Khartoum, Sudan

Jan 28 - A rest day in Dongola - an opportunity to clean ourselves. Our daily use gear, sleeping bags, tent, etc, goes in a red plastic box. The red box has other uses - here as a bathtub.

Dongola is probably not on many tourist routes. It has lots of commerce, as do all the other little places. I am always amazed at the quantity of stock that is on display in street after street. They must sell it or they wouldn't be in business.

The local people were all pleasant. We are a novelty to them and they loved having their picture taken - they just wanted to see their photo.

I mentioned before that the campsite is the former zoo. Here is the tortoise, reportedly the last survivor from days of the zoo.

By sunset, we were pretty well packed up and ready for the 0545 wakeup call from the local mosque.

Yet another interesting question, why nice places got built and then fell into disuse. We saw it all through Egypt - buildings and facilities that seemed to have been reasonably built, but when things break, nothing seems to get repaired.

January 29 - February 1

Four days across the desert on hard surface road to Khartoum. 140-160 km per day except a bit shorter going into Khartoum since we had to convoy through.

Camps were on the desert. We actually prefer going out into the clean sand and digging our own toilet rather than using dirty broken down facilities.

Why did the chicken cross the road? How about why a herd of donkeys crossed the road in the middle of nowhere.

Jan 29 camp was beside an irrigation canal where Ursula is modelling the galabaya she purchased in Dongola. The canal was a bit muddy, but it's water so most of us had a sponge bath. Cold water.

A constant feature was the wind. Cold and strong, all the time. Hard to put up tents. Sand blowing all the time.

The sand gets into everything. I mean everything. Everybody with a camera like our little Sony or Canon where the lenses telescope in and out of the body, we're all having problems with them getting stuck with sand in the works. A few of them have bitten the dust... no pun intended... maybe this is where the expression came from. Luckily, ours still work. The tent zippers all had to be cleaned and lubed in Khartoum.

Every time a truck goes by, it feels like you are hit by a bunch of needles. Mornings are very cold, down in single digits. Afternoons, the sun is hot and the wind is still cold.

The day before Khartoum, we camped near some sort of assembly point for camels and other animals, possibly before they get shipped off to market somewhere.

First of February was the ride through Khartoum. We assembled on the outskirts of Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, and were escorted through 35 km of what would otherwise have been chaotic traffic.

It was quite the experience. The police stopped all the traffic for us. Sirens howling from the front and back the whole time. And the local folk just seemed to take it as if we were the Tour de France going through.

February 2-3 - two days rest in Khartoum.

The highlight was cruising on the Nile to the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. They both rather appear to be the same colour of brown but apparently there is a difference in mineral content because of the different geological structures they come through..

Khartoum itself doesn't have quite as organized a downtown as most cities. There are a few modern buildings like this egg-shaped building that we think is a hotel. In between are tumble-down old single story shacks.

The campsite is south of town in the National Camping Residence that also houses other people including a couple of athletes in training for the Beijing Olympics. The facility is fairly clean.

Tomorrow - February 4 - is the start of six days of riding about 140 km a day, four days on hard surface to the Ethiopian border, then two days of gravel to Gonder.

We'll be in Ethiopia till Febraury 20 after which everything is a bit of an unknown since the political situation in Kenya has resulted in a decision not to ride through; rather we will have to fly over to Tanzania while the trucks (with the bicycles) will drive through.