Landing in Irbil - Part One

Having confidently waived aside advice from colleagues about booking a taxi to pick me up from Irbil International airport, I found myself loitering outside the Arrivals hall at 1.30am with a number of other people who had obviously also been wrong-footed.

Walking to passport control in the newly expanded airport, it was obvious from the flags of the world that fluttered above and the banners advertising conferences that Irbil was taking itself very seriously as a business and networking destination.  The next day there were conferences on aviation, insurance and oil and gas. Passport control itself was very easy as expatriates able to get a visa on arrival. “It’s just like Stansted, isn’t it?” said a man with gelled hair and pointy shoes. He was going to the insurance conference.

Hello Taxi, Irbil International’s taxi service needs to be booked in advance. I was told the alternative to waiting an undetermined amount of time for an available taxi was to get on a bus which would take me to a car park from where I might be able to find a taxi. I decided it was probably safer to stay in the airport. A driver who had been waiting for someone else eventually offered to drop me at my hotel. The streets were deserted apart from the many security checkpoints that line the sides of the roads. The driver, Frank, informed me that it was a very different matter in the Christian side of town, Ankawa which he described as “full of life”.

“There is no life for people in Baghdad but there are jobs for everyone in Kurdistan,” said Frank.

There are vast plans to transform the infrastructure not only in Irbil but the whole Kurdistan region. Irbil’s historic Citadel is about to undergo restoration work and a seven-star hotel is due to be opening up before the summer, presumably in anticipation of the hordes of tourists it expects. The many fountains dotted across the city with the mountains in the background give Irbil a peaceful air-a cross between a small Iranian town and Sharjah. If it wasn’t for the extortionate cost of hiring a taxi, it would almost seem a shame to ruin the peace with metros and highways and international airports.