No Buses in Nothern Iraq

No Buses in Iraq

I left the front door of the Gara Hotel in Duhok with my full pack upon my back and Chaya at my side. We wanted to either venture north to a little mountain town called Amadiya or east to Arbil. The provincial capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Duhok, is not a big city, and we thought that we could find a bus out of town with little difficulty.
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That is until we found that there are no inter-city buses is this part of Iraq. Every single person that we asked said the same thing:

“No bus, take taxi.”

With this news, Iraq became an exponential more expensive country to travel in. It will cost between $30 and $40 each time we travel between cities here. This is a lot of money.

I checked and cross checked the possibilities of public buses running between cities in northern Iraq, I went to two different mini-bus lots in Duhok, I asked in the streets, and I found a bilingual Iraqi-American who also asked around for me. All results point to the same place:

“No bus, take taxi.”

So we paid nearly $30 to take a taxi to Amadiya one hour away, and did not see one single public bus along the highways.

I asked many people why this was, and the only answer that I received besides a shrug of the shoulders and a stale “We use to have buses” was this simple explanation:

“There are not enough people wanting to travel to need buses.”

I have been to plenty of places far more primitive than northern Iraq, but rarely have I stumbled through places that seemed so isolated within themselves. Perhaps the people here simply became so use to not going anywhere that staying put has become a convention.

It seems as if the people who regularly travel between cities in northern Iraq have their own vehicles. There are plenty of private trucks and cars in this region.

I am told that there use to be buses that crossed the northern expanse of Iraq, but not anymore. The taxis have taken over the inter-city travel in this part of the country, but it is my impression that the people here do not travel too far away from their homes anyway. I suppose having to pay $20 to get anyway is a major deterrent to traveling. Or at least it is for us.

Our travel budgets have been increased greatly. Iraq is now going to cost us around $45 a day. Finding out information like this on the fly is part of the “joys” of traveling off of the conventional track.

No Buses in Iraq