Two great days in Sudan

Rest Day Dongola.

We’re now staying in a ground known as the Dongola Zoo.  It has nothing that resembles a zoo, it’s got grass, water, toilet and a shower.  Now this is paradise.  The shower is with a hose. On the rest day we went into town and did the usual walk around the markets, souks as there’re more commonly known with good friend Lindsay, Luke and Horst.  We stopped at a local food shop for lunch which was an omelette with tomato, quite nice actually.

The day never changed with walking in and out of shops and trying to stuff as much into our stomachs as humanly possible.  No, we’re not pigs, but we do need a substantial amount of food and fluids to ensure we make it to Khartoum in one piece, and that is more short term goal.  I don’t look any further than a couple of days.

For evening dinner we found the chicken man, I’ll post the photos of him when I get to Khartoum as the connection right now in the Nubian Desert is crap.  The food was sensational and we each had ½ a chook and rice, washed down with coke, now that’s living.  Dongola has nothing to offer the tourist as it’s a dust bowl.  It did offer me a haircut and the chance to sit down and have nice cup of mint tea with the locals, and that was pretty special.  The Sudanese people are much friendlier and more honest than the Egyptian people we dealt with.

For the rest of the evening we just sat around the Zoo, as we were the only animals in the place, or at least foreign to the locals, and did nothing.  Looking with anticipation to the next 520km stretch to Khartoum.

Dongola to Dead Camel Camp.  Nubian Desert, Sudan. 142kms

Back to the routine of getting up at 6am, or that’s what I thought.  There’s this one guy, Francis from England who gets up at about 5am and wakes everyone up around him.  That’s not good.  I can’t see why anyone needs to get out of bed and make a noise 1hr and 45mins before breakfast is served.  Remember I hate getting out of bed at the best of times.  And at home I don’t need to put my smelly tent down.

So finally got on the bike and headed off with Luke, Lindsay, Peter, Liam, and some others for the ride to lunch.  We stayed at a nice pace and made the 75km lunch break by 9.45am.  I stuffed my face like usual and waited for Rodney and his mates, more affectionately known as ‘Team Grandpa’, because their old and have grand children.  They tried to rope me into their team and told them to go and ………. It.

After lunch it was a nice ride to the tea break at the local Sudanese store with about 10 cyclists. Now that’s what this holiday is all about to me.  Riding along like racing is dumb as crap to me, I came to feel Africa for the last time, and I was sure as hell going to enjoy every kilometre.

We made it into camp when the heat was really going through the roof.  As soon as we put up the tents we had our cups of soup, more water, and then headed off to the Nile River for a nice swim to cool off.  The water was running really fast, so we couldn’t venture out too far.

Back to camp and a really nice meal of beans, meat, rice and some other vegies which I don’t know the name of.  Perhaps I should ask my wife what vegies they are, she does all the shopping at home, I’m too busy working to be worried about doing the shopping.  After eating 2 big plate fills of food it’s now time to hit the sack as we’ve got 143km to do tomorrow.  Good night from the heat of the Nubian Desert.  Oh, before I go to sleep I should say that a relationship is starting to form with 2 people on the tour.  I love gossip.