Sudan's northern desert

We both slept for an hour, when we wake up swimming in our own sweat. Peter has difficulty standing up. We look around us and only see hills covered with black stones and sand. Nothing grows here, apart from us there are no living things. The road ahead of us won't change that for about 500 kilometres. Our hearts sink in our boots. We talk about our situation. The lap before us demands having a strong and healthy condition to stay alive. We don't have to deliberate very long before coming to a decision: we return to Wadi Halfa to seek other means of transportation.
Reluctantly we cycle the eighteen kilometres back to Wadi Halfa. Having arrived there we immediately go to the train station. There's one train every week to Khartoum, which will depart in a few hours. Unfortunately the luggage-wagons are full, there's no more room for our bicycles. We try at the train-driver again; some passengers plea for us, but to no avail: no room for us. We check in at a hotel and sleep like a log.

Thursday-morning Peter starts his day by running to the toilet a couple of times. By now we think not-well baked meat might be the cause. Peter think about becoming a vegetarian again. Zamir, a Sudanese we met at the train-station, introduces us to a white-turbaned man. He's willing to take us to Ed-Debba in his boksi (pick up-truck) when we pay him. That's 520 kilometre to the south, for 67 euro. We don't even try to bargain and start loading our bicycles. Mister turban wants to tie them to the sides of the car. This is no option to us, having experienced the bumpy road; the bicycles would shake to shambles. We want them standing behind the cabin, or not at all. It takes some talking, but then we convince him. We tie the bicycles very tight to the car, so they can't budge at all. There are four more passengers: an old cranky bore that sits next to me in the front of the car and three merchants from Khartoum. The merchants bought ten enormous bags full of accessories for moped-cabs in Egypt. It's incomprehensible how on earth everything is going to fit in the car, but it does. Half of the bags is tied on the outside of the car, so this gets two metres wider and a metre longer.

The end of the afternoon we finally leave: most of the men sit on top of the luggage on the open back and the hot wind starts to do its scorching work. Their eyes, nose and mouth are completely dried out within minutes and they drink as much as they can. The cranky old bore doesn't like it at all that I'm sitting in the cabin and takes as much room as he can, but not without me fighting back. The first hundred kilometres leads through a desolate landscape of stones and stones, black and grey. Nothing grows here. Then we pass small villages alongside the Nile, where we see patches of green. The road is rotten and the back-passengers sometimes almost bump off the car. Just before it gets dark we have a puncture. The spare-tyre shows even less profile than the punctured one. When the night falls we drive trough ghostly, dark villages. Here people go to sleep at sunset: there is no electricity or running water. In the headlights sometimes a donkey, lizard or cat dooms up. At midnight we stop at a road-house. A few coaches and trucks are packed here, all fully loaded. In a tiny house we eat fool, bread, cheese, jam and fish, sitting on the floor. All around the restaurant people are lying on the ground, adults and children, simply on the earth in the open air. The atmosphere is unreal, like we're dreaming. Then we drive on.

A large hump in the road, throttle down, shift gear and then the motor stops. The start-engine refuses to do anything anymore. That's nice, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the desert; what else could you wish for? The little light we carry with us helps to solve the problem: the driver manages to reconnect all the wiring and we can drive again. It's getting colder and colder in the meantime, which initially is a delight after the heat we experienced today. After some time is becomes another ordeal. It's not possible to reach our panniers to get a sweater, there are no more stops. The only thing that rests the back-passengers to forget the cold is to lean back and watch the incredible starry sky. Once in a while a star shoots, but many remain up there. We pass Abri and Kerma-an Nuzi. The latter is a long-stretched village, all houses are surrounded by high walls. There are donkeys, cats and dogs walk about and sometimes a desert-rat shoots under our wheels.

The road seems to get bumpier all the time, holes alternate with sandy patches where the car has difficulty passing through. The rest is washboard. Cycling would be very difficult here, we would have had to walk for very long distances. We reach the point that we can accept the fact that we had to go by car, even though this is very uncomfortable and tiresome as well. I manage to sleep a little bit in the car, Peter doesn't sleep at all because of the cold and the uncomfortable position on top of the bags.
In Dongola we have a long break, where our fellow-passengers treat us to a breakfast consisting of fool, fried egg, cheese and fried livers. Here we see the first Sudanese tarmac-road, that a few kilometres further changes to stones and sand again. After this we encounter a lot of very deep and loose sand, where the driver has to use his low gearing to avoid getting stuck. It's a miracle he knows where to drive: all around us we only see stones, sand and car-tracks, millions of them. Left and right we see the smelling carcasses of donkeys, cows and camels. Some are quite fresh, according to the amount of vultures that are having a feast.
Just after noon, after 22 hours of bumping, we arrive in Ed Debba, our destination. It's a big village with a lot of tiny shops and a market-place. The young hotel-owner, Nimeri, takes us to the police-post to get registered and shows us his village. Everybody greets and questions us. Walking through the village goes at a very slow pace; it's striking that everybody moves in slow-motion, it's too hot to get excited. Our hotel has, for a much lower price, far better facilities than the one in Wadi Halfa: stone floors and walls, a ceiling-fan and a shady court-yard. Unfortunately the fan starts working from six p.m., when Nimeri starts the generator.

We stay in Ed Debba for two days, to rest, sleep and snivel (me). Nimeri very clearly is proud of his guests, because he shows us all around town, the orchards and fields at the Nile and introduces us to his family. Some family-members belong to a southern tribe and have large tattoos and tribal scars in their faces. Everywhere people offer us tea, lemon juice and water.
After two days Nimeri doesn't want us to leave. He thinks we have to stay a lot longer and tries to convince us by offering us to stay for free. In other circumstances we wouldn't hesitate and accept; now we only want to reach cooler places…