ERBIL () - Six kilometers northwest of Choman, the road rises into the Balakayati highlands and toward Nawandah, a village whose life has long been arranged by mountains, water and the changing seasons.
Administratively part of the Haji Omeran subdistrict in Erbil province, Nawandah covers roughly 36 square kilometers, much of it mountainous. Around 80 homes form the village center, surrounded by farmland, orchards and grazing areas that remain central to the local economy.
There is a basic school serving children from grades one through nine. Beyond it, the village follows rhythms that would have been familiar to earlier generations: tending livestock, cultivating fields, maintaining fruit trees and watching the weather closely enough to know what it will permit.
For Nawandah's residents, the landscape is not scenery in the abstract. It is livelihood.
Agriculture and animal husbandry remain the principal sources of income. The village has fertile agricultural land and numerous orchards and gardens, linking household life directly to the surrounding environment.
But the same geography that sustains local families has increasingly drawn people from elsewhere.
From early spring until late autumn, visitors arrive from across Kurdistan for picnics, sightseeing and recreation. Some come simply for the mountain air and greenery; others are drawn by rural and livestock-related activities.
Nawandah is, in that sense, both a working village and a destination.
Water From Halgurd
The most important element in village life may be the one that moves almost invisibly through it.
Mount Halgurd provides Nawandah with its principal water supply.
The flow is abundant enough to exceed the village's own needs, with surplus water continuing onward to nearby communities including Warda, Shora and Darband.
In a mountain region where water shapes both settlement and agriculture, that abundance gives Nawandah an unusual advantage.
It nourishes fields and orchards, supports livestock and helps sustain the greenery that visitors come to see.
The arrangement also illustrates how closely villages in the highlands remain connected. Water originating in one landscape becomes part of the daily life of several communities downstream.
Seen from outside, Nawandah can appear idyllic: mountains rising around cultivated land, gardens clustered near homes, water descending from Halgurd.
From within, however, that beauty is also infrastructure.
The mountains provide pasture. The soil produces crops. The orchards generate income. The water makes much of it possible.
Rural Tourism Beyond the Resorts
Nawandah's appeal also fits into a broader shift in how tourism is being discussed across the Kurdistan Region.
reported in May that three communities in the Region, Biyara, Hirur and Rawanduz, were among seven Iraqi sites nominated for the UN Tourism Organization’s 2026 "Best Tourism Villages"initiative.
Read More: Three Kurdistan Villages Among Shortlisted Sites by Iraq for UN Tourism Program
The nominations emphasized environmental preservation, rural tourism, community participation and sustainable development.
Nawandah is not among those nominated villages, but it reflects many of the same qualities now drawing greater attention to rural Kurdistan: natural landscapes, traditional livelihoods and communities whose character remains closely tied to their environment.
That matters because the Region's tourism strategy is increasingly looking beyond large resorts and city attractions.
has reported that regional authorities are seeking to expand eco-tourism and mountain tourism as part of a wider effort to diversify the economy.
The KRG-backed "Visit Kurdistan"initiative has set a goal of attracting more than 20 million tourists by 2035, while officials have emphasized better roads, bridges and tourism infrastructure as essential to opening less accessible destinations.
More than $13 billion in tourism investment has been committed under the current cabinet in Erbil province alone, according to figures previously reported by.
Yet places such as Nawandah suggest that the appeal of rural tourism does not necessarily begin with investment projects.
Often it begins with what is already there.
A Village Defined by Its Surroundings
In Nawandah, there is no clear dividing line between cultural life and landscape.
The fields, orchards, animals, water and mountains are not separate attractions. Together, they form the village.
That is part of what makes rural places increasingly important to Kurdistan's tourism story.
Visitors may come for an afternoon picnic, a walk through the countryside or the view of the surrounding mountains. Residents remain after the visitors leave, continuing the agricultural work that produced much of the landscape's character in the first place.
This creates a delicate relationship between tourism and preservation.
Regional tourism officials have repeatedly emphasized the need to protect natural environments, manage waste and develop destinations without damaging the characteristics that made them attractive.
For mountain villages, that balance may prove especially important as improved roads and growing domestic tourism bring greater numbers of visitors into previously quieter areas.
Nawandah remains, for now, a relatively small community.
Its scale is part of its identity.
Around 80 households live within a landscape of 36 square kilometers, drawing water from one of Kurdistan's best-known mountain areas and relying largely on farming and livestock.
Its story is not one of dramatic transformation.
It is instead a portrait of continuity: a place where water still comes from the mountain, where orchards remain part of household economics, and where the landscape provides both a living for those who stay and a reason for others to visit.
In a region increasingly investing in tourism as an economic sector, Nawandah offers a reminder that some of Kurdistan's strongest attractions are not constructed at all.
They are villages that have grown into their surroundings so completely that the distinction between nature, livelihood and home is difficult to make.
