There are those elitist travellers who preach some sort of gospel of not needing a guide book. Somehow, local knowledge will trump any research, blogs or convenient paperback book. After nearly 2 decades of living, working and travelling overseas, i can say that local knowledge more often than not... sucks! But let's be fair. Do you know the best hotel in your city? Do you know the best/cheapest way from A to B in your own country? My guess is "no". So when i asked locals in Iraq where the best place was for me to visit for the weekend, the almost unanimous answer was Shaqlawa. I should have know what to expect from local advice for travel.
Let's look at the bright side. While tourism remains in it's infancy in
much of Iraq, the mountain village of Shaqlawa (45 minutes north of Erbil) has taken to tourism like a duck to water. Without question there are more hotels in this town per capita than anywhere else in the country. And honestly, it can be tough to find affordable accommodation outside the major centres. There are a plethora of restaurants, serving mostly the same menu. And there's even fairly easy public transport from Erbil with both buses and shared taxis up for offer (although the station in Shaqlawa is poorly located). The reality is, Shaqlawa is the closest thing you'll get to a tourist trap in Iraq. Shops hawk the same sweet wares. Buildings are all new (including ancient churches that have been built over). But locals swear by the town as a great destination to BBQ and escape the torturous heat common in the desert basin around Erbil. But frankly the town is nothing special.
But all is not lost. Despite lacking in what most foreign tourist might deem
appealing, there are a couple places to make the trip worth while. For the main attraction in town, all you need to do is follow the hordes of weekenders and holidayers. The Cave of Raban Boya dates back nearly 2,000 years. A small, greatly deteriorated shrine remains hidden in a crevice of the large mountain back-drop of Shaqlawa. It's a short hike (not more than 30 minutes if you're in bad shape). But the trail is literally overflowing in the summer, especially on the weekends. Inside the shrine, a large stone is used as a
"Wishing Rock". If you make a wish/pray (same thing really) a slide down the rock 3 times, head first, your wish will come true. Locals swear by the power of this stone and is a major reason for the crowds. There are a couple other shrines tucked away into the hills, but none are as impressive (not that Raban Boya is impressive). Other sites include a couple churches. But even with ancient foundations, the churches are mostly new and uninspiring. The market downtown is famous for pomegranates and walnuts. And you can find a variety of sweets & treats to prove it. Not a great place for diabetics. And for those really wanting to live on the wild-side, there's an amusement park complete with rusty Ferris Wheel and partly functional bumper cars (or Dodge 'Ems for British folk). But remember, electricity is shockingly inconsistent in Iraq.
Shaqlawa just wasn't for me. But it does offer an escape for the summer heat, and is one of the few places outside the main cities with tourist facilities. If you manage to befriend a local in Kurdistan, Shaqlawa might be worth it. The BBQs are kind of fun and the setting is not that bad. But if on your own, i'm not sure the town is worth the effort.
3 comments:
Good post and familiar. Like you say, quite often the local idea of an unmissable destination and day out is quite different from what the average visitor to the middle east had in mind. I remember a place similar to your description in the hills up from Tehran that an Iranian took me to. Very popular with Iranians, it was gaudy gaudy gaudy and tourist trap central but interesting in its own way and showed what the average working Iranian and his family sought out after a hard week's work and found fun and 'current'.
Nothing was historic about it,but it was the realitys of modern Iran. It wouldn't look good in a national geographic photo article but it was more everyday authentic in some ways. It was more alive and present than the places which evoked a past I was seeking out.
In another part of Iran a local guy's eyed looked blank when I mentioned I was interested in going to one of the old forts. He was very eager to show me the latest fast food addition in the town so I went with him to make him happy. He was focused on Iran's present and future. The alive Iran. I was focused on the past and a kind of mythical Iran.
I think far too often travellers selectively exclude (either pointing the camera elsewhere, or visiting elsewhere) what is really going on around them in a country, in favour of seeking out the more exotic (to our mind), the more ancient and mysterious, the more.....different from what we already have back in our home.
We take photos of that delapidated but quirky chair,rather than the bright red plastic one made in China. We seek something unique to the place itself (in our minds).
I'm guilty of doing all these things. It's a side of travelling I find interesting in itself, the way our desires of how a country should be are often quite different. From foreign visitors choosing run down but slightly romantic houseboats in Srinigar in the hope of feeling closer to a lost age of India while the local Indians choose to stay in newly built gaudy concrete resorts unceremoniously built on the hills on the way to Kashmir, there is often this division between foreigner and local about what is rewarding and what is 'local'.
It's a very good point. But what i find is, as travellers, we are playing catch-up. That is, that we are trying to understand where the people came from in order to understand why the are where they are. Or at least, that's what i do.
I find people in general travel to to places that offer something they don't get everyday. Plains people travel to mountains, inland people travel to beaches, modern countries travel to the old, ancient countries travel to the new. In North America (i'm from Canada) something that is 100 years old is classified as "OLD". Living here in Iraqis interesting partly because 1,000 is considered fairly new.
This trend of tourist/local interest is nothing new to me. In places like Azerbaijan, people would take me to tea houses with wi-fi, disco balls and techno music, whereas i preferred old men playing backgammon. I'm used to locals wanting the new and "alive", but i'll still always be interested in the decaying.
Or... there are people who travel to travel, to discover, to see the new, the old, the beauty...Nice post, Joe, as usually!
Post a Comment