Mt Sakran
After a few hours of Choman, we went to another set of mountains named Sakran. We started off from a village with blue roofs and walked to a base camp just below the snow line. It was interesting to see that these little stone huts in the village all had satellite TV. The village itself seemed deserted though. People mostly live there in the harvest season. The walk this time was straight-forward and pleasant. We were at the basecamp within a few hours. But I must say that our camping spot was the most magnificent I have ever stayed at. It felt like somewhere in Patagonia. Steep snow-covered mountains right behind us, surrounded by green fields full of spring flowers. It was stunning and should be nominated as one of the best camp spots in the world!
We had a chill evening. One of our teammates, Tom, had the great idea to make a campfire and it became my job to keep it alive. This allowed us to all to just hang out by the fire and eat together, rather than having everyone withdraw to their tents because of the cold.
The next morning, we got up at 3am to hike up Mt Sakran. Phil had ascended it the week before and gave us some instructions of where to go. Phil himself stayed at the basecamp because of an injury, but Jan joined us. We ended up being 5 people to try the ascent: Jan, Tom, Emma, Pieter and myself. Unfortunately, Pieter got sick along the way and turned around quite early. Pieter had been sick for days, so doing a strenuous hike wasn’t going to help. I must admit that it was a bit tough hiking with those guys, Jan & Tom being two tall guys with long legs, seemed to sprint up the mountain effortlessly, while Emma and I were trailing behind. But I enjoyed the challenge and Jan was very good at showing us a few ice axe techniques to make the ascent easier. The view over the valley when going up was really breathtaking, it was such an amazing experience! Unfortunately, we never made it to the top of Mt Sakran. It got really steep and the snow was really slushy. Jan got concerned about ascending the mountain without being roped, so we turned around. It was the right decision. If any one of us had slipped, it could have ended badly. Also, no one was disappointed about not making it to the top, we all really enjoyed the beautiful views and sunrise, so it was no big deal.
Descending the mountain was a challenge as well. It got really steep at times, and frankly, there was a moment where I could really feel the adrenaline. The snow was very slushy and slipping would have been so easy. Also, it was too slushy to make a self-arrest, so potentially, we would just slide all the way down, which would have been terrible. Jan was really good at keeping an eye on us, if nothing else, his encouragements gave us the confidence to not make any stupid mistakes. As soon as we got to a place that wasn’t as steep and no rocks in immediate sight, we started tobogganing down the hill. Love it!!! It was just so much fun, I could do this all day! Doing this, we got down quite quickly and ran into Pieter. We sat down for a cup of tea and took in the incredible view. After another hour of walking, we were back at our camp. On the way back, we spotted a tortoise! Can you believe it?! I had no idea there were tortoises that high in the mountains, amazing! By the time, we got to the camp, it was perhaps 10am. It felt really nice to already have had a full day so early in the morning. I wish every morning was like that! The other people at the camp only just got up and were hanging out.
We rested for another couple of hours and eventually packed up our camp and started walking back to the village. We ran into some villagers along the way who very much enjoyed seeing us. In fact, they broke out into a hysterical laughter after I said ‘hello’ to them… I was clueless as to why, but couldn’t help but join in. We decided to keep walking towards Choman. It was going to be a long way, but we had nothing planned for that day, so we just walked. We made it to a river that had some construction going on around it and the workers invited us for tea and kebabs. We felt slightly bad, because as soon as we came, they cleaned up all of their stuff and made room for us. Clearly, we had interrupted their break. But you simply can’t beat Kurdish hospitality and all you can do is say Thank You.
Some of us decided to continue the walk to Choman until our jeep would come to pick us up. It was going to be another couple of hours till the jeep would come. The other part of the group stayed by the river to chill. Eventually, even our group got pretty tired and we were trying to find a ride to the city. Every car though was going the wrong direction. Many cars stopped to say hello and welcome us. It was funny when one of the cars stopped to tell us that they had seen us on TV! We’re famous now! Finally, we ran into two Australian women who were involved in some sort of charity in Kurdistan and were there for work reasons. It was a funny experience. The two women couldn’t quite believe their eyes when they saw a bunch of backpackers coming their way. Apparently, they had been debating for a while who we were when they saw us in the distance. Were we foreigners or locals? What the heck were we doing? Kurds don’t really backpack… The whole situation felt really out of place for them and rightly so! But in the end, it was so nice to see other foreigners and those two ladies were able to give us a ride back! Yay! As we got back to town in Choman, a guy in the store invited us in to give us some ice cream. Frankly, we were all in heaven at that point! What a gift! We were only there for a couple of minutes when the kids started appearing at the store entrance to check us out. It was quite entertaining and cute.
In the evening I walked down the street wanting to explore more of the area. A lot of people came out of the stores to watch me walk by, curious about why I was there and what it was doing. Eventually a guy from a carpet store called me into the store. He proudly showed me his carpets, and offered me some tea. It took me a little while to notice that this guy had a prosthetic arm. I asked him what happened, and he just said ‘war’. He spoke perfect English. Turns out he lived in England for quite a while. He had to come back to Iraq because his passport was expiring. However, he can only renew his passport in Baghdad, which is too dangerous to go to. So now he’s stuck in Choman, selling carpets… He seemed strangely optimistic about the whole situation, I guess you have to be, so I mirrored his mood. But the whole situation just seemed so unfair and messed up to me. It’s impossible not to feel for the Kurds and admire their strength.
We had a pretty chill evening that night, eating kebabs as every night :). For some reason, Jan happened to have tons of outdoor movies on his laptop and so we had an impromptu movie night that evening. It was really fun, such inspirational movies and the perfect setting to watch them. I must admit though that I had trouble staying awake as I had been up since 3am that day. Eventually, I just crashed on the sofa and had an amazing night of sleep.
For more photos, go here.
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