Visiting Iraq #2 - Basra

teofilex11 (63)in #travel • 8 years ago

Recently I wrote about my first trip to Iraq, some of their traditions and about life in difficult conditions they are faced with.. You can find it here.

After a few months I came back to Iraq, and this time, it was quiet easier because I was already familiar with atmosphere and what was waiting for me.

Because we had scheduled a few meetings for different projects in the south of the Iraq, we decided to take a flight directly to Basra, one of the biggest cities in Iraq.

Upon the arrival at the airport, we were forced to stay there for a few hours, even though we had a regularly obtained visas. At the end, they just let us go without any explanation.

First impression of the city were not as good as I assumed it is going to be. Basra lays on Shatt al-Arab river very near to the Persian Gulf, and it is the most important port in Iraq. The city is part of the historic location of Sumer, the first urban civilization in the southern Mesopotamia, known as one of the places from where Sinbad the Sailor journeyed.

Despite all the potential Basra has to be a modern city, it is a quiet dirty city, much dirtier than Baghdad, with bad infrastructure and "weird" smell spreading across the streets. During our visit to the governorate of Basra, governor showed us pictures of the beautiful city taken 50 years ago That was the city I was hoping to see. Sadly, right now it looks nothing like that.

One of the projects we were negotiating for, was for their oil industry, so we had a trip to the oil fields.

As the Iraqi people are good hosts, our partners organized a visit to one of their traditional villages. There was just a few houses made of brushwood. The villagers were so excited to see as. The feeling was mutual. We took a short rest, had some tea and chit-chatted about their life.

Unlike the city, there are a pretty nice and clean hotels and restaurants. The people from Iraq, every single one, are a big gourmands and in accordance with that they have really delicious food, primarily salads.