The Road to Khartoum - Part 1

That's Craig and Simon up ahead (as usual) , two London based South Africans who i met on the ferry from Aswan to Wadi Halfa. They've just started a tour from Cairo to Capetown http://www.cairo2capetown.org/ . Great guys and together we formed a good team for the Sudanese stretch of my journey.

From Wadi Halfa there are two 'roads' to Khartoum.The first tracks the nile for 400km to Dongola before continuing on to the capital. The second follows the railway line through the Nubian desert for about 400km and then onto Khartoum. I'd done a bit of reading up before hand and was a bit nervous about both. Both involved sandy roads which would require some difficult cycling and potentially even some pushing. Dongola seemed the safer option with some towns along the way whereas the route tracking the railway maybe looked a little quicker.After a small amount of debate we decided on the rail route as Simon's map showed it as a better road - not sure what this says about the other road! Arriving in Wadi Halfa we completed the immigration formalities much quicker than expected so decided to stock up on supplies and head out that night. The road follows the trainline most of the way to Abu Hamed but we decided to cycle alongside the tracks which seemed to offer a better surface and also prevented us getting lost!

10km under our belt on the first night and all felt good as we settled under the stars to catch some shuteye. 80km a day we thought, we might even get to Abu Hamed in 4 days! We started the next day making further good progress as the ground held firm but as the day went on the sand started to become very soft in patches and so it would be all the way until Abu Hamed. Such were the conditions that at times we had to resort to balancing our tyres on the rails and pushing our bikes in this way as the sand was too thick to push through. The Sudanese sunshine was also making it's presence felt making it impossible to do anything between about 11am and 3. All agreed that this was the toughest 'cycling' they had done to date.

Balancing all of this was the hospitality of the Sudanese which is legendary amongst travellers. Between Wadi Halfa and Abu Hamed there are several manned stations and where they could all of the workers would make sure we were fed, sheltered and watered to the best of their abilities. Aside from the odd sand storm I enjoyed the starkness and solitude of the desert too and when we did finally emerge from the desert 7 days later it seemed strange to suddenly see cars and people - i almost wanted to turn back. Somehow however the allure of cold Coke and a non rice based meal was too great!