Return to Kurdistan - Day 2

We are woken by the sound of a donkey. A few minutes later Rafool comes in and re-starts our fire. We munch on our breakfast, drink tea and go to examine the village "soccer field". Women are shaking milk in sheep-skin containers, making yoghurt, the men are heading out with their flocks. We also head out, having said our partings.

A steep path eventually leads us onto a flower-covered plateau. We only meet some old men with their donkeys. The path keeps climbing among the grasslands with awesome views of the valley below. It soon becomes apparent that we will need to cross the 2000-3000 metre mountain range that was looming above us the day before. I'm thoroughly exhausted. Charlie and I discuss the villagers diet over our own lunch. Wouldn't these people get malnourished, living only on animal products, with no cultivation of crops? A man turns up to answer our question. Hamad is a forager. Every day he climbs up the mountain and picks edible grasses for the folks in the village below. He shows us what we can eat. Quite tasty actually.

After an hour climb we reach the high pass, and are hit by two things - a staggering view of a 2000 metre drop into the valley below with the mountains forming the Iran/Iraq border on the other side, and a massive hail-storm. Running/sliding down the steep rocky path we make it to a Chaykhana. After a short wait, the storm passes and the sun is out again. The rocks are hurting my feet. Hamad points out where his friend fell off a cliff and died. After another hour we meet two women - also foragers, they are Hamad's sister and mother in law.

Just above the village of Zhivar, we part ways. There are fields enclosed within stone fences and small orchards of pomegranate. There is also a waterfall where a woman is doing her washing. We try to find out if the water is drinkable, but fail to communicate. Her children fall over laughing at our miming efforts. Out comes the iodine.

The river is actually the main road into the village, and we are forced to balance on partly submerged rocks as we make our way down. The village itself is a bit of a disappointment after Morodol - there is power and running water, and even a shop and a school. People are friendly, and we soon have a crowd of schoolboys following us. They try to practice their English, and tell us that their English teacher lives in the next village and that we should meet him.

The road down winds and winds, with the roaring Sivar river below. One of the boys points out where his father drove off a cliff, another shows us where his uncle died. Eventually we make it to Bolbur village, but the English teacher isn't home. We decide to head out of the village and camp. There's only an hour of daylight left, and we've been walking for 9 hours.

The teacher comes as we buy a sack of potatoes and some matches. Mehdi refuses to let us camp. He insists we come to his house and stay with his family. We eventually cave in. Mehdi and his family are lovely and we eat dinner on the floor, watching kurdish music videos. The also show us a DVD of the dervish festival held in Owramatakht - long haired men dancing themselves into a trance to the sound of frame drums. I play them Tom Waits' "Downtown Train" and we go to sleep.