Norman's Blog: Rawanduz

Rawanduz

We left Sulaymaniyah before the rush hour to head north west into the hills. Our first stop was at Lake Dukan. The dam was built 1954 - 59. Prior to filling the reservoir, the area to be flooded was subjected to an arhaeolgicl surey that revealed 40 sites with occupation dating back 6,000 years BC.

Five sites were excvated. The archaeologial dig at Tell Bamusian revealed a temple dating to the second millenium BC. At Tell Shemshara there was a sixth millenium BC village and a second millenium BC palae with a small archive of clay tablets.

The inhabitants of 50 village needed to be relocated, mostly to the west side of the new lake.

The pproah road to th dam...

...the reservoir...

...the upriver side of the dam...

...and the spillway, now high and dry as the lake level has fallen so far.

All around the lake, there was evidence of the low level of the water judged by the amount of bech that was showing.

Another view of the lake.

It was a very scenic drive through the mountains along a lot of hairpin bends, tough on the driver but great views. There are three potential route from the north side of the lake to our next destination at Rawanduz. The most westerlypromised to be fastest as it was over gently rolling countryside. We chose the central route through the mountains as the more easterly route was higher and might have snow on the roads making driving difficult. Our local fixer also said that there were more checkpoints which would tke more time to get through.

We crossed the river a lot further up stream.

And there were more mountains to see. It rains a lot up here and the countryside was green with green fields without the need for irrigation. And it was cold, in single figures which few of us had expected from a country that is usually dry and hot covered with deserts. We also thought that we had fewer checkpoints and there were fewer but we still took an hour to get through one where they insisted on taking photos of our passports and visas.

We crossed a pass and started to descend. It was scenic but had seen better days. There were picnic spots along the riverbank but they had been abandoned. And here was litter everywhere. It was hard to appreciate the scenery when there is so much litter. There were also piles of builders rubbish. All the houses seemed to be built of grey concrete, always rather drab but discarded cars and agricultural equipment didn't add anything to the ambience.

Finally, we reached the Hamilton Road. It stretches 185 kilometres from Erbil through the Zagros Mountains to Haji Omeran oon th Iraqi - Kurdistan border with Iran. It is not only one of Asia's most spectacular routes, it is also one of its most audacious feats of engineering.

It was built between 1928 and 1932. It was named after lead engineer A M Hamilton, a New Zealander who worked for the British after they took contro of Iraq following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

The road was part of a grander plan to form a British controlled trade route linking teh Persian Gulf with the Caspian Sea. It was built across largely unmapped terrain in the face of extreme weather, diesese and tribal conflict.

Many of the local Kurds consier Hamilton and his workers as heroes for what they achieved.

We joined the road near Ruwanduz so we missed Khanzad Castle, the former residence of Khanzad, known as the Kurdish Warrior Queen who ruled the area in the 16th century. hamilton described the task of upgrading the rough track as 'an endless zig zag with an unfinished surface of sharp rocks'. On market day, the streets are busy with Kurdish women wearing brightly coloured kras (ground length dresses) and the men wearing traditional jamadani (headdresses) and baggy trousers tied with pshten (cummerbunds).

Hamilton met his first major obstacle near Shaqlawa in the form of a 198 metre high ridge, which he described as 'a lonely placewith an unsavoury reputation for robery and murder'. He assembled an eclectic army of Kurdish, Arabic and Persian workers for the hard lbour. The project overseer was an Assyrian Christian, the surveyor was a Bengali Hindu and the explosives expert an Armenian Jew. With so many religious beliefs to accommadate, as a compromise he proposed that nobody should have a day of rest, so they all worked seven days a week. despite temperatures soaring into the 40's in summer, outbreaks of malaria and venomous snakes.