[...] Chirol from Coming Anarchy has taken off for few months trip to Turkey, Iraq, Caucasus, and back to his home Germany. It definitely looks like an interesting itinerary. Make sure to check back to ComingAnarchy as he has been updating his travelogue so far daily with quite a few pictures. Heading to the bus station this morning, I found that the direct bus to Silopi, the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, had already gone or at least wasn’t coming for awhile. So I had to settle on a number of local buses and connections. First i went to Idil, then on to Cizre which is on the Syrian border by Al-Qamishle and finally to Silopi. En route to Silopi, sitting in the front, the Kurdish to me and kept chattering on in Kurdish. Naturally, the wasn’t much communication but he did stroke his face with his hand, meaning my beard and run his two index fingers together. He was saying I’d fit in well. So far I am. Day 9 in Zakho, Iraq [...]

Have a safe and interesting trip.

God Speed…

News update: there was a shootout today on the Georgian-Abkhaz frontier. Be careful if you’re going that way….
FYI:
TBILISI, March 1 (Reuters) – A shootout shook a village in Georgia just across the border from breakaway Abkhazia on Thursday, days before parliamentary polls in the separatist region, a representative of the Georgian interior ministry said.

Shota Utiashvili said Abkhaz gunmen opened fire on activists from a Georgian non-governmental organisation after they held a media briefing in protest against the elections due on March 4.

“As far as we know, they gathered journalists to tell them they would boycott the parliamentary polls,” Utiashvili said.

Georgian police returned fire in the clash which lasted half an hour to an hour, he told Reuters. Three activists who had crossed from Abkhazia for the meeting were detained by Abkhaz police, he said.

Shooting between gunmen from Abkhazia and Georgian police breaks out sporadically on the de facto border and casualties are recorded every few months.

Utiashvili said no information was available on casualties. One Georgian television channel said several people had been wounded.

Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba told Georgian television: “There was no shooting at all.”

The speaker of Georgia’s parliament Nino Burjanadze called the shootout “another provocation from the Abkhaz side”.

The pro-Tbilisi government of Abkhazia fled during fighting in 1992-93 when separatists drove out Georgian forces. Based since then in the Georgian capital, it has no real power.

South Ossetia, another breakaway region along Georgia’s northern border with Russia, last year voted in a referendum for independence.

Best of luck Chirol.
I’m looking forward to your foreign correspondence.

Be safe.

Best of luck Chirol!! Look forward to your reports from the road.