KEY POINTS:
We've spent more than an hour wandering from office to office in the pouring rain. At one, Husni Tutug reluctantly slips a banknote into the pages of my passport before he hands it over the counter. It seems to work. The passport comes back within minutes with a stamp inside. I'm finally out of Turkey. We drive over the bridge and stop in a car park just beyond the sign announcing "Welcome to Iraq".
I've tried to get to Iraq before but it always seemed wiser to wait until things got better. But now events take a distinct turn for the worse. There's talk of the mess descending into all-out civil war, with the United States standing to one side, unable to do anything. So I decide it's time to go.
Not to central and southern Iraq - Nineveh, Nimrud, Babylon, Ur and all those other ancient centres will have to wait, as will Baghdad.
There is no way I will see Iraq properly in the foreseeable future, so I'll settle for seeing Iraq improperly - I'll just have a taste of the accessible part. Most of the country may be a disaster, but Kurdistan is the one bit that is fairly safe.
I'm going to a tourism conference in Washington DC. If I make a nice little transit of northern Iraq, entering from Turkey and exiting to Iran, I can arrive in Washington direct from two of the three axes of evil.
I fly to Istanbul from Singapore and Dubai early one morning, then catch a domestic flight to Diyarbakir, in the heart of Turkey's Kurdish region and well over in the eastern part of the country.
Stepping out of Diyarbakir's modern little airport terminal late that afternoon, I'm greeted with a chorus from the waiting crowd of taxi drivers:
"Iraq, Iraq, you want to go to Iraq?" they ask in unison.
"Well, yes, but not tonight," I explain. All I want to do is find a hotel and get some sleep.
Next morning Husni, whom I seem to have engaged as a driver, is there and ready to go at 7am. We travel via Mardin and Midyat (with an impressive collection of Syrian churches), and pause to look at the Morgabriel Monastery before stopping for lunch at Silopi, just before the border.
For eight solid kilometres before Silopi, a nose-to-tail line of trucks waits to cross the border into Iraq. There's some paperwork to complete in Silopi, which I wouldn't have known about, but I've been wondering why it's necessary to take a driver across the border rather than just be dropped there. I'm about to find out.
Syria is directly across the river from the road for the next few kilometres, but the truck line-up continues for another 10km and now it's often two, three or even four trucks wide. There must be thousands of them. With most, it's impossible to tell what they're transporting, but there are transporters full of new cars and pick-up trucks, and trucks laden with construction equipment, pipelines, reels of wire and bags of cement. Clearly a lot of building work is going on across the border.
The border is a chaotic, muddy mess and it's raining solidly. Husni seems to know exactly which door to head for, which window to bang on, which queue to barge to the front of, and exactly whom to bribe.
Nevertheless it takes more than an hour of zigzagging from one ramshackle building to another before the old banknote-in-the-passport trick finally works and we make the short drive across the bridge that conveys us into Iraq.
Arriving in Iraq is like a doorway to heaven. Suddenly, I'm sitting in a clean, dry, mud-free waiting room being served glasses of tea while we wait for the passports to be processed. Husni's too. He has to exit Turkey, enter Iraq and then repeat the process in the opposite direction to get me through.
But the officials decide to put me through hoops, and I have to spend 20 minutes explaining why I want to visit Iraq and what I do for a living. Finally they relent, hand over my passport, and welcome me to Iraq.
I've already been welcomed by half a dozen peshmerga soldiers, photographed with two of them and had a chat, in French, with one.
More than two hours after we arrived at the border, Husni drops me in a car park and I take a taxi to Zakho to see the town's ancient bridge before continuing to Dohuk for the night.
This little trip is a foretaste of my next few days in Iraq: there's a certain amount of communication confusion. I can't get across to Adris, my driver, where I want to go; "bridge" doesn't seem to appear in my Kurdistani phrase list, rifling through the handful of books in my daypack doesn't turn up a picture of a bridge and the quick sketches I make of bridges in my notebook don't produce a glimmer of recognition.
"Take me to a hotel," I finally request and, sure enough, somebody at the front desk knows exactly what I'm looking for, even if he is a little disappointed that the first tourist for a while doesn't actually want a room.
Known as the Delal Bridge, Beautiful Bridge in Kurdish, Zakho's number one tourist attraction is said to have been built by a local Abbasidian ruler, which dates it anywhere from AD750 to AD1258, although some suggest it might date to Roman times.
Whatever, it's an impressive, multiple-arched bridge over a rocky river and clearly very old. Zakho is also said to have a stretch of old castle wall but nobody at the hotel knew about that so we press on to Dohuk, along a freeway dotted with advertising billboards, and as we drive into the centre there are a surprising number of hotels. The Sulav Hotel, one of the biggest (and most expensive), costs $50.
I take an instant liking to Dohuk. It's bright, energetic and crowded and has lots of fruit-juice stands. I wander around the town, try out an internet cafe, search inconclusively for Dohuk's bit of decaying castle wall, look in various shops in the bazaar, check out the money-changing quarter, and take quite a few photographs.
Everyone is enthusiastic about being photographed, a sure sign there aren't many tourists around. The weather, however, is still miserable and after an agreeable meal in a restaurant I repair back to the hotel.
It's still raining when I get up and, as I leave Dohuk, I've taken on Adris as a driver again. Travelling east towards Arbil requires lots of diversions, presumably to avoid approaching too close to Mosul.
There's plenty of security, although it centres on a visual check of each vehicle's inhabitants. I expect Arab passengers get more than a cursory glance. Only once today (and once yesterday) do I have to produce my passport and explain what the hell I am doing in Iraq.
Along the way we stop for a hearty roadside lunch (the Kurds like to eat well) and I take some photos of the restaurant and staff, which delights everybody.
Arbil is a delight. I'd always thought that Damascus was the world's oldest, continuously inhabited city but Arbil disputes that claim.
The modern city crowds around the ancient citadel, which surmounts a hill in the middle of the town, so as soon as I've found a hotel room I head towards that prominent landmark.
A stairway ascends to the citadel entrance, guarded by a huge seated statue of Ibn Al-Mistawfi, an important government official back in the 13th century, who wrote a book titled History of Erbil.
It's a fine-looking statue, especially with kids clambering over it and sitting in the local hero's lap.
Just inside the citadel entrance should be three large 19th-century Kurdish houses, turned into museums, according to my 15-year-old guidebook report. Sadly it turns out Saddam trashed them.
That's a disappointment, but there's a surprising substitute. A sign announces the Kurdish Textile Museum. Recently opened and very well presented, the museum displays an eclectic collection of carpets, kilims, saddle bags, baby carriers and other local crafts, plus well-presented displays and information about the Kurdish people and nomadic tribes.
Lolan Mustefa, who established the museum, is a mine of information on the region. I'm impressed that he has put so much effort into creating an excellent tourist attraction, when Iraq today has so few tourists.
I continue to the citadel's mosque, visit the hammam (bathhouse) and enjoy the view over the city from the citadel walls on the other side.
Below the citadel walls I explore the bazaars, inspect the kilim shops, joke with the shoeshine guys, check the selection of papers on sale at the news stands, photograph the photographers waiting for customers outside the citadel, snack on a kebab and drop in to a fruit-juice stand for an orange juice. It seems ridiculous, but I'm really enjoying Iraq.
Funny how things always look darker at night. I wake up in the middle of the night worried about how the crossing to Iran might go and that unease colours the next day.
Before departing Arbil I waste some time tracking down the small, rather dusty and forgotten archaeological museum. Finding things that nobody seems to know about is never easy and having language difficulties to grapple with doesn't help.
Coming back into the Sheraton car park, halfway through my museum search, I encounter a couple of burly Western guys in macho T-shirts checking over their armoured Land Cruiser.
I don't expect for a second they're going to know where the museum is (they don't), but I ask anyway and at least get some advice about safety. "You haven't got a driver? Take care, this may be Kurdistan, but it's still Iraq. It's dangerous out there."
At the hotel desk, after some discussion, since most of the staff also aren't aware there is a museum, I'm given instructions: straight up the way I was going, but driving distance rather than walking.
I flag down a taxi, set off up the road, stop to ask bystanders, u-turn and eventually end up right back where I gave up in the first place.
I was standing right outside the museum when I was directed back past the Sheraton and, remarkably, it's exactly where my ancient guidebook said it was, just past the Hamarawan Hotel.
Next day Arvan, my new driver, resplendent in Beijing Olympics 2008 sweat shirt, drives us to Sulaymaniyah along a straight road with lots of traffic and hairy overtaking manoeuvres. In northern Iraq, driving is probably the most dangerous activity.
My first task in Sulaymaniyah is again to find the museum. It's already closed for the day, but fortunately it's close to my hotel. I have no idea what else Sulaymaniyah has to offer, but wandering the park with its collection of busts of Kurdish heroes and the bazaar area, with its mosques and more Kurdish hero statuary and portraits, uses up the rest of the day very satisfactorily.
I also look in to a couple of more modern shopping centres and check out the town's MaDonal restaurant, an Iraqi-Kurdish interpretation of the golden arches.
I sleep badly. Again I wake in the middle of the night running through the logistics of this trip. I must get to Tabriz in Iran by tomorrow night to fly out the next morning to Istanbul and on to the US.
It looks like the drive to the Iran border could take four or five hours. Add a similar time from the border to Tabriz and it will be a push to get it done in one day, especially if there are any delays at the border. And what if I can't get across the border at all? That will be a huge hassle.
Of course, these sorts of problems always seem bigger at 3am than in daylight but eventually I come to the decision to continue straight through and try to get across to Iran next day. Then I'll have all the following day to make my way to Tabriz.
In the morning I look around the museum. It doesn't open at 8.30am (according to the guard at the front entrance last night) or 9am (the guard at the rear entrance), but at 9.30am. It's surprisingly good and it certainly wasn't trashed in the post-invasion chaos, like the Baghdad museum.
Arvan turns up and we head off to Arbil, then to the Iran border. After a fuel-bargaining session on the edge of Sulaymaniyah, we're soon speeding down the freeway, skirting round Kirkuk and then heading north.
Finally, we arrive at the Kurdistan border control and my worst fears are realised. I'm not sure what it is that I'm told at great length, but the general message is that I'm not going to get into Iran.
A week later I discover that this is actually no longer the northern border crossing between Iraq and Iran.
What a drag. Here I am at the border, about the same distance from Tabriz as Arbil, but that's where I'm heading back to. Still, the sun breaks through to provide a nice clouds-over-the-snow sunset as we hurtle back downhill. It's a scary ride, a nine-hour trip, and en route we've got lost twice.
It looks like my best bet is to retrace my steps from Arbil to Diyarbakir in Turkey where I started my Kurdistan foray. But are there flights tomorrow and can I get there in time to fly to Istanbul to pick up my flight to the US the next morning?
It's nearly 10pm when I dump my bag in the Arbil Tower Hotel and race to the internet cafe next door. I get on to the Turkish Airlines website and check its flight schedules. Isn't the world wide web wonderful? Even in Iraq it works. If there's a seat available and if I can get across the border fairly quickly, I should make it. And I do.
* This is an edited extract from Bad Lands: a tourist on the axis of evil, by Tony Wheeler (Lonely Planet, $34.99).
Iraq: Not such a bad place
Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler is a legendary traveller and notable enthusiast for the benefits of tourism.
There's no better antidote to ignorance and prejudice, he argues, than seeing a country and its people with your own eyes.
So it's no great surprise that his reaction to President George W. Bush's pronouncement of an axis of evil - Iraq, Iran, North Korea - should be to go to those countries to see them for himself.
This book is the story of those journeys plus a few trips to other frequently demonised states like Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Naturally, given his positive attitude, Wheeler found fascinating people and sights everywhere.
He chuckles at the bizarre leadership cult in North Koreaand marvels at the ancient monuments which survived the depredations of the Taliban in Afghanistan
In Iran he laps up the friendliness of the locals. "I cannot remember the last country I visited where there was such an overwhelming urge to make you feel welcome, to roll out the Persian carpet, to include you in the family gathering."
In Albania he savours the magnificent hilltop churches and mosques, in Cuba he revels in the music and dance, and in strife-torn Iraq he finds interesting museums.
And, he is careful to emphasise, going to these places does not have to be dangerous. "I had an extraordinarily interesting time visiting my nine Bad Lands. Only in Afghanistan and Iraq was I ever concerned for my own safety and I always ate well, slept comfortably, stayed healthy and, as a bonus, made some good friends."
Of course, making friends and enjoying the scenery does not mean closing your eyes to what's wrong - and Wheeler doesn't make that mistake - but he does conclude that, on the whole, these places are not as bad as they're made out to be.
On his own evil-meter - based on how a country treats its citizens, if it's involved in terrorism, whether it's a threat to other countries and if there is a personality cult - he concludes that Cuba (only 1.5 black marks out of 10), Burma (2.5), Albania (3) and Saudi Arabia (4) are pretty much also-rans when it comes to evil.
The darkest stars in Wheeler's personal axis of evil are Iraq under Saddam Hussein (6) and North Korea under the Dear Leader (7) and, just to keep things in perspective, he reckons that supposedly good countries like the United States and France (remember the Rainbow Warrior?) might well rate fairly badly by the same criteria.
So don't cross countries off your list of places to visit just because they may have a bad reputation. Read this book and be inspired to go there and make up your own mind. Or, if that's not possible, sit back and enjoy the Bad Lands vicariously through the eyes of one of the world's most ardent travellers.
* Herald Travel and Lonely Planet have five copies of Bad Lands to give away. If you'd like a copy just write your name and address on the back of an envelope and add the name of the country you think would be the scariest to visit. Post your entry to Bad Lands, Herald Travel, PO Box 3290, Auckland. Entries will close on May 15 and the five winners will be named in Travel on May 22.
