The Sudan Entry

Well here I am in Khartoum in the capital of one of the hardest countries we are going to enter after what has been the most interesting entry into a country I've ever had. Firstly we left Aswan in southern Egypt and got a ferry to Wadi Halfar on the southern side of the Aswan Dam, they say that in Africa everything has to be done using African time and this ferry ride that took effectively 24hrs crossing the Aswan dam was a typical example. The same distance could be traversed in a vehicle in about 4 hrs but welcome to Africa, on they ferry we met some Germans and a few other Europeans heading south towards cape town and have been intermittently bumping into them. One of them a Greek Guy whose luck just isn't going his way, he was attempting to travel from Cairo to Uganda in a double decker coach which when it was being put on the barge for the crossing smashed the rear end into the ground as it was being driven on. Next when the coach reached Wadi Halfar in the north of Sudan it had to cross open desert for four hundred kilometers to reach Khartoum in the center, then on his first night in the desert a truck smashed into his rear end again and the following picture says it all...

Due to some unforeseen circumstances we had to spend two nights in the town of (Wadi) Halfar where the only accommodation was a German field hospital from one of the world wars. This place has to be the coolest accommodation of the entire trip so far and memorable as the Sudanese are the friendliest people we have met so far, I suppose its because they rarely ever see tourists. So after spending two nights in the desert (I sound like the bible...) we past all ten of the stations on the rail line we were following to get to Khartoum and the blue nile sailing club where we spend two nights before heading onto Gondor in Ethiopia.

I left out that we stopped to see some Sudanese Pyramids which were from the rulers of Egypt in the 3-4 century BC...













More Photos here...