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good morning everybody and welcome to northern iraq i landed here really late last night at 2
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am i got to my hotel at about 4 4 ish am and it's currently 10 am so i'm pretty tired i just
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had breakfast but i think it's time to go out and explore i'm so so excited to be here i came here
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for a few days last year and it really wasn't enough. I didn't get to explore
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enough, I didn't get to show you enough so I'm back. This is my view for my hotel
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room all the way, it's absolutely amazing. I love all of these local houses
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okay i think another great way i can show you the culture and the history here is by showing
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you the markets and the main soup soups if you don't know in the middle east are the main
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meeting hubs of people and the main gathering of people and it's a really great way to
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see the history, see the culture and see what people are doing here in the local area
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There is one main place that I'm actually on the lookout for
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thank you Hi Hi hi hi You wanna get it I not going to go Thanks Thanks
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Okay after quite a while trying to find this amazing cafe, I finally found it
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I just ordered a chai. This place is the oldest cafe in the whole of Erbil and it's been active since 1963
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And in here you can see all of the incredibly famous Kyrgyz people who have visited
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Thank you. Okay so I found all the people
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The sun is just going down. It's about 4.35 and this place is so busy
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This is the main fruit and vegetable market here in Beel. I'm just here with Pavel, the tour guide I'm going to be travelling around with tomorrow
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so keep an eye for that. But yeah it's so so busy here
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This smells are incredible, it's so nice. I love wandering around these areas because
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it really gives you a true insight to what it's like to live here. All of the people
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getting their fruit and vegetables for their recipes tonight. It's really cool
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and Muslim and Jewish I forget to mention this one they were living together just in peace together It amazing
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The more I walk around and the more I wander, I'm picking up on a kind of really cool quirk about people here
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I don't know whether it's the people here or people in Iraq, but it's to do with prayer beads
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They're not using them for prayer, I think it used to be for prayer
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But they're kind of twiddling them in their fingers and moving them around
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I don't know whether it's for peace or stress relief But it's really really cool
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Okay? Do you know how to do it? that better
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that's good good yeah yeah great so one thing I wanted to do when I came back to
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Kurdistan was to wear the traditional outfit there's something about this that's so cool and I love it so much so I thought it would be a great
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opportunity to do it now and yeah I really love it. I also wore it with Converse as always. I love here so much. One thing I really
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wanted to do here in Erbil was go and see how local families live and go and
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see the inside of a family house and go and experience what it's like to live in
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in Ebele as a local so I've actually very just kindly been invited to go and have dinner with a local family here in Ebele so
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Yeah, let's go there now. I'm really really excited Hello Wow. Oh, it looks amazing
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So we have here Kiftash Noi. When we were refugees in Iran 1991 my mother she learned from them and she taught my wife so this is one of my favorite food at the moment you know right well it
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looks amazing so we cook that often you know maybe once or twice a week
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So many people think Kurdistan isn't safe. What would you say for tourists who want to come here
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Yeah, actually that's a very good question. So in most Western government like in UK, European Union or America, if you look to their website, the government website says all Iraq is going to be safe
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not safe but actually it's not true for example Kurdistan region is totally
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different than Iraq because in Kurdistan since 1991 we have our own government
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we have our own security we we've got our federally or autonomous in 1991 so
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what is the best time you get to come here best time to visit Kurdistan
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spring and autumn but I will recommend March and April March we have most our
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celebration are in March for example Kurdish New Year but I would say March
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April May and plus October November this five month it's amazing to visit
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Kurdistan so I've just been looking through the Lonely Planet guide and
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and Haval's name is here inside the Lonely Planet Middle East Guide
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That's amazing. This is just stored in your house. Yeah, this is handmade, so we make it and then we can use it for one or two months
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There is no expired, you know? Yeah. So this is now, it's very, how to say in English, crachy
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Or very hard? Yeah, it cracks. Cracks. so when we eat it we put some water on it to fry it and then we'll be very very full
