It even sounds hard
Sudan... but in reality it wasn't at all. Even when we had an
accident here that made us loose almost two weeks of our trip while
getting the car repaired.
In our last report
we
were on our way through Lake Nasser. The sailing experience was not
really a pleasure, we
.JPG)
must say. The boat was overcrowded with both
people and goods. Luckily, we had a cabin and could sleep through
the night. The only nice thing about it was to get another glimpse
of Abu Simbel in the early morning. We arrived in Wadi Halfa just
after noon, but were not allowed off the boat another couple of
hours... again a normal procedure. Luckily, Klaus, the truck owner
who had sailed on the barge with our car two days before, was
waiting for us at th
e port. A Sudanese agent was with him, who
facilitated dealing with the authorities and
after a while the six drivers of the vehicles (four cars and two
motorcycles) were permitted on land in order to offload them from
the barge. It went surprisingly well. The women stayed an hour
longer on board until it was almost empty and could get out easily.
Afterwards, the customs procedures took a couple of additional hours
and at about at 5 p.m. we were out. The group stuck together,
camping in the desert just outside Wadi Halfa, where we relaxed for
the evening.
The next morning we
went back to town in order to register (which is compulsory), shop
some groceries and change money. Not that Wadi Halfa is a real town
but it has a decent small market, a bank, a couple of restaurants
and a few houses. It was then time to start our desert traverse
-although along the Nile- towards Dong
ola,
the first big town after 500 km. We started badly that day with one
of the cars having a flat tire before really leaving Wadi Halfa. We
split in several groups. Reto and I more or less followed the
bikers, who, due to the heat and the road conditions, did not have
it easy. The road to Dongola is just a piste, sometimes with hard
corrugations, sometimes quite sandy. And although a road is being
built, bridges are still missing so it does not really help to drive
on it. The whole group camped together again that night, in a nice
place not far from a small village. We normally left the campsites
last and then caught up with the others, who made longer lunch
brakes. The second day it was our turn for a flat tire... Murphy's
law, in every case these things happened between noon and 3.00 p.m.
when the heat was at it's peak. We repaired it in Abri, where the
others were also fixing tires or other parts of their cars...
Soleb temple was
the only historical site we visited on our way to Dongola and more
because of the experience of looking for the boatman, crossing the
Nile, etc. as for the temple itself. We got a very good impression
of the villages along the worlds longest river those days. They
looked neat, painted and well maintained.
In one place we
stopped to refill our water and quickly a lady went out of her house
and started sp
eaking
with us. She was the village's English teacher and was happy to see
foreigners. Her two kids enjoyed playing drivers of our car while
she was interested in our books and ourselves. The Sudanese treat
people very differently than the Egyptians. A good example was the
boatman who ferried us across the Nile to Soleb temple in his boat
and charged for the trip. In Egypt we had the impression they
overacted when serving a guest in order to get a better tip. The
boatman in contrary asked for help when his boat was stuck, asked us
to hold the ropes, etc. This we experienced many times afterwards as
well. They ask for help in the obvious situations and they provide
help in the same manner without expecting anything in return. Later,
when we had an accident and flipped our car, a bus came shortly
afterwards. Most men got off and helped to put our car back on it's
four wheels. One guy checked the engine oil, another took away the
broken glass. 20 minutes after the accident we were ready to drive
off... When we assured them we were fine, they hopped on the bus and
drove away.
Heat,
dust and historical sites
During the f
our
days driving to Dongola we had the opportunity to camp in beautiful
spots. It was hot but bearable as we always took water for showers
in our water bag. We also went searching for the 3rd Cataract, which
in fact are some rapids that did not impress us much. Dongola was
simply HOT. We crossed the Nile with the ferry at 3 p.m. and the
thermometer showed 51.8° Celsius... As we were all together again,
with the truck, the motorbikes and the other cars, we went looking
for a hotel. What the guidebook describes as the best hotel in town
was a lot less attractive than to sleep in our cars... so we
continued looking and found a new place with installed air
conditioning, fans, etc. But unfortunately, when many rooms were
booked the electrical installations failed and there was not even
water to have
showers... Reto and I just took advantage of our stay to use the
internet and upload our web-site with the reports written during the
Lake Nasser crossing. The next day we headed off alone to Karima on
a sandy road. The drive was nice and camping there was beautiful,
until 3 in the morning a very nice and refreshing breeze blew. But
then a roaring noise woke me up and I felt it coming... the wind
developed into a storm. I woke Reto and we managed to close our
pop-up roof just in time. A sand (although it was mainly dust)
storm! It got immediately hot in the car but one has no choice but
to remain with all windows
shut.
Karima, the next
day was also very hot. We visited it's known Jebel Barkal with it's two
temples at 2 p.m. and I did not even got of the car (with aircon...).
Anyway, Reto made some pictures of the pyramids there as we could
drive with the car very close. The temples were really ruins so we
decided we could miss them... In the afternoon we visited Nuri,
another burial site with Pyramids and went to have a look to the dam
the Chinese are building on the Nile. Funnily enough Sudan has many
Chinese working in such mega-projects.
Khartoum was...
(guess what?) hot. We arrived on a Tuesday and we met the other
overlanders again. We got our visas for Ethiopia; used all the
wireless internet and shopping facilities that could provide some
time in air conditioned rooms... On May 3rd we treated ourselves and
went to a hotel. After all it was our Wedding Anniversary the next
day... Hotels in Khartoum are very expensive but we did
not regret spending the whole afternoon in our room. I took the
opportunity to do some laundry as well. In Sudan everything dries
very quickly. Friday is the day to be in Khartoum as the dervish’s
ritual takes places as of 5 pm. The dervishes are Sufi Muslims. They
gather at the Hamed al Nil Tomb in Omdurman to chant and prey. And
the atmosphere is that of a party. They show up dressed in green and
red, as well as in their traditional white, and start marching in a
line and chanting to the sounds of drums and cymbals. Many of them
carry a stick. At the beginning they mainly greet each other. Then,
when the rhythm goes faster some start swirling, bouncing, jumping
on one leg… some look in trance… The ritual is a form of
communication of each individual with God. And in their swirling
they look quite isolated, despite having a large audience. Not only
foreigners but mainly Sudanese families with children go to see them
and clap along. We were just behind a row of women that were happily
bouncing to the rhythm. Now and then a dervish would come and spread
lemon scent or incense around. The ritual lasted over an hour and it
was very interesting to see.
The
most famous touristical site in the country is the Pyramids at Meroe.
They are on the way to Atbara and Port Sudan, where we were planning
to explore the underwater world. So we headed North and decided to
visit Naqa, a historical Kushite site, on the way. There are two
quite well preserved temples there, the Amun Temple and the Temple
of the Lion. In general, temples in Sudan are very similar to the
ones in Egypt but a lot smaller and often from a later period, as
Kush invaded Egypt in the 8th century B.C. and
established the 25th Dynasty of Pharaohs. The temples at
Naqa were built in the 1st century A.D. They are in the
desert; about 30 km east of the Nile, so there was without any doubt
a water source nearby at the time. There is a water well just meters
away from the Lion temple today, and what impressed us most is that
the way the well is used nowadays did probably not evolve much in
the last 2000 years… Locals use it to fill their containers as well
as to give water to their animals. When we were there, there was a
family with several containers, a big herd of camels and a few
donkeys. The well is operated through wooden pulleys, ropes and
donkeys pulling the
ropes for
a distance of 80 meters till they get the water up. The
water bags are made out of goat skin and have a capacity of about 30
liters. It was incredible to see how exited the camels got each time
a water bag arrived to the surface and how they fought for a space
to drink. When a camel was satisfied, it slowly moved to the back
letting others have their turn to drink. Needless to say, it took
the family hours until it was done with the task. In the “Dark Star
Safari” the travel writer Paul Theroux also describes this same well
pretty much as we saw it. He was there in 2001 and had a guide with
him, through whom he could communicate with the locals. Knowing
Theroux was American one of the men getting water told him “tell
Bush that we want a pump”. They still do not have one. What
impressed us is that temples are somehow always part of the past and
what was going on a few meters away was the most pure form of daily
reality, even in May 2007.
We
arrived at Meroe in the late afternoon, just in time to see the sun
set behind the pyramids. The site was used by the Kushites as a
royal graveyard since around 270 BC until the 4th century
AD. The pyramids are much smaller than the Egyptian ones, the
largest is just less than 30 meters high, and their angle approaches
70 degrees. In total there are about 100 pyramids in Meroe, divided
in the Northern and Southern clusters. We stayed in the Northern one
as it is the best preserved. Nevertheless, most of its 30 pyramids
had been decapitated… this was the work of an Italian treasure
hunter, Giuseppe Ferlini, who in 1834 found gold in one of them and
continued his destructive work on the rest. We slept about 200
meters from them. Despite this being the most touristic site in
Sudan, it was only us and four other people in two tents….JPG)
The next morning
during breakfast two riders “parked” their camels between us and the
pyramids… they did not ask us to take a ride, they just stayed
there… so we decided to do the real tourist thing and try them… and
then the other three overlander couples in Land Rovers, with whom
we’ve been traveling on and off since Aswan, showed up. We were
happy to meet them again. We visited the site during the morning and
the riders even took us to the caves (full of bats…) where the
stones were cut to build the pyramids.
Car on
the side
All was going well, even better than well. And then it happened… We
wanted to reach Port Sudan (about 700 km away) that day. Reto drove
until Atbara and then I continued. The road was asphalt for a
change. But then a deviation came and we went into the sand. I do
not have much experience driving off-road and I hated it. As the
main traffic there are trucks, at the beginning the track to follow
was very deep. Then it improved a bit but I still hated it. R.JPG)
eto
thought I was doing well and wanted me to continue as he believes I
should gain experience driving off-road in case anything happens to
him. And what an experience I gained! The track turned into a piste
where corrugations alternated with sandy patches. Reto asked me to
drive faster, over 70, in order to have a less bumpy ride. The rest
is easy to imagine. We drove over a sandy patch, the back wheels
slid quite a bit, I over-steered to one side, then over-steered to
the other one until we touched the sandy “mounds” on the side of the
road and the front wheels got stuck. The speed and the inertia did
the rest and we flipped over the left side.
We were both
wearing seat-belts so nothing happened to us. We got out through the
passenger’s window. Very soon a bus came and the passengers helped
us. A truck pulled our car back on its wheels and 20 minutes later
we were ready to drive… The Sudanese are very helpful. We took a
while checking that we did
not
loose anything and discussing what to do next. Finally, we decided
to go back to Khartoum as there are many Toyotas (from the UN and
other organizations) and we assumed it would be easier to repair the
car there. It was not a bad accident but cars nowadays are quite
soft… the driver’s door bent in and did not open anymore. The left
side panel looked bad as well, and even the roof bent strangely… We
sent pictures to a friend in Switzerland (Thank you Paul!) that day
and he thought all three parts should be exchanged. In Switzerland
it would probably be considered a total loss.
Early next day we
were at the official Toyota dealer just to find out that they did
not have the parts we needed. It takes about four months to get
spare parts into Sudan. We asked one of the employees if he could
suggest any other solutio
n.
He told us to wait until the closing time and then he took us to
another workshop. It turned out to be that many Toyota mechanics
were there having a second job after their working time. The guys
even offered us to stay in their apartment as they had a free
bedroom.
So that’s how the
next 12 days went by. We stayed in the apartment in the morning
(luckily there was air conditioning and satellite TV), we went to
the internet, washed clothes, etc. and at 4 pm went to the workshop
to see the car being straightened. During that time we could observe
a bit of Khartoum’s daily life. How friendly Sudanese are among each
other (and not only with foreigners), and somehow less conservative
than Egyptians, with men and women greeting each other and stopping
for a chat in the middle of the street. This was particularly the
case on Fridays after the prayer (the workshop was just across the
street from a mosque).
It was also
remarkable to us that we were almost one month in the country and we
did not hear the word “Darfur” once. The conflict seems too far away
from people in the north or in Khartoum… It was only later, already
in Ethiopia, that we learned how hard life can be there, through
Iker, a Basque working for the Spanish Red Cross.
The car was
finished on a Friday and we were happy with the result. It was still
unbelievable for us to realize
how
much stuff we have in it. It took us many hours to put back all the
food, clothes, utensils, spare parts and tools. It was then time to
celebrate, so we invited our hosts \ mechanics for dinner. The next
day we set off towards the Ethiopian border. We spent our last night
in Sudan close to the town of Gedaref in a farming area and were not
surprised the next morning to see herds of sheep and their shepherds
(on donkeys and camels). The closer we came to the border, the
greener the landscape got. Leaving Sudan was the easiest and
quickest border procedure we had in Africa. It took us exactly 9
minutes to fill forms, get passports and carnet stamped, in two
different but nearby buildings…
In
a way it was sad to leave. Despite the heat and the accident, we
will remember Sudan for it’s wonderful desert, the freedom we felt,
the great wild camping and it’s unexpected historical sites. And we
will especially remember it for the kindness of its people. Ethiopia
would be somehow different, but that is part of the next report!
Stay there, we’ll
be back soon with more!
Kind Regards,
Victoria & Reto
Link to Travel Report
5 Ethiopia North
Four
weeks in Sudan