Meeting the heat

Travelling by boat from Aswan, Egypt, we enter our eighteenth country. While doing so we unknowingly pass the tropic of Cancer. In the boat we spend the night in a cabin, travelling first class for the first time in our lives.
Early in the morning the sun's already very hot and everybody looks for shady places on the deck. The fully loaded flat-bottomed vessel that's tied to the passenger-ship is disconnected and at a slightly higher speed we pass pelicans on our way to the landing-stage of Wadi Halfa, Sudan.

Customs-formalities take some time, but our panniers stay closed. With a sticker on each bag we cycle into Sudan. Here we see no tarmac, no paving, no marked roads. Everything consists of sand, washboard and stones. Wadi Halfa is an insignificant place: spread over a large terrain there are some mud- and stone houses with corrugated iron roofs. Around it just sand.
Our hotel, the Wadi El Nile, consists entirely of corrugated iron; mud cubby-holes with a hole in the ground serve as toilets, mud cubby-holes with a hole in the ground and buckets filled with water serve as bathrooms. The hotel-floor is the desert-sand. It seems we have reached Africa at last. There's nothing wrong with it, it corresponds with the image we had of the impoverished Sudan. Worse than expected is the heat. Even in the shades the temperature rises above the 45 degrees Celsius (= 113 degrees Fahrenheit). Whilst sitting completely still the sweat gushes from our bodies. The people look beautiful: men in light-coloured and white galabia's, women wear their brightly coloured tobes wrapped around their bodies. For a few cents we eat Nile-fish, bread and stone-grilled meat. Water is kept cool in big earthen jars, that we will encounter all through Sudan. According to everyone we meet this is good drinking water, so we drink as much as we can. There isn't a lot of choice; tapwater doesn't exist, the very expensive alternative is buying bottled water.

Before we start cycling into the country, we have to report to the police to be registered, like everybody who arrived by boat. It's afternoon and the police-post doesn't open until morning. We decide to wander around a little bit to kill time, but retreat to our hotel after half an hour. It's too hot, the energy is being sucked out of our bodies; exhausted we drop on our rope-beds.

The next morning, after a restless night with a lot of dogs and radio's, Peter wakes up feeling very weak, he has to run to the toilet. Obviously something wasn't as trustworthy as it seemed yesterday: the grilled meat or maybe the water after all. The compulsory police-registration is a contest in bureaucratic provision of work. In fourteen different stages with different clerks in obscure little rooms we are forced to do our level best to enter the country. We have to give our designated route and all the places we want to go to. Difficult, since we do not have a map of this country, just like the police. Two and a half hours later we've obtained our seals, stamps and signatures. And we've spent all the money we've changed on the black market. Exchanging money on the black market is the most normal thing you can do here: when you enter the local bank, that's only open sporadically, they're astounded if you ask to change your money. Nobody even thinks to do so.

It's already past twelve when we finally get on our bicycles for the leaden stretch direction Khartoum. The Sudanese have told us that the first 560 kilometres are unpaved, then the tarmac-road from Abu Dom to Khartoum follows for about 370 kilometres. Nowhere in the village are roadsigns; everywhere are sandpaths in all directions. We take the broadest path, with the largest amount of tyre-tracks. With help of the sun we find our way out of the village, southwards, over sandy tracks that are just steady enough to cycle on. After a police-control at the end of the village starts a gravelroad consisting of stones, washboard and soft sand where we have to push our bicycles.

We both tied a shawl around our head, wear sunglasses and carry a huge amount of water. It's ridiculously hot, especially the short climbs are very tough. We have cycled for eighteen kilometres when Peter collapses. Diarrhoea, total weakness, the heat and the difficult road force us to take a break already. We tie the tent's-groundsheet between our bicycles to create some shade and cooling. Peer gets weaker every minute and has to lay down. I don't feel too great either. The thermometer indicates 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in the shade. One day in Sudan and we're floored.

What kind of country is this?