A Land Apart

On a crisp spring night on the flanks of Bradost Peak, six tents sway in the breeze on a grassy bench in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq. Synonymous with war since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq might seem an ill-advised camping spot for a group of adventuring westerners. Mosul, one of the last strongholds of the Islamic State, is down the road, and Kirkuk, a Kurdish separatist hotbed that sees regular air strikes and suicide attacks, is just a bit farther. But if Tom Bodkin’s hunch is right, miles of first-rate singletrack are also close at hand.

Bodkin has led five of us here to explore the mountain biking potential of Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous swath of northern Iraq geographically, culturally, and politically apart from the rest of this troubled nation. The Kurds are a stateless people pressed into the margins of Iran, Syria, Turkey, and this northernmost corner of Iraq, a mountain sanctuary of soaring peaks and wild rivers more reminiscent