No,not the musical it’s the engineer, stupid! Archibald Hamilton was a New Zealand engineer who was commissioned to build a road linking Kurdistan to Iran as a trade route. The road was to go along rugged mountains, gorges and over rivers in the time between 1928 and 1932. Everyone said that it could not be done but with dynamite, local help and unique cantilevered bridges he made it happen. While little of the original road remains intact, the modern day road is named the Hamilton Road in his honour.
It is a short drive to the Bekhal waterfalls. A pleasant small series of cascades the whole area is dominated by kitsch, gaudy tourist infrastructure that does not do the place justice. There are cafes and souvenir shops all around fortunately all closed. Similarly at the next stop the Gali Ali Beg waterfall which is more substantial but the surrounds were flooded and the cute lttle ducks paddling around were better than the potential hordes of tourists to descend upon the place. Eventually our vertiginous drive through the the deepest gorge in the Middle East, the Rawandaz gorge broadens out into the flat plains around the city of Sulymani, Kurdistan’s second biggest and our destination for the night.
