INSIDE SADDAM HUSSEIN'S ABANDONED PALACE IN IRAQI KURDISTAN (Garra Mountain)

so there i am in an suv in iraq kurdistan driving up a slippery and snowy mountain called garam mountain where saddam hussein had one of his old palaces i'm not sure how this happened but i accidentally recorded this clip in time lapse mode which is why it looks so our funny told us that this area of the mountain and in this region in general the pkk gorillas they hide out here and sometimes they ambush the turkish side of the border so the turkish army often comes here and drops bombs on them they ambush the pkk so hopefully our car will not get mistaken for a pkk vehicle and we are not going to be toast before we get out of this country after a scary drive up the mountain we eventually arrived at the palace i have no idea what i'm saying in this clip but i do look pretty excited okay so we are currently on the balcony of saddam hussein's palace quite disappointing actually i was expecting to see more it's first of all we can't supposedly there's supposedly there's a gorgeous view from here but it's all foggy and so we can't see anything we're gonna head inside right here uh najir van can you come inside and read me some of the graffiti what do these things say uh they're just like hearts and letters what about this like it's the name name of people they wrote their names here okay so just like from from visitors who've been here so apparently this is uh most of the building is is uh a peshmerga army base so they don't allow people in uh which was a surprise and disappointing but at least you know what we did see somewhat of saddam's palace it's crazy to think that uh not too long ago he lived here as one of his residences and uh what can you say definitely a historic place that's it freezing cold so cool something to point out is that you see this place it doesn't look like a palace it looks like an abandoned warehouse or something you know even the the bricks have been taken but once upon a time there was beautiful marble and uh tiles from special stones and the people once saddam left this place people literally came here and they wanted to take everything so they literally took these stones off the walls and uh you know i guess there was that feeling of like taking taking back from a person who depressed them and uh so it doesn't look anything like a palace now once the time once upon a time this was a very beautiful building so so right on the other side of this wall there's a group of peshmerga soldiers sitting there i don't want to film them but uh this is their base see there's almost nothing left of this place all its beauty has been stripped now it's just beer see you later from garam mountain iraqi kurdistan yeah okay so saw that sign over there we're leaving saddam's palace now driving down the mountain and there's a sign that says basically don't veer off the road because there are unexploded mines all over the place very common problem in war torn countries you