I took the wrong road to Uruk, IRAQ | Solo female motorcycle travel in Iraq | S01 E05
up today on Alex herps and derps across Iraq solo by motorcycle [Music] they gave me cake okay so Google Maps is taking me on some crazy fruits yay following a strange man in a small Iraqi Village in the middle of nowhere so I'll be staying here at the soldiers check those to actually overnight we'll continue humble of those I'm still undecided if I'll sleep on this because it could have bed bugs and I would not like to have bed bugs yala habibis it's almost nine I ever slept because when there's no windows there's natural light in places and it's too dark I don't work am I also tea last night so it made it nice and that makes me not sleep [Music] I want to go to another archaeological site called urugu which is a bit north of here maybe another one called Neighbor which I learned about just randomly on Facebook so there's alphabet but let's try to get there and then hopefully I'll end up in najaf which is one of the holy cities in Iraq that people visit when they're going on the Arabian pilgrimage has a few like mosques and a shrine um but yeah I've destroyed everything in two seconds um I'm a bit chaotic when it comes to being used in the clean and that's to say I'm not eating clean I explode everywhere so it's time to pack this stuff let's pray my bike is still outside I just checked the security cameras and it is even though I use the crappiest bike lock on it but it lives police watched it so cool yeah let's hit the roads lazily [Music] I also snagged all these things from the free breakfast here because I'm a Backpacker and can't help but try and save everywhere and these are cheesy things it's honest to be refrigerated kind of freaky but okay a bunch of tea bags and carrot Jam I don't even know carrot Jam is a thing hair Jam for everyone I am set I'm not even hungry but I'll eat it later and take bread too excuse me I was finally packed up and ready to leave now Seria but leaving took a little bit longer than planned I rock these two very very very very you're also enjoying this guy is insisting that he gives me something for the road loads of candies oh my gosh oh boy Rockies [Music] I'm here with all these guys assalamu alaikum we Face Sami packing up my bike and insisted I have tea because Iraqi tea is the best tea cheers the police were kind enough to watch my bike also all night it actually survived being seen with a very crappy lock to this radiator here so all worked out okay thank you for everything thank you very much it was nice to meet you okay okay getting out of nazarea it's like so much more time than I thought it would those guys kept giving me so many things they wanted to give me chai and sweets and someone gave me earphones I don't even have an earphone jack on my phone but he ran away before I could give it back to him people are too nice everyone wanted to talk and so that's fine take pictures some people are a bit resistance is taking pictures with people all the time sometimes I remember people are so kind here I feel like it's the least I can do take pictures with them but anyway I thought I would leave it at 9 30 and it is now 11 11 30. no it's 11 okay it's 11. and uh yeah right now I'm going through which is another historical site is about 70 kilometers north of here and after that I will go to another if I think because I am definitely too late to go anywhere else so yeah let's see [Music] all right [Music] so I just got stopped at a police checkpoint which is normal there's checkpoints all over here and this per usual they asked me to give my passport and come in and do a check this one I walked in all the police guys are coming to look they gave me cake I guess it was someone's birthday they had cake it was an interesting fake I'm very sugary now and then the one like that guy who killed something that took me a sign to check my passport I was like okay okay you're from Ireland because my passport says United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland I said no England is like Okay Google Translate I want to marry Irish and I said well I'm married already I lied to him said I'm married let me see huh sister no sister sorry one brother huh and then he showed me like another translation and it said Vineyard continuous in vitro I don't think that translation is correct then he thought a bit type some more and it said Vineyard continuous in vitro in status I I don't know bro that sounds like it possibly is sexual and I'm not having it die luckily let me go he did ask for my WhatsApp number many times and I said no I don't use WhatsApp sorry Instagram okay you can be my Instagram follower but know what's up so interesting checkpoint sometimes you just have to sometimes you have to lie a little bit because otherwise you get into even more awkward situations but at least I got cake cake [Music] thank you okay so my girlfriend's on charge because it died but I just had to do some freaking crazy water Crossings in the village to get the Earth but now the charge is on and I can show you how beautiful it is [Music] over here [Music] Google Maps said the urk was only 70 kilometers from nasseria but what I didn't realize was that it was taking me on a creative route to the ancient city [Music] crazy rude yay but that man just told me I can go this way but he said it's off-road so let's see thank God it's the middle of the day what the is going on fun let's try and get there I think I was supposed to come to the differences but I didn't know so [Music] uh sorry go this way this way and um the end and left okay take this road or this way day two okay this road which road is Best Road foreign [Music] [Music] why take a paved Road when you can follow a random strange man in a pickup truck on muddy roads and remote rural Iraq seems like a perfectly reasonable shortcut to me JK I was totally wondering if I was going to die or be abducted this entire time that solo female travel for you he's leading me I would be freaking the out right now if I was just following this random track but having someone meeting me I hope he's not a serial killer brother [Music] [Music] because I don't know oh boy sheets one electron all good huh yes yes I think Britannia Britannia what Britannia Britannia Britannia this one [Music] I'm funny foreign yes okay [Music] thank you I don't even know luckily no luck was needed after a long and muddy while I made it to the ancient ruins of Baruch also known as warka and made it to Earth after request Google Maps shits times that was a kilometers of kilometers of Muddy off-road which is super slippery and the reason that that's scary is because if I fall maybe the bike is stuck maybe I need help to be pulled out and being a girl on a stuck bike in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere Rock could end very badly who would have thought so generally I try to not take such risky routes when I'm alone I'm with people it's different but if I'm alone maybe not but I did it unintentionally and I made it hopefully it's all okay just time to visit to the ancient city of Uruk [Music] foreign 15 minutes after I arrived a car rolled in with a group of Rocky tourists one of them was a young female illustrator based in Dubai and she spoke fluent English and was studying urugu for her thesis Saving Grace since the mandatory site guide was not so enthusiastic about speaking English and my Arabic is definitely not one part work is famous because this was like the capital of Gilgamesh you might have heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh as an ancient Town one of the first like big long tails in the world I just wish pedious stuff and listen to God speaking in Arabic but anyway this was one of the capital cities it's also in the Bible is Ekman not that I recognize that name um it was a metropolitan area there were tens of thousands of people living here probably 40 to 60 000 which is a bunch of people back in the day and so now this here is one of the ziggurats that's remaining to to like head god um there's a Temple up at the top we are not allowed to go there and there were three stairways going up to the top of the ziggurat which you can't really see now because they're also splooge but all of this here would have been houses Temple complexes government buildings everything we're standing in a city it looks like a bunch of Hills but this is actually a city [Music] that is one of several scripts for the different civilizations that lived in this area which is the oldest pretty wild I don't even know well you can see the layers of time they're still old brick down at the bottom and then further up here weather has taken its toll and now a lot of the walls I've just covered in okay so Kamar just explained it to me yay so all of this blue tile here was brought from Pakistan and there were actually multiple civilizations who lived in this area and they called them the siloquians I've never heard that I need to Google but basically they're from ancient Persia and so they were a super wealthy civilization and they brought all of these blue tiles here to the city and so the city was actually blue you can't tell because all these bricks are here and they're very beige colored but the city was actually blue back in the day but then other civilizations came in I think they said it was the Assyrians and so they were poor here you can see this Philippi inside I think this is a Syrian and they just use normal bricks and you can tell that these bricks belong to theirs because they stamped it here but so you can see Rich guys poor people this was originally the entrance gate so this is the original Stone also which is not been restored foreign [Music] but that was a king and the bigger small Mound over there and the smaller Mounds around it were a smaller pyramids for other kings who came after him that's the cigarette oh no you can't let's see here here okay so that was this here this is this is oh no it's it's not blue foreign and the Sun is setting almost probably in half an hour and I was planning on going to najaf but it's like two or three hours from here I don't want to ride at night and so I asked if I could camp here at the station and they're like why not but also you can just uh you can just stay in the spare room if you want I said okay uh why not you sure I have a tent they said no that's fine so I'll be staying here at the soldiers check post actually overnight which is nice because then I'm secure from dogs I'm secure for humans probably the bigger problem and then yeah then I can drive tomorrow to najaf and be fresh and be okay and not have to worry about just racing at night on that very crappy road which would be a nightmare I don't think it's a drive out of that road but I might have to we'll find out welcome to my humble abode I'm still undecided if I'll sleep on this because it could have bed bugs and I would not like to have bed books I might just put a mattress on the floor my air mattress but let's see [Music] days like this are the reason I love traveling even after seven years of life on the road [Music] everything is going but with a bit of patience a hint of faith and the willingness to open up to local people everything always works out in the end don't ask me how just trust me it does [Music] [Laughter] [Music] laughs
2023-09-19 19:09
