A large American cruise ship had appeared in Yalta bay overnight and Sergey had been prebooked to spend the day shepherding Americans around.  As a result we were going to be on our own today in Yalta and the surrounding area.  Yalta is a world famous city despite its relatively modest size due to the conference held there in 1945 between the USA, USSR and Great Britain (represented by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill respectively), to decide the fate of post-war Europe.  The conference was held in Yalta because the area is full of the large country houses (dachas) of rich Russians.  Unfortunately, the stately homes are all located in the hills around the town and are difficult to get to for people who aren’t on an American tour bus.

Moorish architecture at Vorentovsky Palace

We started by heading off to the Vorentovsky Palace to the west of Yalta in a town called Alupka (the palace is sometimes known as the Alpuka Palace).  This palace was built for a Napoleonic era Russian general and was built by the architect who designed Buckingham Palace in London.  The architectural style is very unique - if you look at the land facing side it looks like a Scottish castle, whereas if you look at the sea facing side it looks like a Moorish mansion.  It is also famous as the place where Winston Churchill stayed when he was at the Yalta conference - he is said to have quipped that one of the lion statues in the grounds looked like him without a cigar.  To get there we had to catch the number 32 bus from the Veshchevoy Rynok bus station in Yalta - a journey that was made challenging by the sheer weight of Cyrillic (which is hard to read on a moving bus).  Unfortunately when we arrived it was raining slightly and with time tight we decided to wander around the grounds in the drizzle rather than actually go inside.

Livadia Palace, location of the Yalta Conference

From here we got on another bus back towards Yalta and got off at another palace, the Livadia Palace.  This is the famous one, where the three leaders argued about how they would carve up Europe.  The palace, while not as ostentatious as some of the others in the area, is definitely the most historically significant.  Not only did it hold the Yalta conference (arguably one of the most important events of 20th century European history), it was also the summer house of Tsar Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia who spent his last four summers here with his family before their execution in 1917 by the Bolsheviks.  The downstairs part of the palace is a museum dedicated to the conference, while the upstairs is dedicated to the Tsar.  In the centre is the courtyard where the famous picture of the three leaders was taken.  Interestingly there are also a few ‘outtakes’ of this photo shown in the museum where the three men look a lot more casual.  While the museum wasn’t hugely comprehensive, the palace and the Yalta treaty are famous enough to need very little introduction and it is one of those locations where you can really feel the history.  Stepping out into the courtyard where the famous photograph was taken was a lot like stepping back in time.

Dinner in Yalta

I left you as we headed for Odessa station to get the train to Simferopol.  The journey was full of drama - as we walked along the platform we passed a darkened carriage which appeared to contain cages.  On closer inspection there were hands grasping the outside of the cages and shaded faces grinning behind - it turned out that the last carriage of our train was a prison carriage.  Having never seen such a thing before, we were all a little unsettled.  We were further unsettled in the early hours of the morning when the train pulled up next to a junk yard containing a burning car which exploded just as we passed, shooting a fireball into the air and making the carriage shake.  We assume that it was arson that had got out of hand.  Anyway, believe it or not, the journey was actually fairly comfortable as we didn’t arrive in Simferopol on the Crimean peninsular until about midday so had plenty of time to get up at our leisure.

The remains of Sudak castle

As we had lots of stuff to see in the Crimea and not a lot of time to see it, I had arranged for us to meet up with a local tour guide called Sergey Sorokin who was to drive us around.  While it did take the edge off the whole ‘independent travelling’ thing, given the choice of spending a bit extra to see everything and missing things on the cheap, I would always spend the extra.  Sergey picked us up from Simferopol train station and we headed due east to the town of Sudak on the Crimean coast.  The town is famous for its 14th century Genoese castle, an important stop on the silk road to China.  It stood for a century as one of five Italian outposts on the Crimea, before it fell to the Ottomans.  The remains of the castle are fairly substantial and the views over the coast are really pretty.  The town has a beach and is popular with locals and Russians, though the tourist season is currently coming to a close as the school year is about to start.  We had a bit of lunch in the town before heading onto our next location, the cliffs around the town of Novy Svet.

The view from Sudak castle

The coastline around Novy Svet

Novy Svet itself is nothing much more than a Russian beach resort, but the surrounding cliffs are supposedly the most beautiful stretch of Crimean coastline.  We parked up and then walked around 3.5km along a coastal path.  The weather has been fantastic up until now and we were able to get photos from Sergey’s favourite viewpoint.  Despite doing the same walk countless times, he got his camera out as he said that the conditions were just about perfect.  Apparently a few years ago the beaches in the area were totally unregulated and were at risk of being totally obliterated by holiday makers.  Things have changed a lot in Ukraine, particularly in the run up to Euro 2012, as an influx of European tourists makes the country re-think its tourist industry.  The beaches are now protected and there are western signs all over the place which is to our advantage.  We had done a lot of driving to get to Sudak so we now headed back west on a two and a half hour drive to Yalta where we would be spending the night.  On the way back we stopped at an amazing church perched on the hill that had been set up as a memorial to all the sailors that had died along the coastline.  It was a great place to watch the sun go down.  We got to Yalta late and essentially crashed at the hostel where Sergey dropped us off.

Church to the lost sailors, Crimean coastline

Day 5: Odessa Historical Centre

Odessa Opera House

The trains in Ukraine aren’t a whole different to the ones in Russia - which probably doesn’t come as a surprise.  Arriving at 7am after about as good a sleep as it is ever possible to get on a sleeper train, we walked through Odessa looking for our hostel.  The outskirts of the city are very rundown and the guys were starting to question my judgement about coming here.  This was furthered by the ominous staircase that led up to our hostel, looking like something straight out of Crime and Punishment.  I went up by myself first, just in case I had got it wrong, climbing the three flights of stairs and tentatively knocking on the door.  I nearly wet myself when a giant of a man opened the door and looked down at me asking what I wanted.  It turned out to be Adam, the hostel owner, who turned out to be an Ausralian gentle giant who had studied in Bristol. I called the other guys up and we settled into the TIU Front Page hostel which we immediately loved.  We cooked ourselves breakfast and then headed out into the city in the rain.

Potemkin Steps, Odessa

I have to admit that our first impressions of Odessa was that it wasn’t really up to much.  It is one of those cities that is more about the ambience than any specific sights, so we walked through the historical district with its pretty museums, government buildings and opera house - the opera house is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful in the world.  Unfortunately the rain didn’t help the city and spoiled the look a bit.  Our aim was to find Odessa’s main tourist site, the Potemkin Steps, which had been used in the film “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein during the communist period in Russian.  It included the famous scene where a baby in a pram is knocked down the long flight of steps to the bottom.  Unfortunately it is one of those tourist sights that you can only really appreciate from the pictures from the air that you see in guidebooks and can never quite get the angle for on the ground.  We carried on through the historical centre, passing semi-sights like old town houses and museums that looked faded in the rain, deciding that maybe Odessa had been overrated on the internet.  Feeling a bit glum we went into a pizza restaurant for lunch that turned out not to have any pizza.  While we were in the restaurant however, the weather changed and we left to find that the whole feel of the city had changed.  We nipped into the Western and Eastern Artifacts museum that turned out to be nearly entirely ‘out of order’ (as the Ukrainian for closed appears to be), before literally re-visiting everywhere that we had been in the morning to see what it felt like in the sunshine.

Inside the Opera House

As we had been up early with the train, we decided to head back to the hostel to relax and clean up before our evening entertainment - a visit to the Odessa Opera House to see Verdi’s Requiem performed, with mid-range seats costing us the tiny cost of 3.90GBP.  It is probably the cheapest place in the world you can get an opera without it being rubbish - and is also probably one of the best places to see the opera, even if they say the quality of the performances have dipped since Soviet days.  We couldn’t tell a difference in quality though - it was a really good spectacle and very different to the standard backpacking sights we had been seeing.  Annoyingly, the tickets clearly said that cameras were not allowed, so I left mine at the hostel, only to find the Ukrainians happily snapping away all through the performance.  Luckily Katie had her camera with her so I borrowed hers.  After the opera we went out to a brilliant Ukrainian restaurant for a traditional meal in a pretty park, before going to a few bars to sample Odessa’s nightlife - supposedly the best in Eastern Europe.


Day 6: The Catacombs

Benny and Katie in the tunnels

Having said that the Opera was off the standard backpacker trail, we were ready to go one better today.  The amazing architecture of Odessa is almost entirely made from limestone that is found naturally a few metres below the surface of the city and surrounding countryside.  As a result, a vast network of shallow mines and catacombs is found in the city - a network that is reportedly 2000 km long (the famous network underneath Paris is only 500 km long).  They aren’t really a historical sight as such though - there are no hidden churches or tombs down there as it is just a mine.  It has historical significance however as it has often been used as a hide out, by people ranging from Russian smugglers to Ukrainian partisans fighting the Nazis. A tour guide had advertisements in our hostel so we booked him for the five of us plus a Dutch guy we had met in the hostel.  He picked us up and we travelled to the outskirts of the city on a public bus.

A miner’s poem

The tour wasn’t particularly official - we were sneaking into an entrance to the catacombs in somebody’s garden (we were told to move quickly and quietly into the entrance).  Luckily our two guides knew their way, as there are lots of stories floating around the internet about people getting lost and never being seen again.  Apparently Ukrainians come down all the time for parties and the like - complete with music, which is impressive considering the high risk of a cave-in.  We spent about an hour and a half in the caves, which varied in height between us standing tall and squatting.  We had no idea what to expect and it was a good experience - especially for Katie who seemed a bit nervous at first.  As I say, it wasn’t a particularly historical location (though a few poems written by miners were left on the walls), but was interesting nonetheless.

Odessa beach

We got the bus back into town and spent the rest of our day wandering around the city in the sunshine.  Having walked around the historical centre several times, we headed for one of Odessa’s beaches, just to see how it was.  It was a nice walk along the coast, but the views are almost entirely of Odessa’s giant cargo port and the beach was nothing special - made worse in the knowledge that the water is well known as being filthy.  It was getting late in the day, so we headed back to the hostel via one last look through the historical centre, getting some street food for dinner.  At 11pm we got a taxi to the train station (5 people plus the driver in a standard taxi) before getting the midnight train to Simferopol on the Crimean Peninsular, for the last part of the trip.

Inside the Upper Lavra complex

Yesterday’s day trip to Chornobyl was epic enough to have its own post, but was only the second day of our three in Kiev.  The first day in Ukraine’s capital city had been pretty rushed, so we decided to take it a bit easier and left the hostel at just before midday and treated ourselves to a morning coffee at a Ukrainian coffee chain that we have really fallen in love with (strangely enough, we have yet to see a Starbucks).  We only really had one area that we wanted to see today, the Pechersk Lavra, a complex of monasteries, churches and caves that is the centre of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. To get there required us to use the Kyiv Metro, which is ornately decorated and extremely deep - some of the escalators reportedly take up to 8 minutes to reach the surface.  The network isn’t hugely extensive and there are only three stations in the entire city where you can change between the three lines, but it got us close to the Lavra, leaving us a 15 minute walk to reach the gates.

The Upper Lavra bell tower

The complex is divided into an upper and lower part, one owned by the Russian Orthodox church and the other by the Ukrainian (apparently there is a lot of tension between the two).  We entered the upper section to start with, paying 50UAH (about 3.90GBP) plus a further 100UAH for the right to take photos, which seemed like a bit of a scam.  This did allow us access into several churches within the complex, but museums cost extra so we avoided them.  It was nice to walk around though, as it is a centre for pilgrims and is full of monks, worshippers and tourists alike.  We spent an hour or so walking around the grounds, taking in the ambience, before heading down into the lower Lavra.  This was much the same as the upper, but slightly smaller and with the extra tourist attraction of a set of catacombs.  These were originally dug back in the days when Christians were persecuted and literally ‘forced underground’.  A sprawling network spread under the city and became the place where monks were buried.  Their bodies are still there, wrapped in cloth and in glass cases and are the holiest of places within Ukraine.  Pilgrims head down into the cramped tunnels with naked candles and duck from one side to the other, kissing the cases of the dead monks.  What with every woman wearing a headscarf, it poses a serious fire hazard, but nobody seems to care and the monks guarding the entrance shepherded more and more people into the tunnel complex.  Stupidly, we didn’t realise that the candles were for finding your way rather than for prayer, and therefore stumbled around in the dark looking extremely touristy.

View over the lower Lavra complex

The motherland statue (with dramatic filter…)

After wandering around the Lavra for a couple of hours we continued south to a set of sights at the opposite end of the historical spectrum.  Kyiv suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis and a large museum and memorial have been set up to the south of the city.  The museum itself was closed, but there were enough bits of WW2 military hardware in the open air museum for us to look at for a while.  The main highlight of the museum complex is the giant statue that has been built on top - the motherland statue, which is made of titanium and looks over the entire city.  Nothing says communism like a giant metal WW2 statue.  This essentially concluded our sight seeing tour of Kyiv.  There was far more that we could have seen with more time, but we felt we had got a good feel for the city and were now happy to move onto our next location, Odessa on the Black Sea.  We walked back to the hostel via a Ukrainian restaurant, grabbed our bags and then headed to Kyiv’s main passenger train station for the sleeper train heading south.  The train left at 22.05 and arrived at 06.55 and cost about 20GBP for a second class ticket - which is pretty good as it also saved a night in a hostel.

Today was set to be one of the most unique travelling experiences I am likely to ever have.  For the last decade, the Ukrainian nuclear authorities have allowed small groups of tourists to enter the 30km exclusion zone around the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.  A trip, costing $150, is the only way to get into the exclusion zone and results in a radiation doseage equivalent to a long haul flight from London to New York - so more than I would have had if I had sat at home, but not enough to turn me into an X-man.  Arranging the trip had actually been very easy - there are lots of tour companies on the internet who will do it and I had just picked the one that the hostel recommended.  I transferred a $50 deposit per person through Western Union and paid the rest up front when we met the company in Independence Square in Kyiv.  We were in a small group of eight and travelled the 105km north to the Chornobyl site in a minibus while being shown a really good English documentary about the disaster.

Me, Ollie, Benny and Charlotte at the Chornobyl entrance

An overview, for those of you who don’t know the story.  In the early hours of the morning of 26th April 1986 the management of Chornobyl power station decided to conduct an experiment where they simulated a ‘worst case scenario’ where the nuclear fuel rods were left exposed during a power cut.  Unfortunately, the experiment turned out to reveal all of the flaws in the Chornobyl design - bad construction, planning and management, which culminated in a massive explosion that blew the 500 tonne concrete protective slab off the top of the reactor and allowed tonnes of radioactive material into the atmosphere.  First on the scene were 28 firefighters who entered the exposed reactor with no protective equipment to try to put out the massive fire.  A nuclear fire is no match for conventional firemen however and by the end of the evening the first firemen were starting to die from radiation exposure.  Meanwhile the communist authorities were unwilling to admit that there was a problem and it took them a few days to start evacuating the nearby towns of Pripyat (a town that had been constructed in 1970 to serve the power plant) and Chornobyl, the smaller town that the plant was named after.  At first a 10km exclusion zone was created, but studies of the surrounding land soon discovered that 30km was more appropriate and this is where the boundaries are found today.

Chornobyl Reactor Number 4

The burning magma at the core was still burning however and the Soviets only started admitting a problem when nuclear power plants in Sweden began to detect a massive surge in radioactivity at their nuclear stations.  At first they checked that it wasn’t one of their own power stations and quickly assumed that it was someone elsewhere.  Any western country would have made it clear they had a problem - so all eyes turned to the Soviet Union, who only really realised the scale of the problem when they heard that the rest of Europe was being contaminated with a radioactive cloud.  Things were looking a lot worse as well, as the magma at the core was beginning to melt through the floor below it and was heading towards a pool of water that had been created by the firemen who had been first onto the site.  I don’t know the physics of it, but had the molten magma reached the pool of water, it would have caused a second explosion that experts said would have the power of a 5 megaton bomb - enough to kill 100,000 people in the immediate explosion and perhaps even scarier, enough radiation to render all of Europe uninhabitable.  The true scale of what could have arguably been the worst ever catastrophe to affect mankind has only recently been released by the authorities and we all owe it to the Soviet Union’s ability to mobilise manpower (and send men to their certain deaths) to avert this.  At first, robots were sent into the power station to prevent humans from coming into contact with the radiation, but the sheer strength of radiation was causing the circuitry of the robots to fail within a few hours of their deployment.  To respond to this, the Soviet’s came up with perhaps the most communist of solutions - the bio-robot.  The bio-robot was just a young army reservist, wearing as much lead protection as he could legitimately strap to himself while still being able to move.  Looking like medieval knights, these young soldiers would then be sent into the most radioactive sections to work for less than a minute, before running back again.  Sheer strength of manpower (around 500,000 men worked on stablising Chornobyl) saved the day, but 4,000 people have since died as a result of radiation based issues and 125,000 have severe disabilities.  The state continues to undermine their benefits.  The sarcophagus that holds the reactor is starting to come to the end of its 30 year life and the European Union has paid for a new sarcophagus which will make the site safe for the next 100 years.  Anyway, that’s the history, now for our visit.

Abandoned kingergarten, Chornobyl

Having passed through the military checkpoint at the edge of the 30km exclusion zone we went to the town of Chornobyl.  Despite its famous name, there isn’t a whole lot to see there except for a small museum with some fairly average exhibits and a memorial to the 180-odd villages that were abandoned within the exclusion zone.  Apparently 4000 people still work within the 30km zone, maintaining the sarcophagus and monitoring the site - for every 15 days they work they have to take 15 days of holiday to prevent them getting too much exposure.  From the town of Chornobyl we passed the memorial to the 28 firefighters and stopped at what appeared to be a random spot of woodlands.  It turned out that this had once been a village and we followed our guide through the undergrowth to find a very overgrown and worn down building that apparently used to be a kindergarten.  We had to really stick to the path our guide had taken as she carried a geiger counter to work out the safest way forward - a couple of metres to the right or the left could have resulted in a ten-fold increase in radiation exposure.  The kindergarten was EXTREMELY eerie - the building was falling to pieces but contained dolls, childrens shoes and all the other things you would expect to see in a nursery that belonged to people who are now in their 30s.

Pripyat’s abandoned ferris wheel

From here we carried on towards Pripyat, which is within the 10km exclusion zone where radiation is much higher. We got to see our first glimpse of the infamous reactor number 4 on the horizon, within its concrete sarcophagus and also passed the abandoned construction sites that would have been reactors 5 and 6.  Interestingly, the Soviets had planned an enormous twelve reactors at the site with the last one to have been completed in 2012 - how differently things turned out!  The town of Pripyat was to be the highlight of the trip.  The city of 50,000 people was totally evacuated in 1986, with the residents told that they would return within a couple of days.  They have never been back and the entire city has become an overgrown Soviet time capsule.  We spent an hour and a half walking around, looking at abandoned cafes, supermarkets, cinemas, houses and government buildings.  We stopped for photos next to the now famous ferris wheel, due to open three days after the explosion.  The town has become enormously overgrown and apparently several parts of it are out of bounds as they have been taken over by wolves and wild boars.

Pripyat’s Cultural Bureau

Lunch was included in the tour and we had it in the canteen where the Chornobyl workers eat.  On the way in, we had to have our radiation levels taken in a scanner - all of us passed except for Charlotte who had to go and wash her hands (and then passed - nothing to worry about).  The food was pretty good and we were told to take lots of extra bread to feed the giant catfish that live in the river next to the restaurant.  The catfish are only giant due to a lack of predators rather than radiation, if you are wondering.  After a further radiation test (which we all passed) we headed back to Kyiv, extremely impressed by what we had seen.  Its strange though - Chornobyl is the site of a major catastophe but somehow it doesn’t quite feel like that.  Thousands of people have died as a result of the disaster, but the invisible nature of radiation means that often the victims are totally overlooked.  This is proven by the way that the authorities deal with 'veterans’ of the Chornobyl 'campaign’ - soldiers who were exposed to life threatening doses of radiation get far less help from the authorities than soldiers who served in combat zones.  That evening we met up with Katie who had spent the day in Kyiv and spent the evening in the hostel making homemade dumplings with the hostel staff.  It had been a once in a life time experience to explore Chornobyl and Pripyat and I would encourage anybody who has the chance to go there.

PS: I found a new 'dramatic tone’ filter feature on my camera which seemed like it was designed to take photos of Chornobyl - just before you think that the lighting in the area is as dramatic as it is shown

Day One: Arrival

Possibly the most painless start to a backpacking trip I have ever experienced.  Charlotte, Katie and I got the train down to Gatwick and met Benny and Ollie then whizzed through check-in with Ukrainian International Airways and arrived in Kyiv early despite having a late departure.  I had arranged for a people carrier to meet us at the airport and take us to our hostel in the city centre - the ‘Dream House Hostel’.  Lots of the reviews on the internet said that the hostel is one of the best in Europe and on first glances it seemed very impressive - one of those hostels like the Godzilla Hostel in Moscow that achieve a legendary status amongst backpackers which makes them the only place you would want to stay.  We were staying in a six bed dorm, so had one randomer with us but we barely saw them.  Having arrived at the hostel at 7ish and having had a long day (especially Charlotte who had essentially come straight from Canada) we decided to have a quick explore before our dinner.  I didn’t know if when I booked the trip, but we had actually arrived on Ukrainian Independence Day, so there were lots of families around and fireworks going off.  We ate at a restaurant that was a shrine to Quentin Tarrantino and served all kinds of food (but not Ukrainian - we can start being cultured tomorrow).  After dinner we made the most of our free welcome beer at the hostel before an early night - as I say, a very painless start to the trip.  The excitement begins tomorrow.

Day Two: The City

Kyiv Furnicular Railway Station

Despite having a fair bit of time in Kyiv, the schedule was set to be fairly hectic.  I had designated today as the day where we would do the lion’s share of exploring the city.  The day got off to a bad start as Benny’s alarm clock was too quiet and Charlotte’s alarm was set to British time.  Getting up at a leisurely pace (my least favourite way of getting up) we left the hostel and headed for the furnicular railway that would take us up towards the city centre.  The terrain in Kyiv is very hilly and our hostel is set at the bottom of the city’s favourite street - the bohemian “St Andrew’s Descent”.  We decided that it was better to get the furnicular up the hill and walk down it later as we attempted to do the “Lonely Planet Walking Tour” in order to fit in as much as possible.  The railway was very impressive in itself, following the odd Soviet tradition of making all of their buildings bland and then elaborately decorating public transport terminals.

St Michael’s Golden Domed Cathedral

Our first stop was St Michael’s Golden Domed Cathedral.  This was our introduction to the city’s Orthodox cathedral’s and was a good place to start as the immaculate blue and gold building is a clear landmark on the city’s skyline.  We thought that somehow it was a bit TOO immaculate and when we read a few noticeboards we found out that the original had been destroyed by the communists - as I say, communism is pretty bad for fans of architecture unless you love the inside of train stations.  It was very impressive nonetheless and is very close to another major church, St Sophia’s which is one of the most important buildings in Ukrainian heritage.  This church is the real deal, though the original Byzantine design has been repeatedly redesigned so that now it has a Baroque style with parts of the original design sticking through.  We walked around the grounds to the tranquil sound of an old man playing some kind of home made string instrument.  We were allowed inside the cathedral itself, but were barred from taking any photos which is fair enough as the murals inside are some of the earliest examples of Byzantine fresco work.  The cathedral itself is named after Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The gate of the Cathedral complex had a large bell tower on the top which me, Ollie and Benny decided to climb up for the sake of an extra 50p on our ticket.  The views from the top over St Sophias and Kyiv were well worth it.

St Sophia’s Cathedral, Kyiv

The last statue of Lenin in Kyiv

We had spent a few hours in and around the two cathedrals and in doing so had only ticked off two of the 24 sites on the walking tour (unfortunately I don’t think this computer is capable of uploading photos of 24 different sites so I am giving you a kind of “best of” collection).  Our next site was the Golden Gate, a recreation of the original entrance to the city that was burned down by the Mongols.  We were hungry so went off and sorted out some lunch.  The three guys headed to the nearest doner kebab van and got an excellent chicken kebab for about 1.50GBP.  The girls showed us up a bit however as they headed to an organic cafe and found themselves a salmon and caviar sandwhich.  In fairness it cost about six times more, but it was pretty impressive.  With plenty more things to see, we got moving and walked past another cathedral, a park, the university and the city’s last remaining Lenin statue (which has a permanent manned tent next to it to prevent the authorities doing away with it).  From there we went over to the main square, where the famous Orange Revolution had taken place.  There seemed to be an awful lot going on in the square and we had no idea what it meant or was celebrating, but it seemed fun.  We were approached by two dodgy looking guys in animal costumes who insisted on having their photos with them and then literally chased us across the square when we refused to pay them anything.  Charlotte and Benny took the brunt of their attack and held up admirably.

Friendship arch between Russia and Ukraine

From here there were STILL another 12 sites to see on the walking tour and the day was getting on a bit, but I wanted to finish up so I promised everybody a juice break at 5 if we could get enough things done.  That was enough of an incentive to power through the other half of Kyiv that we had yet to see - passing through the expensive luxury house district which contained architectural gems like 'the weeping lady’, 'chimera’ and 'chocolate’ houses before we got to the Ukrainian parliament and the surrounding view point over the Dnieper river that the city is based on.  It was here that we stopped and had our promised juice.  There wasn’t a whole lot more to see and we were now on our way back to the hostel.  We passed the Dynamo Kyiv stadium (not one of the Euro 2012 venues - they used the far larger Olympic stadium) and came across the Friendship Arch that was built by the Soviets to symbolise the brotherhood between the Russians and Ukrainians.  The arch was pretty impressive, but it was interesting to note how this monument is located on the edge of town and is fairly deserted while all of the Ukrainian independence monuments are given pride of place in the city centre.

St Andrew’s Descent

We had NOW pretty much finished and ambled back to the hostel to clean up before dinner.  It had been quite an exhausting day as the temperature pushed over 30 degrees and we had walked fairly solidly throughout.  On the plus side, we had seen the majority of the sights in the city and had really got our bearings.  Tomorrow, everybody except Katie is heading out on the Chornobyl tour and we will only have one day left to see the others things in the city.  On our way back to the hostel we walked down the very pretty St Andrew’s descent.  That night we decided to start our 'cultural dining’ experience with a visit to a local Georgian restaurant which was really excellent.  The food was a cross between Middle Eastern and Russian and despite a few strange bits on the menu (I ordered the 'chocolate assortment’ for dessert and got a plate full of chocolate) we were pleasantly impressed.  All in all, a great start to the trip.  We have all taken a real liking to Kyiv - for me it is a lot like St Petersburg, but on a smaller and more intimate scale.  We had been told that the Ukrainians would be far more friendly than the Russians and I have to say that my first impressions tend to agree with that.

Erbil Mosque, Iraq

After what seemed like a lifetime in some ways and a second in others, it was time for us to head back to the UK.  The memory of landing in Iraq with nervous excitement a week ago had now faded and we had begun to feel about as at home as you probably can do here as a Brit.  Having spent most of our trip in the countryside, it didn’t really feel like we had got to know any of the cities particularly well so we spent the morning having a general wander.  We found ourselves at Erbil’s main mosque which was totally closed as people were celebrating Eid.  Whether we would have been able to go into the mosque anyway is debatable but the outside was very pretty and worth seeing.  It looks like it is fairly modern, but has been built in the traditional style.  After the mosque we packed up our backs and caught a cab to the airport where we flew back to London via Vienna with Austrian Airlines.


So, I don’t normally do this, but I think that somehow this trip warrants a conclusion.  I think that the best way to do this is for me to list some positives (and negatives about the trip).  Overall, I believe that Iraqi Kurdistan is infinitely visitable and offers a fascinating alternative destination for the intrepid backpacker.  But anyway, pros and cons:

+ The people: without a doubt the most overwhelming feature that we will take from this trip is how friendly, helpful and welcoming the Kurdish people are.  We had literally no negative experiences with any of the Kurds and made a lot of friends.  Without a shadow of a doubt, they are the most naturally friendly people I have ever met on my travels.

+ Off the beaten track: for the time being, Iraq (whether Kurdish or not) will be seen by most as an extremely unlikely (or unwise) travel destination.  If you are so inclined, this offers more of a temptation than impediment to visit the area as you can rely on having an experience that few will have had, visiting a region that has not been changed through tourism at all.

+ The sights: there is a stunning array of historical, natural and modern sites across Kurdistan which mean that there is always something to do.  I have even heard of there being a blossoming adventure travel industry developing around hiking and white water rafting.  While most people assume I came to Iraq to ‘tick a country off’ while putting myself in faux-danger, there is loads to see in Kurdistan.

- Lack of information: the flip side of the region being off the beaten track is that there is very little information available for backpackers and this can quite often lead to confusion and a fear that you don’t really know what you want to see.  Looking at blogs (like you are doing now - good start) and trying to find a local’s contact details is definitely advisable if possible.

- Heat and Ramaddan: not a massive problem - just go at any other time of the year that isn’t when we went.

- Danger: this is only a potential negative.  Iraqi Kurdistan is perfectly safe at the moment and is set to stay that way.  Unfortunately, the situation may change if outside factors change.  To the north, Turkey is engaged in a guerilla war with Kurdish separatists, to the east is unpredictable Iran, to the south is the rest of Iraq which has always had tensions with Kurds and to the west is Syria which is currently facing a civil war.  As long as Kurdistan is left to decide its own fate, it will be safe.  I just hope that it will be allowed to.

Erbil City Centre

In many ways the sightseeing part of our journey was now over, as we had visited the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan - Dohuk, Erbil and Sulimaniyah.  There were a few bits that we wanted to see in Sulimaniyah in the morning, such as the Torture Museum, but everything was closed as today was the last day of Ramaddan.  We got a taxi to the ‘Erbil Garage’ where the share taxis left from Sulimaniyah back to Erbil.  We were again faced with the difficult issue of whether to go through Kirkuk.  The fastest way to do our journey would have included a trip on the ring road around Kirkuk - so while a car bomb had gone off in the city centre a few days earlier, we wouldn’t actually be going to the city centre.  Kirkuk, which is ethnically Kurdish but contains a real mix of people (Arabs, Turcomans, Christians, Kurds etc) and is home to a lot of violence.  Some Kurds had insisted it was okay, while some advised us to steer well clear.  Tom and I decided that the journey wasn’t worth the risk, even if we only travelled on the ring road, as another attack in a different city had seen a man attack an army checkpoint with a machine gun.  Some French people we had met in Sulimaniyah were risking the Kirkuk route, so it was tempting to join them, but we managed to convince a share taxi driver to take us the long way round (over the mountains) for an extra 10000IQD each.  The whole trip therefore cost us 25000IQD - and paying an extra £5.50 to avoid Kirkuk seemed like a no brainer.

14th century minaret

We arrived back in Erbil in the late afternoon and found a really nice hotel in the city centre.  All of the prices had gone up as the last day of Ramaddan is the day before Eid and is therefore the equivalent of Christmas Eve.  By this stage in the trip we were quite exhausted and happy to just sit around the hostel until people came out to get their dinner after sunset.  Before we grabbed some food, we walked to the 'minaret park’ on the edge of town where a the remains of a 14th century minaret are sitting in a small park - it was shut but we still got a few photos.  In the evening we had our last meal - finally getting a chicken kebab rather than the countless lamb kebabs we have had thus far.  As is now customary, we proceeded to a shisha bar where we sat with two Arab kids from Mosul.  This was quite a big thing for us, as we had psyched ourselves up to believe that Mosul was the centre of all evil (which obviously it isn’t, but we were very keen on staying away).  The two guys were reasonably friendly (but a bit reserved) and we talked about all the things that they were into that we might know of - they were both keen BMX riders and showed us the videos of them in action.  We left the shisha bar fairly early to make sure that we would be rested for tomorrow when we fly back to the UK.

The Halabja Memorial

 At about 4pm we arrived at the Halabja monument, a world apart from swimming in the river.  Around 5000 people had died in the attack on what was a totally civilian target.  Expecting a conventional artillery bombardment, the Kurdish inhabitants headed into their basements to take cover.  This was no conventional attack however as Chemical Ali poured napalm, phosphorus and mustard and nerve gas on the city.  The gas, heavier than air, sunk into the town’s basements, suffocating those who had taken cover.  Thousands of people spent their last moments trying to protect their families from the gas to no avail - the memorial is full of pictures of fathers and mothers wrapped around their young children in a futile effort to keep the gas at bay.  The nerve gas took a few hours to kill the target, and as the gas began to assault the nervous system many people were physically unable to stop themselves laughing hysterically.  The inside of the memorial features the names of the dead, carved in stone and divided into families.  We watched a video about the attack at the end, with the curator of the museum who featured in the video as he had been in Halabja during the attack.  He lost his eight brothers and sisters and was only able to survive as he hid in a pile of bodies.  He now stands and watches the documentary video about the attack every day.

A photo exhibit within the memorial

Perhaps it was the fact that we had travelled to the Halabja monument with a Kurdish family, including a father with his young son, or perhaps it was because western photographers were able to enter the city immediately after the attack to document the chaos, but the museum really hit home the horror of the attacks in a way that even my visits to Auschwitz and the Cambodian Killing Fields couldn’t.  Omed and Nabaz were speachless at first and when they spoke you could sense the anger in their usually cheerful Welsh and Geordie accents.  An archive had been set up to the side of the memorial and this contained some fascinating artifacts, including the death certificates of Saddam’s two sons and the death sentence and rope that had been used to kill Chemical Ali.  I had travelled to Kurdistan with the belief that the recent Iraq war had been little more than looting by the Americans and British.  Our visit to Halabja changed my mind somewhat - by ridding the world of men like Saddam and Chemical Ali we certainly made it a better place.  It is a little-reported fact that on the day that anti-war protests took place in New York and London, a pro-war rally took place in Kurdistan.  We liberated them and they make it very clear that they are eternally thankful.

Pre-Eid shopping in Sulimaniyah

After such a sombre visit, we spent the journey back to Sulimaniyah in quiet contemplation.  On the way, we stopped at some relatives of Omed and Nabaz who welcomed us into their home to sit and chat for a while.  We arrived on the outskirts of Sulimaniyah and decided to hitchhike back into the city centre - as it was approaching the time for the breaking of the fast and we didn’t want to make our two guides wait any longer for their food.  The man that we thumbed a lift with was listening to the radio when we got in and just as the call to prayer came on, he pulled out a basket of figs and a bottle of water and broke his fast - offering both to us.  That night we wandered around the city centre as it is approaching the end to Ramaddan and the atmosphere is something similar to Christmas Eve as families start to buy presents for Eid on Sunday.  We finished the night at the city’s one and only bar, at the only five star hotel in town.  We sat with the owners - a Russian and a Georgian guy who treated us to a few drinks and even gave us a bottle of vodka.  It had been a day of contrasts as we saw the best of Kurdish hospitality and the worst of human evil. 

We had now explored most of the north of Iraqi Kurdistan - two of the three provinces that make up the region.  All that remained was the Sulimaniyah region to the east of the country.  To get there from Erbil would have potentially meant going through the city of Kirkuk - a city that is ethnically Kurdish, but not part of Kurdistan, meaning that ethnic tensions do exist.  We decided to kill two birds with one stone by getting a private taxi to take us to two sites that we were interested in that form an arc around Kirkuk.  This turned out to be a wise decision in hindsight, as we would later find out that a car bomb had gone off in Kirkuk the very day that we had planned to pass through it.

Dokan Lake, Iraq

The two sites that we had chosen were Dokan lake and the Chemi Rezan caves, both along Kurdistan’s eastern border with Iran.  As the journey was reasonably long and difficult, we were willing to spend $100 to do the journey - getting the receptionist at our Erbil hotel to make the arrangements with our driver.  We set out at about midday and arrived at Dokan lake at about half 1.  Our driver was a bit rubbish and seemed to have no sense of direction, so Tom and I had to lead him to the lake.  The journey had taken us through the flat desert badlands at the foot of the Kurdish mountains - a vast desert expanse more like the Iraq that we had expected to see.  When we reached the lake it was a refreshing burst of blue.  The lake is totally manmade and has built up behind the Dokan hydroelectric dam.  There were a few resorts being built around the edge of the lake, but these seemed deserted, with a few fishermen being the only people around.

Chemi Rezan cave entrance, Iraq

After we had visited the lake, the taxi driver seemed to get a bit confused and insisted that we head straight to Sulimaniyah and skip out Chemi Rezan.  We obviously weren’t very happy with that as we had paid so much to do the trip, so we rang around some of our Kurdish friends who eventually managed to convince the driver to uphold his agreement.  The caves at Chemi Rezan had been recommended to us by one of the British consul employees that we had met last night.  There was scant information about the site online - it was only discovered in 2006 by some German archaeologists.  From what I gather (and this is unconfirmed), the caves are amongst the first human settlements on earth.  There are another set of caves near Dohuk that are better known, and these are world famous as neanderthal sites, and I THINK that Chemi Rezan is along the same lines.  Anyway, we were unable to go inside the cave but stood outside and marvelled at the carvings around the entrance.  It wasn’t too difficult to imagine our ancestors walking around the lush valley that the caves are in - a small river runs through it with small herds of cattle grazing.  Its a shame that we didn’t know more about the history of the site, but it was an amazing place to visit nonetheless.

Chemi Rezan gorge

From Chemi Rezan we headed on towards Sulimaniyah, arriving in the late afternoon.  We found a hotel quickly and met up with Nabaz from Newcastle who we had met in Erbil on our first night.  He brought his cousin Omed along - who is from Swansea (though I originally mistook his broad welsh accent for Kurdish and spoke to him verrrrry slowwwwly).  Both of them had sought asylum in the UK a decade ago and had set up successful lives there.  We walked around the town with them and then went our separate ways for dinner, only to bump into them again at a shisha bar later on in the evening.

The road to Baghdad (we turned off)

Not a whole lot of sightseeing planned for today was we tried to get back to Erbil.  When time is tight, it is obviously preferable to complete a loop of the country, but the fact that we flew into Erbil in the centre, and that the region is a thin strip, meant that we have had to use the capital as a bit of a base.  We therefore got a share taxi back to Dohuk (with a family of four - a tight squeeze for 7 people in a 5 seater taxi) and then on from Dohuk to Erbil.  The Amedi-Dohuk journey cost us 8000IQD while the Dohuk-Erbil taxi cost us 15000IQD.  In the latter journey we were joined by two guys, a policeman and a Syrian army deserter.  They were both friendly and eager to find out about us.  We were fascinated by the Syrian, but didn’t feel it was right to ask him too much about his experiences.  Apparently there is a refugee camp near Dohuk for Syrians fleeing the civil war - it would be interesting to know whether the Iraqi Kurds are only sheltering Syrian Kurds, or whether Syrian Arabs are welcome too.

The Rotana Hotel, Erbil

Having left Amedi at midday we arrived in Erbil at 5pm and found ourselves a hotel.  While we were reasonably happy with the Qandeel Hotel that we stayed at last time we were here, we thought we could get more for our money and with a bit of haggling stayed at the Lomana Hotel for 20USD each per night - only a couple of pounds more than the first place, but with a big jump in quality.  Feeling classy, the two of us decided to visit the nicest hotel in town for dinner at their Lebanese restaurant.  The Rotana Hotel is a true 5 star hotel, located in a guarded compound on the edge of town.  It is where diplomats and the odd head of state stay so we dressed up in shirts and tried to fit in.  By a strange coincidence, the British consulate had sent a delegation to the hotel that night to make a presentation to local businessmen about the legacy of the London Olympics and explaining why Britain was a great place to invest in.  We missed the presentation, but were allowed into the hall afterwards to look around.  We were met inside by a Scottish lady from the British consulate team and briefly by the Iraqi Olympic minister.  It was interesting to talk to them about our experiences - they were surprised that we were backpacking and said that backpackers really are few and far between.  After this pretty cool experience, we moved on to the restaurant where we had a wonderful meze dinner followed by shisha.  While it was far more expensive than the food we have been used to (we worked out that we could have had 35 kebabs from street sellers for the same price), it worked out at about the same price as a standard restaurant in the UK.  Considering the location (and the company) we figured it was more than worth it.

Amedi, Iraq

With all of Iraqi Kurdistan to explore, and not much time to do it, we moved swiftly on from Dohuk to the town of Amedi in the north.  The policeman that we had hitched a ride with yesterday had also arranged for a share taxi to our next destination, Amediyah (Amedi).  It turned out to be a private taxi and cost us 20000IQD which wasn’t TOO bad for the 50km journey that snaked up through the mountains.  Amedi is nicknamed “the town that doesn’t grow” in Iraq, as it is perched on top of a steep sided plateau.  It is a stunning location and really looks like something straight out of Lord of the Rings.  We stopped to take some photos outside the city, then got the taxi to drop us off at the bazaar.  Unfortunately, it soon became very clear that there were no hotels in the town.  The locals suggested that we tried the town of Sulav, about 5km away, so we got another taxi to take us there.  Annoyingly, there weren’t any hotels there either and the locals in Sulav suggested we tried in the valley between the two towns.  After a lot of searching we eventually came across a fairly decent motel room, that was inconveniently located between the two places that we wanted to visit.

The view over a minefield

The motel room was more like a little apartment so Tom and I went to a local shop and bought some food to cook our own lunch - it seemed easier than trying to find a place that would serve us.  After lunch I had a sleep (the 50 degree celsius heat is tiring me out) while Tom went for a little hike into the mountains to get some even better views over the city and surrounding countryside.  I would have joined him, but I hadn’t brought any suitable boots as I was under the impression that the countryside was covered in landmines, left from the Iraq-Iran war.  Tom didn’t believe me, so went on his merry way.  We later hitched a ride with a minesweeper who told us that the whole area was mined.  So Tom has now achieved the debatable honour of having successfully walked through a minefield.  The photos were worth it though.

Sunset over Amedi valley

Amedi is just about the smallest town that we have visited and has proven to be the place where Ramaddan is the most difficult to come to terms with.  At about 4 we walked into town to look around and saw most of the key sites - the mosque, bazaar etc, but the town was totally deserted.  At half 5 we realised that nothing was going to open for hours so we hitched a ride back to the hotel and sat around for a bit.  The view of the sunset from the town was set to be amazing, so we hitched back in and found a spot to watch it.  The sun had started to burn off the haze and the views down the valley at sunset were simply incredible.

Shisha bars (and a mini cinema) in Sulav

Muslims are allowed to eat after the sun has gone down, but that generally means that they go and eat with their families, rather than opening up their restaurants.  This meant that we had to wait another hour after the sun had gone down until we could eat.  We walked around for a bit and spoke to a group of kids about where the nearest restaurant was, only to find that it was in Sulav.  Having been under the impression that Amedi was a bit of a tourist trap for Iraqis, it turned out that there were no hotels or restaurants.  For the second time today, we headed over to Sulav and found ourselves a restaurant doing local food which wasn’t too bad.  As has now become our routine, we found ourselves a bar for some post-dinner shisha.  After sitting for a while we were joined by some guys who we had seen driving around Amedi in a white Hummer (which as you may have guessed didn’t blend in particularly well).  One of the guys was from Leeds, though he didn’t stay for long.  One of the guys stayed and talked to us for a few hours. He told us what it was like to live in Kurdistan - hated by the Turks to the north, Arabs to the west and south and Iranians to the east, they faced total isolation.  While they appreciated the peace and freedom from oppression that the British and American invasion had brought, the Kurds were unable to travel (get out as he called it) leading to a frustration that they were alone in their little region.  We also asked him whether the rumours about the city of Mosul were true, and whether we would be in as much danger as we had been told.  He said that if we turned up, somebody would watch us and wait until we stopped in a hotel or restaurant and would then make a call to bring in somebody to shoot us there and then - further confirming that Mosul and the rest of Iraq is a no-go zone.  We stayed out until about 1am, moving around the various shisha bars in Sulav and being treated to drinks (non-alcoholic of course) and shisha by his mates.