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Currency: Sudanese Dinars, I quid = 400 Dinar
Cost of diesel: 25p a litre (rip off!)
5th September
Arriving in Wadi Halfa we were met as expected and taken to our hotel to wait for the car barge to arrive the next day. I mean the loosest possible definition of the word hotel. It was more like a refugee camp with mud walls and sand floors and hundreds of bed laid out in the open air. The 4 of us had a mud room, with a sand floor and bamboo roof. The beds were not designed for a man of my stature and when I sat on it it promptly bent it half until the middle was touching the floor. It made for an interesting nights sleeping!
We met some English lads who were travelling up to Egypt and went out for some food with them. Thank Christ it was dark when we ate because I have no desire to know exactly what it was that I ate!
Lake Nasser
6th September
Another early start, we had to meet at the office of the bloke helping us at 8am. This we did and then sat on his concrete steps for 4 hours doing bugger all! The best thing about this though was that he had loads of photos of old Wadi Halfa before the Egyptians decided to flood it. The town looked lovely, palm tree lined streets, old colonial style buildings, all now under hundreds of metres of water. The new Wadi Halfa is less appealing. It is as if they put up all these temporary mud houses whilst they got on with the job of building the new proper ones, and then never actually built them and are still living in the temporary houses 35 years later! There are probably worse places in the world (Luton might be up there though) but you’d have to go a long way to find them!
The car barge arrived at 12 and we went to meet it. The problem that was immediately obvious was twofold. Firstly they also only had 1 proper metal ramp and secondly that the cars were about 5ft about the level of the pontoon. We then had to wait over 3 hours for them to find another ramp and reverse down them. ‘Finding’ this ramp cost us about £25! This was properly scary, the ramps were at a crazily steep angle and when you got to the bottom of them your back wheels were on the edge of the pontoon at the other side. We’ve got some wicked photos and again they show it much better.
After another 4 hours in customs getting the carnets sorted and about 120$ lighter we finally left Wadi Halfa. The Germans came with us and we went about 20 km along the desert road and camped for the night. This was our first experience of desert camping and it was amazing. The moon was so bright that you didn’t need torches. We had some supper and went to bed. Want to guess what woke us up? Rain! In the bloody desert. It rained for hours! I thought I was losing my rain god touch but it seems to back working well.
Camping in the Nubian desert
7th September
Seeing as the Germans were trying to set a new record for getting to Cape Town they left at 6am. We had a more leisurely departure, finally leaving at about 11am! We then did about 220km through the Nubian Desert towards Khartoum. The driving was brilliant. This is proper desert. We are following a railway line and there is no road. You just drive on the sand next to it. In places the sand is really deep and there are loads of places where you can see people got stuck. A few weeks ago some other Germans got stuck out here for 5 days! This is proper desert driving and really good fun. It is really dusty though, especially when we got nailed by a dust storm! By the time we stopped the car was covered in yellow dust, unfortunately so was the interior! We camping for the next few nights and aim to hit Khartoum by Sunday.
8th September
Another 300km further south. We did the final 200km through the desert. Amy had her first experience of off-road driving today and did very well. We expect to actually get into Khartoum on Saturday and camp at the famous Blue Nile Sailing Club.
9th September.
Well, last night was one to remember. We camped in the desert again, had dinner and went to bed. It was a lovely night, there was no wind and everything was calm. Suddenly, out of no-where, this gale-force wind sprung up. The tent started to flap about and the car was rocking from side to side. I looked out of the tent and all I could see was this wall of sand approaching us. Suddenly it hit us and visibility was cut to about 4ft. This sand was blowing horizontally. I had to get out of the tent because we’d lift the awning up and all the chairs and tables out. The awning was flapping all over the place and it took all my strength to get it down and roll it up. Whilst this was happening the table was lifted up and deposited about 10m’s away, the same with the chairs. I managed to put everything away and went back up to the tent. It was really straining at this point so I put my arms out and held onto the fly sheet, whilst Amy was holding onto the main body of the tent. We did this for a while but I was worried that the tent was going to blow away, so Amy went and got in the car and I put the tent away. A really lovely job when it’s blowing a force 9 gale. It was amazing, the car weighs 3.5 tonnes and it was rocking right over.
By this time, Henry and Ali were in their car and the wind had blown their tent over, effectively shutting it for them! We sat in the cars for about an hour telling each other crap jokes over the walk-talkies until the storm died down. When it had we put the tents back up and fell asleep. Only to then be awakened by more huge gusts of wind and then torrential, tropical storm rain. This went on for about an hour and then stopped. Only to be then followed by a massive thunder and lighting storm. Needless to say, by the time we woke up the following morning we were pretty knackered. Poor old Ali had decided to sleep out under the stars that night and when the sand storm came the air mattress he was sleeping on got lifted up over the car and blown to kingdom come. There is probably a group of Sudanese camel herders looking at it in wonder now and thinking it has come from aliens.
Nubian Desert
9th September
Drove to Khartoum today, after sorting out the debris from the storms last night. It is amazing, huge parts of northern Sudan, which is all desert, are really flooded and we’ve heard that quite a few people have drowned as a result. The drive down is pretty uneventful. It is just lots and lots of hot desert. We did stop at the ancient city of Meroe. This is a collection of ancient pyramids, not on the scale of the Giza ones, but impressive none the less. We were the only tourists there and had a good look around. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about them so that’s all I can say!
Getting to Khartoum was easy; we found the campsite and set everything up. We’ve put up our uber-tent, the massive 4 man effort we bought just before we left. It is enormous and dwarfs all the other 2 man tent around it. It does seem a bit ridiculous but it means we’ve got loads of room.
Henry and Ali met up with their friend Sally, who is teaching in Khartoum for a year. We were all really pleased to hear that all week there have been anti-governments riots in town due to the beheading of a prominent anti-government journalist. You guys probably know more about it then us because we have been having a bit of news black out for the last week. Anyway, the situation seems calmer now but there are loads of police and army on the streets in Khartoum. Ali, Henry and the Germans are all trying to get their Ethiopian visas and as soon as they get them we’re going to bug out and head to Ethiopia.
Khartoum itself seems very nice. We did go out for a Chinese last night which was excellent. I had the enjoyable experience of having our second crash. I was driving along and a taxi driver just opened his door in front of me, unsurprisingly I totalled the door, but was left with a big scratch and dent down both drivers’ side doors on my car. Having learnt from Cairo I didn’t even bother to stop and just cracked on.
More desert camping
Driving in the desert
12th September
Having spent a few days in Khartoum cleaning all the dust out of the car we decided to get out of Sudan due to the fact the political situation seems to be a bit unstable at the moment. So we started the 550km journey to the Ethiopian border.
We did a couple of hours and then pulled of the road and camped in some bushes away from the road.
13th September
We wanted to get the border today but the journey was taking too long and so we got to about 60km form the border and decided to camp. The scenery was amazing. This area is really wet and green. There are lots of rolling green hills and it actually looks remarkable like Wales. Again we wanted to get away from the road so we headed down a dirt track into the fields. This quickly turned into a complete quagmire and we ended up doing about 90 minutes of wicked off-road mud driving through these enormous ruts. Both cars managed to get stuck at different points but it was excellent fun. We camped near this big hill that had amazing views across the plains and looked exactly what you’d imagine Africa to look like, except there were no animals. The only flat ground we could find was either side of this little track that the locals used to get to their fields. So for about an hour we had people, donkeys, goats, etc wandering through the middle of the camp. The people all looked totally bemused at us. They simply couldn’t comprehend what we were doing! As we had dinner we all said that if it rained that night we’d be in real trouble because it would make the road out even more difficult. Guess what happened that night? Yup, it rained. However, it didn’t just rain. This was Noah’s flood, end of the world rain. We thought we had some big storms in the desert and in Khartoum. However, these were tiddlers compared to what we got that night. Everywhere you looked there was lighting. There were 10 flashes every second. It really was like the end of the world. Then the rain and wind came. Unfortunately the wind came from the side and again it was so powerful that the car was rocking from side to side like a boat. This meant that the rain hit us horizontally and was able to get under our fly sheet and quickly filled up the tent with about 2 inches of water. So again we had to get down, put the tent away and sleep in the car. The storms went on for hours and from the safety of the car we were able to appreciate the enormity of the storm. Every second there was a massive bolt of lighting hitting the ground, whilst above it sheet and fork lighting raced across the sky. I have never seen anything like it.
Anyway, at day break we had to get everything out and dry it off. Once this was done we started the drive back to the road. The track was a swamp, ten times worse than the day before. However, we did quite well and only managed to get stuck once. Henry had to winch us out and then he used his brilliant mud terrain tyres to make some better tracks through the mud and we followed in these. The all-terrains we have got are good, however, you can really see the difference how good a set of mud-terrains are in these conditions. We completed the rest of the journey to the border without incident. Although the road was pretty awful, with lorry ruts that you could lose your car in! We’ve really enjoyed Sudan. It is a lovely country with a huge variety of scenery. However, the political situation is so bad that I can’ see it pulling itself out of poverty for many years to come
Waiting with Henry to get the cars off
Getting the car off. Lots of fun!
A muddy Amy after helping to push the car out of the mud in southern Sudan
The pyramids at the ancient Royal city of Meroe in the north, above, and well and truly stuck in the mud in southern Sudan below.
The Blue Nile Sailing Club in Khartoum. This was Lord Kitchener's old gun boat.
The mud here is called black cotton soil. This what it does to your tyres!
Christ, if the camels can't survive the desert I hope we don't break down. You can see more of the desert road in the left photo.
