Sudan
Monday day 51
Hugo read in our guide book that the dustiest place in the Sudan was El Obeid (Michelin spelling) or Al Ubayyid in our Garmin GPS. It also said to have the prettiest Catholic Church and is the city where the headquarters of the Gum Arabic company are located. Sudan is one of the world’s biggest exporters of such a product which is used in the food and beverage industries and used to be the adhesive used for stamps. So he decided we should go there. It is also the furthest south the guide book says we can safely travel. It took a full day in Kharthoum at the Ministry of Humanitarian affairs( thanks goodness we had its co ordinates on the GPS) to get a permit to travel there but it would have taken a full day to get a permit to travel anywhere in Sudan. That is how the country works. It is a photocopier salesmen’s dream everything must be copied at least three times and then is passed up wards for approval and signature...they claim they learnt it from the British. In the North we were repeatedly stopped at checkpoints and asked to show our travel permit but since we left Kharthoum heading South towards the “troubled” areas our permits have not been requested or checked once despite passing through checkpoints. We were waved through!
We (the Toyota and Stefan our German personal IT consultant) decide to take what Michelin describe as a secondary Yellow road to Kosti from Kharthoum on the west bank of the Nile. There was a good tarmac Chinese built road on the East bank but this would be too easy... We had assumed it would be about a day’s drive. After 5 miles the tarmac ran out but we carried on......When asking for directions at a dusty cafe with a dormitory, all we were told was “KOSTI SOUTH”. We followed the tracks and headed south east with Nile on our left in the distance. There was the occasional truck passing so we felt were on some sort of correct road. As you can see the trucks even carry cars on top of their normal cargo. This is normal, there are no axle limits here. Passenger carrying vehicles have no limits to the number of passengers. The passengers stand on the roof and hold onto anything.
We spent a wonderful night beside the Nile alongside water hyacinth beds. The insects were like “dust” but only appeared at dusk but there were rather a lot of them, the worse place in 50 days so far for such lovely creatures . A camel herd grazed peacefully around us on the thorny bushes. The thorns are so long that they pierce sandals and go right through into the foot. Isabella has become an expert at removing these from all parts of Hugo’s anatomy. Stefan who has lost one of his shoes from his motorbike (they were tied on) and so only has motor cycle boots or sandals does not seem to have this thorny problem. He is looking for one right legged man with size 41 feet to give his boot to. Beside our camping spot were fishermen who used gondolas and long poles to punt along the shallow hyacinth waters. They cast their nets then banged gongs for hours with a wooden mallet all night to frighten the fish and keep us awake. At least it made a change from the Mosque alarm clocks. It was somewhat like banging dustbin lids. Initially we thought they were cannibals doing their apperitif dance.
The views were great though. When we put up our tents it was 41 degrees C despite the Nile breezes and Isabella saw some wonderful new birds. At night it is very warm but about 4 am it becomes chilly and the sleeping bags are needed as a sheet is not adequate.
Overall we managed 120 miles in the 6 hours and Stefan came off his motor bike only 5 times!
All along the Nile Hugo has been saying well we bought all this gear for the car we had better get stuck and learn how to use it....well......his wish came true.