Katie's in Africa: Sweltering in the Sudan

After a week in Sudan I can understand why few tourists come here. While the people are extremely friendly, the heat and never-ending desert are just exhausting. In fairness, Lonely Planet does warn against coming here outside of October to March given the extreme heat – seems they weren’t joking.

We left the border town of Wadi Halpa a day later than we’d hoped because the barge our truck was on became caught on a sandbar. I have since learned that the passenger boat from Aswan sinks frequently because of overloads. This does not surprise me. The captain was very firm about how many people he would take, but his luggage policy was more ‘whatever you can carry on before we depart’ than set kilograms.

The first night we only made it about 60kms down the road and pulled off the highway, passed another quarry (not before we all had flashbacks of the last quarry we camped in) to a lovely spot by the Nile. Fear of Nile crocodiles meant no one went swimming, but it was much cooler than our former prison, I mean guesthouse. We spent the night watching satellites orbit in the sky, trying to guess which countries are spying on Sudan, while dodging scorpions and camel spiders running around our feet.

The next day was a long drive in searing heat and by 4pm we all agreed that dying as a result of our internal organs overheating would be worse than being eaten by a croc, so when we crossed the Nile again we jumped out for a swim. Some local boys were cooling off nearby and the little buggers whipped out their mobile phone cameras when us girls stripped down to underwear or bikinis, so it’s possible I’m now a porn star in Sudan.

That night we camped outside of a small village, which was pleasant but possibly a camel graveyard, given the carcasses lying around. A few inquisitive locals came to have a stare as we prepared dinner – don’t blame them as I doubt many orange trucks full of white people pull up for the night and pitch tents near dead animals.

The next day was another long drive in the heat, but by midafternoon it rained. Being the lunatics we are we jumped out of the truck in near hysteria, on the busiest road in Sudan. Actually the main highway that runs from north to south is in excellent condition – a recent gift from China to assist in securing their fuel consumption. It’s one lane each way but made of bitumen and the trucks fly along overtaking each other so three are in a row. This is not always successful though, and we’ve seen about three accidents in the last two days that were probably fatal.

After our rain dance we found some ancient pyramids (not as big as Egypt’s but still impressive) and took advantage of their lack of fencing and camped in the dunes behind them. This was lovely given it had cooled down a lot and as it was one of our travellers birthday’s we had lamb and birthday cake for dinner. Alas by morning the heat had returned. I cannot begin to describe what 50 degrees feels like when you have no shade, fans or aircon. It’s excrutiating. Many of us are putting rehydration tablets in our water just to avoid getting sick, as a few have been knocked out. We have a tank of water that’s been treated on the truck but it has no way of staying cool. When we pass through towns we stop for cool water, but we are all drinking upwards of 4 litres a day.

Yesterday when we pulled into a town to get water and food, we returned to our truck to find a local cop waiting for us. He made us follow him to the station and then followed a 90 minute rigmarole of going through papers and passports, made worse cause one guy had lost his travel permit. They wanted a bribe without saying so outright, but Alison has a firm no-bribe policy. Next they wanted all our cameras because we aren’t meant to be taking photos without a permit. I managed to keep mine hidden and others swapped memory cards and erased some of their photos. One guy had a heap of pics from Australia and America, and after 30 minutes of going through these the cops gave up and let us go.

After this little incident I discovered there is a god. We were meant to be camping again last night, this time near an ancient temple that you have to drive 40km off-road to reach. We got about 30km in when we came to an abrupt halt. The previous day’s rain had created too much mud to pass, and as no one was keen to spend hours digging us out, we turned around and drove to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. The history buffs, who were gagging to see the temple we subsequently missed, are convinced I was somehow involved in creating this miracle.

Our accommodation in Khartoum was another campsite, at which point I decided this was not the time to be a hero and checked into a nearby hotel. Yes, I was the only one to do so (other than a guy who had to leave us three days ago and come to Khartoum early as he was so ill from the heat).

This turned out to be fortuitous because later that night when I went to find some dinner I met a fascinating person. I had just sat down at a plastic table in the street with some chicken cooked on a simple hot plate by the side of the road when a local asked if he could share my table. We got chatting and it turned out he was not a local but a refugee from Eritrea and now lives in Canada. He is about 50 years old, works as an environmental engineer for the Canadian govt and spends most of his time on the ice in the Arctic circle sorting out water pollution there. He is in Khartoum en route back to Canada after visiting his parents who refuse to leave the border town they live in on the edge of Sudan and Eritrea. He comes once a year and hates it. We sat in the street eating and drinking tea and talking for over two hours about politics, media, development aid, climate change …. Conversations like this are exactly what I wanted to get out of this trip, so here’s hoping for more chance encounters!