping basically, at first it was one dog then five more came, then the one who was alone joined the five others, then two others appeared so now there probably should be a group of eight dogs, they are not that small and i might be in their territory and you can see the beautiful landscape of kurdistan see you tomorrow guys morning my friends hey let's go to get my food bag first, when i wake up from camping, always food bag and then let's go to erbil everything okay, and let's go back on the road again i need to tell you the story about the man later so basically the man you just saw, he came to see me, he wanted to offer me food, but he was telling i go to the city and i bring back some food, so i was saying no no, then he wanted to give me money and that's his house, people are so friendly here, okay let's go to erbil today guys arriving in erbil okay and here i am in my hotel, in erbil, i will not show you too much of the hotel because i went cheap, so it's not spotless let's say, but there is some very funny thing i want to show you still in my hotel, look at this door, so i have this door in the hotel which i can close like that and i open it like that, i need to pull it upwards, and look at that then i can go down on a ladder, oh my god, isn't that crazy, i have vertigo just by looking at it, oh my god, let's just close the door, and let's go have a look at erbil okay, so just... let's just have a quick uh first look, first impression of erbil, let's go around the neighborhood where i stay, which is called taryawa i think, something like that and uh yeah oh the first thing i wanted to tell you, i was quite lucky, i looked for hotels around people told me that it was supposed to be cheap around here, but then everything was uh was still expensive, then some guys in the street came with me, basically they followed me, and they did all the bargaining for me, so then i got a really good price, i paid like 18 000 per night 12 dollars something like that, quite cheap, which is probably normal compared to the quality of the room, which is... but i mean it's cheap, so what can you ask for... oh look at that place very nice okay it looks like uh they are preparing dinner, i have a perfect place for dinner around here also i wanted to tell you that i changed my plans as well, originally i wanted to go somewhere else during ramadan, because right now it's march 15th, and on the 2nd of april ramadan is going to start and then i thought i need to go somewhere else because... to avoid ramadan because otherwise i would have spent most of my journey in the southern part of iraq during ramadan, which would be a pity, because i would miss this part of the life, but uh then i changed my plan, and i thought okay i'm gonna stay here, because i wanted to go to sri lanka but then the flight tickets uh, the price went up very very fast, so then now it's just too expensive to go just for one month, so i'm gonna stay here, but i'm gonna extend my visa here in kurdistan, well my kurdish visa and uh, and so that i can like do half... like half of the ramadan here let's say, and half of the ramadan in iraq proper, so i can still see most of um... i can still see iraq during normal times basically, because otherwise for example i would only have seen baghdad during ramadan, which would be a pity, look at that beautiful shop so basically now we are arriving... you see there is one guy selling fruit
fruit, we are arriving at the citadel, which is right in the middle of erbil uh it's not the right way, i am not going the right way for the light i'm gonna stay two weeks here in erbil, i hope i can extend my visa, yeah so that, so after those two weeks here, i'm gonna ride to slemani, probably take me two or three days, two three four days then i should reach slemani at the beginning of ramadan, i'm probably gonna spend two weeks in slimani, then fly to baghdad and spend two months more in iraq proper and hopefully at the end of that get a visa for iran, and continue my journey towards iran, if i don't get the visa for iran, then i'm stuck here basically, so then uh i'll see what happens, but that's roughly the plan for the coming two or three months look at the wonderful citadel, with the light of the sunset so it looks like i'm finally arriving at a busy area you can see a juice in front, maybe let's just get a juice yeah maybe i deserve a juice after a ride, you can always have some juice and some sweets, look at the sweets juice, mix, everything, all right mix mix how much is it, mix, 2000. okay and then i am gonna have a... some sweets also, baklava one like this that's big whatever let's finish the video with just a juice and some sweets to reward me for the ride, for the two days ride i can sit, okay just in front of the beautiful fortress, look at that here i have a mix, look at this color very good, let's try the baklavas that's good, let's try the other one this one is better okay that's it, the baklavas are done, very fast, and the juice is done also the juice was two thousand, so a bit more than one dollar but the baklavas only one thousand, so for the baklavas plus the juice, two dollars, 3 000. i like the... it's a busy street i love it and the citadel just up there okay guys i guess after this reward for uh, for my ride, that's uh, let's say that's the... that's the end of the video, so signing off as if i was on a ship, see you later, probably still around here in erbil, ciao guys
2022-04-26 15:17
