Blogs from Sudan, Africa - page 8

We never found any statue to General Gordon - sadly. But we were thankful to leave Khartoum and get on with our journey so were up and away by 8 o’clock. It was easy to get out of the city, shopping and fuelling up as we did so. But once away, when I was leading, we went horribly wrong and despite the helpful directions from non English speaking locals (who sent us in the totally wrong direction) we found ourselves out in the scrubby desert amongst endless hovel villages with never a moments sight of tarmac anywhere. We were totally lost amongst a maze of tracks, none of which seemed to lead in any sensible direction! To resolve this we headed NORTH, back towards Khartoum, in the firm belief that we would eventually hit some ... read more

3rd - 4th November The authorities in Khartoum had changed the venue of the major bus station. Result? Total traffic chaos! Ian and Jeremy took their cars off first thing to the Toyota agent who was extremely helpful. They sorted out Jeremy’s car’s electrics which have been giving endless trouble. A new battery was part of the equation. Ian’s car was put on the ramp only to find that the extra fuel tank had just about broken free. It took a little longer to fix this - two days - as the tank had be removed completely and brackets replaced and/or strengthened. However, in the end all was well. Except that it took about an hour and a half to do the journey to and from the garage when normally it would be a matter of ... read more

It took us ages to get onto the right road for Atbara. The eventual route was nothing akin to that shown on our maps. In fact a spanking new highway has been recently constructed across the desert more or less in a straight line from a point some 5 miles or so below the ferry crossing. When asking directions everyone was positive in saying “The road is just down there and you turn left”. It was and we did. And it was a superb road, sometimes a little difficult to follow because of sand being blown across. But the views otherwise were great, the colours even better and we made good time to Atbara. Here we were again faced with no bridge but another, similar ferry. It was a long wait and it only took four ... read more

28th - 30th October If you look at the map of Sudan the distance between Wadi Halfa and Dongola is only 285 miles. A simple journey, one would suppose, but it took us 2 and a half days! We had met some South African travelers in Luxor who described this road as the worst they had ever been on, in fact they labeled it “The Road from Hell”. We now know why! A general description of the road will suffice for the full length. At first the road wound round desert hills strewn with small rocks and the gravel surface was badly corrugated. This corrugation got worse and worse and the option was either to drive slowly (at 15 mph) or as fast as one safely could (at about 45 mph). Either choice was wrong; the ... read more

I have discovered in myself the skill of predicting the weather. At least when it will rain... All I have to do is wash my clothes and hang them on the line to dry. Shortly after the clothes are hung up, clouds suddenly appear, and WHAM! Microburst downpour on top of the clothes line. Awesome. This rain also only tends to appear when I am driving out of the camp for a patrol or to do errands. My clothes are flapping happilly on the clothes line like innocent little things that flap, and whammy! (Salute to AnchorMan) The next thing they know they are being blown off the line, covered in burrs and seed pods, and covered in sand and muck. Sweet. The other occasion that I have been able to predict the rainfall is when ... read more

Somedays, you just want to scream and throw something breakable... I awoke at 0645 this morning, excited and nervous beause today was the day that I was to lead a 3 man patrol to supervise the removal of over 100 rounds of unexploded ordnance. Just two days ago I had sat down face to face with the Lieutenant in charge of the engineering company, and he had whole-heartedly agreed to put a team together for Saturday and get the job done. For those of you not in the military, combat engineers in general do things like demolitions, constructions of camps and fortifications, and mine/ordnance removal. When the three UNMO's arrived at the HQ to meet with the Lieutenant an dhis team, I knew something wasn't going to work, beacuse the LT was dressed in a tracksuit ... read more

Where do we start? It feels like months since the last update and since then we have experienced everything from temples to tombs and Al-Qaeda bomb threats to robbery! We pick up in Luxor, half way south along the Nile in Egypt. After a rather eventful journey reaching here we decided to spend 4 or 5 days taking in the sites and relaxing as best one can in 50 degree heat! Whilst in Luxor we saw the magnificent Luxor and Karnak temples, stretching for what seemed miles into the desert along the river. It is incredible to think that some of these temples have been standing tall for over 35 centuries... it really does put English Heritage in the shade. One very hot day involved an early 6am start to cross the river to the West ... read more