This is not a country that appears on your travel agent’s brochure — and that is precisely the point. It’s a ancient crossroads of 438,000 square kilometres — the Zagros mountains rising in the northeast, the Euphrates and Tigris carving through the heart of the country, the marshlands of the south spreading across a landscape that gave the world its first cities. The travellers who come here come for reasons that don’t fit on a postcard: to walk the ziggurat of Ur where Abraham was born four thousand years ago, to stand inside the spiral minaret of Samarra rising from the desert like something from another civilisation entirely, to drink tea in a family home in Erbil’s citadel — the oldest continuously inhabited fortress on Earth — to float through the Mesopotamian marshes in a wooden boat at sunrise in a silence that makes history feel immediate.

RJ Travel operates group tours and private tours in Iraq with itineraries ranging from five to fourteen days. Every tour is led by English-speaking Iraqi guides with deep personal relationships in every community on every route — from the Kurdish north to the Shia heartland of the south. Choose a guaranteed group departure with up to fifteen travellers, or book a private trip on your own dates with your own vehicle and guide. E-visa assistance is included with all group tours.

Whether you’re drawn by the Mesopotamian archaeology of Ur, Babylon and Nippur, the Ottoman grandeur of Baghdad’s old city, the mountain valleys and bazaars of Iraqi Kurdistan, or the golden domes of Najaf and Karbala — every route crosses terrain that most travel companies refuse to operate in and most travellers will never see.