Mount Orégano

My friend Sean McLachlan went on vacation in Iraq. Seriously.

He writes for Gadling, a major travel blog, and got them to foot the bill. He only had to survive the trip:

“So I'm traveling in a war-torn region rife with sectarian violence under the care of a man I'd never met? Isn't that a bit stupid? Car bombs, Al Qaeda, people being beheaded on Youtube videos, hello!

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But there are 31 million people living in Iraq 365 days a year, so there's got to be a lot more happening there than that. That's what I signed up to see. I've been to so-called dangerous regions before – Palestine, Kurdistan, and Somaliland, to name a few – and every single one of them turned out to be less dangerous than TV wants us to believe. The media thrives on death. When the famine ended in Ethiopia, it dropped off the news. When the civil war ended in Colombia, it dropped off the news. And how often do you hear about Iraq when something isn't blowing up?”

So starts his 17-day vacation in Iraq, “in search of adventure, archaeology and AK-47s.” He saw amazing beauty, and visited the ziggurat of Babylon, the ancient city of Ur, and one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. He went for a beer run in Basra.

Read his posts so far and enjoy the photos at:
http://www.gadling.com/tag/destinationiraq

— Sue Burke