My First Obstacles in Iraq — Not Allowed to Take the Route I Planned (S2/Ep58)

This was my first real day riding through Iraq and it turned out to be more complicated than expected. After crossing the border, I spent the night in the city of Zakho. My plan for the next day was to ride to Erbil to buy motorcycle insurance. I had chosen a scenic route through the mountains, but very quickly I realized that things would not go as planned. At several checkpoints, I was stopped and sent back. The soldiers would not allow me to continue on the route I had chosen. Whether it was because I am a foreigner, or because of the heavy rain in the previous days and safety concerns. I honestly don't know. Instead, I was told to take the main road. Eventually, I managed to convince one of the checkpoints to let me pass so I could visit the Mor Mattei Monastery, a place I really wanted to see. It seems that here, you often need a specific reason to go somewhere and for me, this was all completely new. I simply had no experience with how things work yet. On the way to the monastery, something unexpected happened. A friendly local man invited me to join him for lunch. At first, he thought I was a man and the surprise when I removed my helmet was very obvious. But the invitation remained, and I ended up sitting next to him on the men's side during the meal. I guess that was some kind of special guest treatment. After visiting the beautiful monastery, I continued toward Erbil. But just when I finally found a gas station, something happened again that had already occurred several times before. The tank was overfilled and about 20 meters after leaving the station, my motorcycle suddenly shut down. At that moment, I still had no idea why. This was only my first day riding in Iraq and already full of unexpected lessons. Spendings of the day: Food: - € Accommodation: - € Fuel: - € Other: - € Sum day: - € Km day: - km Km total: - km Spendings overall: - € 🛎️Do subscribe to my channel for new updates:    / @travelwithevora   ⚡️ Let's get connected: ▶️ Instagram:   / travelwithevora   ▶️ Website: www.travelwithevora.com Thanks to everyone who comments or gives me a thumbs up under my videos, you support my channel a lot.