We had to get up at 6 a.m. to get the bus out to Kassala. Kassala is right beside the border with Eritrea and the bus took 8 hours to get there. It was pretty much desert the whole way until we got closer to Kassala, when we spotted lots of villages of huts made of mud and straw. The bus dropped us at a little souk about 5 minutes away by taxi from Kassala. We arrived and found the Riyad hotel, which we checked into. Walking around Kassala, we got a lot more stares than anywhere else and loads of people coming up to us to shout 'Khawaja' (foreigner). This wasn't done in a threatening way though and people were extremely friendly. Registering at the police station was another experience of comical Sudanese bureaucracy. We
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