Sadly, Dongola marked the end of the famous Nubian culture we’ve all come to love and enjoy as we pushed south through the Nubian desert to Khartoum over 4 days (3 nights) where we camped the whole time in off the road in the desert. That’s not to say that the Sudanese hospitality and kindness doesn’t remain, it’s just not to the extent that we’ve experienced between Wadi Halfa to Dongola (Nubian territory) which has been nothing short of amazing.
We left our guesthouse in Dongola at about 9:00am on Saturday 14 January after literally waiting around for 1 hour for some kind of movement in the kitchen for our included breakfast to be prepared for us, to no avail. A little disappointed, we pushed off hungry and into the Dongola township to find something to eat and were fortunate enough to come across a roadside stall selling falafels and bread and contently consumed enough of both to feed a small army. Trying to hand gesture our way into ensuring non English speaking people that the four of us really do want enough food to feed 20 people is quickly becoming the norm and we are quite the experts now. Much to our embarrassment, we found that our guesthouse hosts had packed us egg rolls to eat on the road which was why they didn’t prepare anything for us on the morning of our departure in Dongola. Wade wrote in their guestbook and I hope his comments didn’t make mention of not having been provided with brekky. He did however steal their front door key- though whether this was accidental or retribution for the brekky fiasco is still the topic of hot debate.
The route we took between Dongola to Khartoum showed absolutely no towns on Wade’s maps and we initially thought we’d have to carry enough food and water to get us through 3 days of cycling in Sudan’s ever-increasing temperatures. Fortunately, this is a well-travelled trucking route so there are small roadside “cafes” every 70-or so kilometers where the staple of fool (or foul) is served which we’ve essentially lived in for most lunches and even the occasional breakfast for most of Egypt and all of Sudan. Fool is a bean dish, with oil and spices and in its preparation involves a very sophisticated preparation method where the “chef” pummels the mix with a pepsi bottle. I’m lead to believe that one can also use a sprite or fanta bottle too with the same bland results. Foul is also served with bread, which when we are lucky was made sometime in the preceding 7 days and resembles the texture of your average house brick. However, we do not complain as food has now become more of akin to filling your car with fuel than a culinary experience. The amount of food we are consuming is not a problem: all of these roadside “cafes” are laden with cakes, biscuits and other local delicacies (dried dates!) which we buy as much as we can carry. And boy do we eat. At last count, I consumed an average of 6 chocolate bars a day, 3 or 4 cokes, about 7 litres of water and the equivalent of about 4 huge meals a day. Despite this, I’m losing weight rapidly and my bike clothes are starting to sag already. I’m quite excited to know that I’ve got to step up the amount of eating i’m doing. On the downside, I see an immediate dental appointment upon my return to Melbourne.
The days have been really tough with nothing significant to alter the terrain as we peddled our way through the desert. Quite annoyingly there are road signs which have counted down the kilometres until Khartoum, every kilometre, as soon as we arrived in Sudan in Wadi Halfa over 9 days ago. Being reminded of your progress, every kilometre, plays havoc on you and basically makes it impossible to tune out and have the kilometres melt away zen-style.
Our roadside camping has been fun: we’re pulling off the road at about 6pm which about 1 hour before sunset herein Sudan. At first we were very cautious and went to huge efforts to ensure we were very far off the road, behind dunes, sheltered from the wind and passing traffic. However, crossing soft sand, which has the consistency of talcum-powder, becomes old very quickly when you’re pushsing almost 40kgs of bike and by the third night we’d camped about 50 metres from the road behind a 30 centimetre drop- we were in full view of passing traffic and couldn’t care less. Sudan is absolutely safe and we don’t feel the need to be overly cautious at night.
The 3 days from Dongola to Khartoum really did pass without too much to report on. Shane’s still breaking spokes quite often. At last count he’s gone through about 10 or 11 rear spokes, with Gavan having also broken 2 and (touch wood) Wade & I not having broken any. We have no idea why Shane’s breaking any at all- considering we’ve gone to painstaking efforts to ensure his rear pannier bags contain next-to-nothing and have recently loosened all of his rear spokes as we’ve came to believe they were originally over tightened when they were built. It’s not a problem that he’s breaking them- it takes about 20-30 minutes to repair every time, but it can’t be good for his morale having this weighing on his mind all of the time.
The mornings in the desert have been absolutely freezing. I’ve spent a winter in the Canadian Rockies and I don’t remember having felt this cold before in my life. Perhaps its because I wasn’t wearing bloody bike shorts in the Rockies, or maybe Sudan’s mornings are just stupidly cold. I’ve started the last 4 mornings riding in shorts, pants, t-shirt, vest, jacket, gloves and my head scarf for the first hour or two. Things heat up by about 10am though and by the point in lathering myself in sunscreen every 2 hours for the rest of the afternoon. I have the most ridiculous tan lines ever- I even have these lines on my forehead where the sun’s been punishing me through the air vents in my helmet. Check out this photo for a chuckle.
It’s funny the things we do to occupy ourselves while turning the peddles every day. In Egypt, we had a ‘dead dog count’ which topped at 15 or so. In Sudan, we have a ‘dead camel count’ which we’ve literally lost count of but will hazard a guess to be somewhere around the 150-200 mark. I think i’ve seen more dead camels than live ones. This does not bode well for ones confidence to see an animal which has essentially evolved to live in the desert perish so often. Perhaps they’ve yet to discover fool.
Shane and I have also developed a sophisticated system where we rank country’s treatment of donkeys. This has been coined the CDI (Country Donkey Index) and we are pleased to report Sudan ranks quite high on the CDI with fat and healthy donkeys everywhere, unlike Egypt whose donkeys could use some TLC.
Our last 4 days have also come with a very increased presence of Sudanese military who patrol the stretch of road in their camouflaged topless 4WDs with 50 calibre machine guns mounted on the back and carry 4 or 5 very hardened troops each carrying AK47s. They wave, we smile and wave and silently hope they keep driving, which they always have. About 40kms outside of Khartoum we had to cross a military checkpoint which was also mounted with whopping big machine guns and a small troop of soldiers. Gavan was ordered to remove his handlebar mounted camera at the checkpoint, which he did not object to. Quite concerning was the strong smell of gun powder at the checkpoint which we hoped was just bored troops letting off rounds and not the result of another tourist who’d also had a handlebar mounted camera.
We’ve checked into the Necropole Hotel in Khartoum where we’re paying an outrageous amount of money per night ($70USD/night) which we aren’t complaining about, considering none of us have had a shower in 4 or 5 days and the last shower we had (4 or 5 days ago) was cold water so didn’t really count as it involved a quick lather followed by 30 seconds of painstaking cleansing under freezing dribbling water. Upon arriving at the Necropole, the bottom of our showers resembled the desert floor with the amount of dirt and sand left behind. Just for comparison, taking this luxury hotel out of the equation, we’ll make it through Sudan having spent less than $300USD each.
It’s currently 4:30am and for some unknown reason i’m wide awake despite being a) absolutely exhausted, b) dosed up on over the counter Xanax and c) absolutely exhausted. Breakfast isn’t served for another 2 ½ hours so i’ll sneak back into bed in the hope I get another couple hours sleep before spending my day pushing the boundaries of safe caffeine and food consumption in Khartoum. We’ve almost ridden a total of 2,000 in about 15 or 16 days of riding, so my desire to spend my day off to run around Khartoum’s tourist sites today is non-existent. I plan on eating, giving my bike a once-over, eating some more, reading, walking downtown, eating and maybe even an afternoon nap, and I couldn’t be happier with this itinerary.
All in all, i’m loving this adventure. To Wade’s credit, his planned route though tough at times has rest days very well planned (every 5 or 6 days) and the daily kilometres have become relatively easy. After having pushed ourselves last week and smashed out two back-to-back 190km days, anything less seems like a walk in the park. Though, our next country (in approx 5 days) is Ethiopia where things are going to change drastically as we start climbing through mountains (over 4km high!). I’m probably going to need/want to quit smoking by then but the local cigarettes at $0.50AUD per packet are just too bloody tempting.
I won’t be sad to leave the desert. Everything I own is caked in sand and dirt. As i understand it, the route we’re about to take from Dongola to Ethiopia is quite green with lots of vegetation and a little more civilised. I just hope they serve more than fool and stale bread. Health-wise, everyone’s in top shape. We’re all looking out for each other and monitoring any small ailments, niggles etc which are treated immediately and managed well (i.e sore knees, achilles from improper bike fit). Quite hilariously, we’ve all developed a small case of nerve damage in our hands and all struggle with grip strength (as a result of sitting in the same position on the handlebars for up to 8 hours a day). It’s common to ask to help opening a screw top coke bottle. We’ve developed a sophisticated and manly routine to do on the bike every day to repair the damage, so fear not.
Again, thank you for everyone’s comments and emails. Internet has been difficult (i.e. almost impossible) to use or find in Sudan. I reply to as many as I can but still haven’t had a chance to reply to everyone’s. I read them all and thoroughly enjoy receiving them- they really give me and the others a big morale boost. Special thanks to Marg, Lorena and Nadia- your emails and messages have been great. Keep them coming- I couldn’t care less about the content, it’s just great to hear from you all about the random goings on life back home.
Shaun T- we’re all thinking of you and really hope you get the chance to join us at some point on this journey. Thanks for all of your comments and emails- hopefully we’ll get a chance to skype with you soon. Hot tip- there’s absolutely no relationship between smoking and cycle touring so don’t feel the need to train your butt off. Just get used to riding daily, even if it’s only 30-40kms or so. Though he doesn’t smoke, Gavan’s survived perfectly fine after not having ridden more than 2 decent rides in 2011! I think he might be part-freak though ;)
And for all your skypers out there, add me on skype (justinmolik) and i’ll hopefully catch you online at some point. Take care everyone. I’m back off to bed to try and get myself a couple hours more sleep before I make a pig of myself at the Necropole hotel’s buffet brekky at 7am.
Oh, and I learnt something about Sudan yesterday: quite hot and parched, we asked our hotel manager how serious Sudan was about it’s stance/ban on alcohol and whether there was somewhere that might sell one or two beers to us. His reply was that we’d go to jail if caught. If a Sudanese national was caught- they get 40 lashes. It’s amazing how quickly your motivation for beer can evaporate.
We left our guesthouse in Dongola at about 9:00am on Saturday 14 January after literally waiting around for 1 hour for some kind of movement in the kitchen for our included breakfast to be prepared for us, to no avail. A little disappointed, we pushed off hungry and into the Dongola township to find something to eat and were fortunate enough to come across a roadside stall selling falafels and bread and contently consumed enough of both to feed a small army. Trying to hand gesture our way into ensuring non English speaking people that the four of us really do want enough food to feed 20 people is quickly becoming the norm and we are quite the experts now. Much to our embarrassment, we found that our guesthouse hosts had packed us egg rolls to eat on the road which was why they didn’t prepare anything for us on the morning of our departure in Dongola. Wade wrote in their guestbook and I hope his comments didn’t make mention of not having been provided with brekky. He did however steal their front door key- though whether this was accidental or retribution for the brekky fiasco is still the topic of hot debate.
The route we took between Dongola to Khartoum showed absolutely no towns on Wade’s maps and we initially thought we’d have to carry enough food and water to get us through 3 days of cycling in Sudan’s ever-increasing temperatures. Fortunately, this is a well-travelled trucking route so there are small roadside “cafes” every 70-or so kilometers where the staple of fool (or foul) is served which we’ve essentially lived in for most lunches and even the occasional breakfast for most of Egypt and all of Sudan. Fool is a bean dish, with oil and spices and in its preparation involves a very sophisticated preparation method where the “chef” pummels the mix with a pepsi bottle. I’m lead to believe that one can also use a sprite or fanta bottle too with the same bland results. Foul is also served with bread, which when we are lucky was made sometime in the preceding 7 days and resembles the texture of your average house brick. However, we do not complain as food has now become more of akin to filling your car with fuel than a culinary experience. The amount of food we are consuming is not a problem: all of these roadside “cafes” are laden with cakes, biscuits and other local delicacies (dried dates!) which we buy as much as we can carry. And boy do we eat. At last count, I consumed an average of 6 chocolate bars a day, 3 or 4 cokes, about 7 litres of water and the equivalent of about 4 huge meals a day. Despite this, I’m losing weight rapidly and my bike clothes are starting to sag already. I’m quite excited to know that I’ve got to step up the amount of eating i’m doing. On the downside, I see an immediate dental appointment upon my return to Melbourne.
The days have been really tough with nothing significant to alter the terrain as we peddled our way through the desert. Quite annoyingly there are road signs which have counted down the kilometres until Khartoum, every kilometre, as soon as we arrived in Sudan in Wadi Halfa over 9 days ago. Being reminded of your progress, every kilometre, plays havoc on you and basically makes it impossible to tune out and have the kilometres melt away zen-style.
Our roadside camping has been fun: we’re pulling off the road at about 6pm which about 1 hour before sunset herein Sudan. At first we were very cautious and went to huge efforts to ensure we were very far off the road, behind dunes, sheltered from the wind and passing traffic. However, crossing soft sand, which has the consistency of talcum-powder, becomes old very quickly when you’re pushsing almost 40kgs of bike and by the third night we’d camped about 50 metres from the road behind a 30 centimetre drop- we were in full view of passing traffic and couldn’t care less. Sudan is absolutely safe and we don’t feel the need to be overly cautious at night.
The 3 days from Dongola to Khartoum really did pass without too much to report on. Shane’s still breaking spokes quite often. At last count he’s gone through about 10 or 11 rear spokes, with Gavan having also broken 2 and (touch wood) Wade & I not having broken any. We have no idea why Shane’s breaking any at all- considering we’ve gone to painstaking efforts to ensure his rear pannier bags contain next-to-nothing and have recently loosened all of his rear spokes as we’ve came to believe they were originally over tightened when they were built. It’s not a problem that he’s breaking them- it takes about 20-30 minutes to repair every time, but it can’t be good for his morale having this weighing on his mind all of the time.
The mornings in the desert have been absolutely freezing. I’ve spent a winter in the Canadian Rockies and I don’t remember having felt this cold before in my life. Perhaps its because I wasn’t wearing bloody bike shorts in the Rockies, or maybe Sudan’s mornings are just stupidly cold. I’ve started the last 4 mornings riding in shorts, pants, t-shirt, vest, jacket, gloves and my head scarf for the first hour or two. Things heat up by about 10am though and by the point in lathering myself in sunscreen every 2 hours for the rest of the afternoon. I have the most ridiculous tan lines ever- I even have these lines on my forehead where the sun’s been punishing me through the air vents in my helmet. Check out this photo for a chuckle.
It’s funny the things we do to occupy ourselves while turning the peddles every day. In Egypt, we had a ‘dead dog count’ which topped at 15 or so. In Sudan, we have a ‘dead camel count’ which we’ve literally lost count of but will hazard a guess to be somewhere around the 150-200 mark. I think i’ve seen more dead camels than live ones. This does not bode well for ones confidence to see an animal which has essentially evolved to live in the desert perish so often. Perhaps they’ve yet to discover fool.
Shane and I have also developed a sophisticated system where we rank country’s treatment of donkeys. This has been coined the CDI (Country Donkey Index) and we are pleased to report Sudan ranks quite high on the CDI with fat and healthy donkeys everywhere, unlike Egypt whose donkeys could use some TLC.
Our last 4 days have also come with a very increased presence of Sudanese military who patrol the stretch of road in their camouflaged topless 4WDs with 50 calibre machine guns mounted on the back and carry 4 or 5 very hardened troops each carrying AK47s. They wave, we smile and wave and silently hope they keep driving, which they always have. About 40kms outside of Khartoum we had to cross a military checkpoint which was also mounted with whopping big machine guns and a small troop of soldiers. Gavan was ordered to remove his handlebar mounted camera at the checkpoint, which he did not object to. Quite concerning was the strong smell of gun powder at the checkpoint which we hoped was just bored troops letting off rounds and not the result of another tourist who’d also had a handlebar mounted camera.
We’ve checked into the Necropole Hotel in Khartoum where we’re paying an outrageous amount of money per night ($70USD/night) which we aren’t complaining about, considering none of us have had a shower in 4 or 5 days and the last shower we had (4 or 5 days ago) was cold water so didn’t really count as it involved a quick lather followed by 30 seconds of painstaking cleansing under freezing dribbling water. Upon arriving at the Necropole, the bottom of our showers resembled the desert floor with the amount of dirt and sand left behind. Just for comparison, taking this luxury hotel out of the equation, we’ll make it through Sudan having spent less than $300USD each.
It’s currently 4:30am and for some unknown reason i’m wide awake despite being a) absolutely exhausted, b) dosed up on over the counter Xanax and c) absolutely exhausted. Breakfast isn’t served for another 2 ½ hours so i’ll sneak back into bed in the hope I get another couple hours sleep before spending my day pushing the boundaries of safe caffeine and food consumption in Khartoum. We’ve almost ridden a total of 2,000 in about 15 or 16 days of riding, so my desire to spend my day off to run around Khartoum’s tourist sites today is non-existent. I plan on eating, giving my bike a once-over, eating some more, reading, walking downtown, eating and maybe even an afternoon nap, and I couldn’t be happier with this itinerary.
All in all, i’m loving this adventure. To Wade’s credit, his planned route though tough at times has rest days very well planned (every 5 or 6 days) and the daily kilometres have become relatively easy. After having pushed ourselves last week and smashed out two back-to-back 190km days, anything less seems like a walk in the park. Though, our next country (in approx 5 days) is Ethiopia where things are going to change drastically as we start climbing through mountains (over 4km high!). I’m probably going to need/want to quit smoking by then but the local cigarettes at $0.50AUD per packet are just too bloody tempting.
I won’t be sad to leave the desert. Everything I own is caked in sand and dirt. As i understand it, the route we’re about to take from Dongola to Ethiopia is quite green with lots of vegetation and a little more civilised. I just hope they serve more than fool and stale bread. Health-wise, everyone’s in top shape. We’re all looking out for each other and monitoring any small ailments, niggles etc which are treated immediately and managed well (i.e sore knees, achilles from improper bike fit). Quite hilariously, we’ve all developed a small case of nerve damage in our hands and all struggle with grip strength (as a result of sitting in the same position on the handlebars for up to 8 hours a day). It’s common to ask to help opening a screw top coke bottle. We’ve developed a sophisticated and manly routine to do on the bike every day to repair the damage, so fear not.
Again, thank you for everyone’s comments and emails. Internet has been difficult (i.e. almost impossible) to use or find in Sudan. I reply to as many as I can but still haven’t had a chance to reply to everyone’s. I read them all and thoroughly enjoy receiving them- they really give me and the others a big morale boost. Special thanks to Marg, Lorena and Nadia- your emails and messages have been great. Keep them coming- I couldn’t care less about the content, it’s just great to hear from you all about the random goings on life back home.
Shaun T- we’re all thinking of you and really hope you get the chance to join us at some point on this journey. Thanks for all of your comments and emails- hopefully we’ll get a chance to skype with you soon. Hot tip- there’s absolutely no relationship between smoking and cycle touring so don’t feel the need to train your butt off. Just get used to riding daily, even if it’s only 30-40kms or so. Though he doesn’t smoke, Gavan’s survived perfectly fine after not having ridden more than 2 decent rides in 2011! I think he might be part-freak though ;)
And for all your skypers out there, add me on skype (justinmolik) and i’ll hopefully catch you online at some point. Take care everyone. I’m back off to bed to try and get myself a couple hours more sleep before I make a pig of myself at the Necropole hotel’s buffet brekky at 7am.
Oh, and I learnt something about Sudan yesterday: quite hot and parched, we asked our hotel manager how serious Sudan was about it’s stance/ban on alcohol and whether there was somewhere that might sell one or two beers to us. His reply was that we’d go to jail if caught. If a Sudanese national was caught- they get 40 lashes. It’s amazing how quickly your motivation for beer can evaporate.
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