Khartoum - Gondar - 7 Days 260km

Khartoum, Wadi Mendai, Gallabat, Gondar

After turning back in the desert the bus dropped me on the outskirts of Khartoum so it was 12k of night riding through the city to get to the hostel.
The plan was to get my Sudanese visa registered (supposed to be done 3 days after arriving into Sudan so I was a little late) and get my visa for Ethiopia.

I thought that this should take 3 days at the most but because it was the festival of Eid the Ethiopian embassy was closed and I would have to wait 6 days for it to open again.
So I had to have a week in Khartoum. All the tourist activities were closed because of Eid and most of the shops were also closed.

Downtown Khartoum. The drains don't work as they are full of rubbish so when it rains the water stays.

I meet up with Tim the Australian from Wadi Halfa for a BBQ near the Nile and spent some time with Nori a Libyan who was also staying at the hostel. He has travelled all over Africa and gave me some good ideas of where to go for the rest of the trip.

I went to the football (Sudan v Nigeria) that was a qualification game for the Africa cup of Nations. A 1-0 win to Sudan but it wasn't much of a game. 


I got my Sudanese visa registered. It took 4 hours and 2 trips to the registration office at the Airport and $50US but it allowed me to leave Sudan.


Apart from that there was a lot of coffee drunk and I spent the hottest part of the day in the air conditioning at the mall just to get out of the heat.

The main problem I had was that I was running out of money. I had budgeted what I would need based on the costs in the Lonely Planet Africa book but I didn't know that the rate of inflation in Sudan is 40% so even though the book was only a year old all the prices were double. I also didn't plan on spending a week in Khartoum.

There are economic sanctions in place against Sudan (The president/dictator Omar al-Bashir has been charged with war crimes) and the Visa card doesn't work there so I had no way of getting any money. 
 
The day after getting my Ethiopian visa I left Khartoum. I was happy to be leaving, there wasn't a lot to do in Khartoum and it was very hot.

I want to say it was good to get back on the bike again but it wasn't. I was low on money and probably wouldn't have enough to get to Ethiopia via bike, it was very hot, my MP3 player broke in the desert heat, it was 500k to the nearest beer and the events in getting to Khartoum were fresh in my mind. 

 

The driving in Southern Sudan wasn't good. There was plenty of traffic and every 10 minutes I would be forced off the road by a car overtaking and ignoring that I was there. I would also be forced off the road when two buses or a bus and a truck converged. Sudan has 9370 deaths per 100000 cars, the second worst in the world, and I was beginning to see why.

The 6000k mark

As it turned out it was only 260km before I had to stop. I had become unwell after eating/drinking something bad and some simple calculations meant I had only just enough money to make it to Ethiopia via bus. 

I was around 300km from the border and then a a further 180km from the nearest ATM at Gondar. So at Waid Mendai I had to take the bus. I had enough money for around 4 days  biking and it was going to take me at least 8 days to get to Gondar. 

 The bus station at Wadi Mendai. From here it was to Gallabat.

This is my hotel for the evening in Gallabat. I rode 30km around Gallabat in the dark after arriving looking for the bus stop that would take me to the Ethiopian border. I couldn't find it so I found a cheap hotel using the GPS.

Its a what am I doing here/can I do this moment. Egypt had been a failure, Sudan a disaster and I was about to get up in the morning and get on another bus to take me to Ethiopia.


It was a horrible, empty felling to know Sudan had defeated me again for the third and final time and there was nothing I could do about it.

My time in Sudan was over and I was happy about that. The people of Sudan had mostly been incredibly friendly but the heat, the lack of tourist sites, the rubbish that was everywhere, the bad food, the driving and the poor economic situation mean that Sudan isn't a great place to visit. Would I go back? No, once is enough.

So it was onto Ethiopia via the bus and to the town of Gondar.

There was sensational Ethiopian coffee

Stunning scenery and lots of hills

Sheep roaming the streets

A nice castle

And beer! 
Ethiopia was going to be a big challenge because of the hills and the altitude but I was really looking forward to it.

Aswan - Wadi Halfa - Kharthoum 8 days 770km

 Aswan, Wadi Halfa, Abri, Dongola, Ed Debba & Khartoum

Until recently the only way to get from Egypt to Sudan was by ferry. I like a boat ride so I decided to wait a few days in Aswan for the weekly sailing.

I don't know if this was a good idea or not. It certainly was an experience.
I arrived at 11am for the 8pm sailing. I was too late to get any space on deck so I moved to just in front the bridge where the crew sleep. There wasn't a lot of shade but I did have space to lie down.

The loading of cargo continued until 7.30pm. Anything that you use in a house was loaded on. TV's, fridges,dryers, freezers, clothes, washers, dryers, food and even a kitchen sink all loaded through a single door. There were fights, disputes, yelling and at 7.30pm the boat stopped taking cargo. There were more fights as people didn't get what they wanted on board and we left at 8pm. By that time the cargo on the deck was stacked 6 feet high and there were trails you walked through to get to the back of the boat. All I could think was if this thing capsizes at least I'm going to be able to get out.

The boat arrived at Wadi Halfa around 2pm and I waited an hour before I took the bike down two flights of stairs and tried to get off. I had almost got to the exit and then I couldn't go any further. The man letting the people off had decided to start letting people back on again. Chaos ensued and after having people crawling all over me and the bike I lost it and started yelling. Everyone stopped, looked at me and I heard one voice say "crazy white man" then the madness started up again.

After getting off the boat there was a short ride to the town I meet up with Tim an Australian who was on the boat and we went to a lokanda. Its hostel type accommodation where they provide a bed under the stars.

The next day I was up early and back on the bike. It was good to be going somewhere but I hadn't really prepared very well for what was ahead. I knew it would be hot but the desert proved to be something else.

I had around 5L of water with me when I set off so I thought I would be good for the day. It was around 40 degrees and I had done 100km in pretty good time but it was getting hotter and around 1.30pm the cramp started. I didn't think much of it until about 10km later when it happened again. I made my way to the next settlement which was a mining camp and decided to have a break. As soon as I got off the bike both legs locked up and I fell over. 

Not for the first time I had under catered but this time it was serious. I couldn't walk without part of my legs cramping up. Quads, hamstrings, groin at different times, and at one stage my fingers too.

Some miners put me onto a bed at the back of the picture here and I lay there for 3 hours. Every time I moved some part of me cramped up. I drank water, 7-up, Pepsi and after 4 re-hydration sachets it got better. I had totally underestimated the heat and how much fluid and salt I would need. The miners gave me a ride to the Abri (20km) and I went to a hotel to recover.

It was Day 1 in the desert and I just had my ass kicked. I needed to re-think how I was going to do this.

I spent 2 days in Abri with Mr Maqshood at his Nubian Hotel eating lots of food with salt and drinking huge amounts of water. After the break I was still a bit sore but I was ready to go again.

I would clearly need more water so I got out the 8L bladder I had purchased for Africa, filled it with water and set off again. I was carrying about 10L of water with the drink bottles and some extra bottled water. This turned out to be what I would need for each day.
I also decided that riding the bike during the hottest part of the day wasn't a good idea so I would ride from 7.30am until around 12.30pm then take a break until 4pm then a hour or two before it got dark.

This is a water station on the side of the road. In the red clay pots is water of varying degrees of quality but they kept the water cool. These were commonly found along the road where people would wait for buses or where there was a small settlement. They are a great place to get out of the sun, have a nap and eat some noodles. I have to filter the water before drinking.

This is an abandoned bus shelter (I think). I made use of these to sleep in for 3 nights on the way to Khartoum.

The friendly locals at a roadside store getting ready to hand over the Pepsi.

Fixing a puncture where there was some shade.

After 6 days I had made it to Ed Debba and slept on the stretcher next to the blue barrel's.
I was helped along by a tail wind most of the way. Along the way I tried some biking at night when it was cooler. It went OK until I fell off doing a u-turn when looking for some shelter. I was hardly moving at the time, I just couldn't unclip my bike shoe fast enough to stop myself from falling. There was a fair bit of blood and a bit of a hole in my elbow but apart from that I was fine. It was just one of those things that happen when you are tired. 

From Ed Debba it was only 300km to Khartoum and I thought that would be done easily in 3 days but the desert had other ideas. I can carry around a 10L of water at any one time. This should give me around 7/8 hours of biking and have a bit left over to cook with. I was only eating noodles at this stage so I didn't need a lot for cooking.

When I woke the next morning the wind had changed in direction and strength, and what was going to be a comfortable ride to Khartoum had now become something totally different.
 
I set off at 7.30am and by 10.30am I had done 27km into a strong head wind. A man driving past stopped and gave me some bananas and water. I asked him where the next "cafeteria" was - a cafeteria is a road side shop with water/food. He said it was 100km but I didn't know if he meant 100k from where I was or 100k from where I had started as there was a bit of a language problem. 

I had a break in the shade by a cell phone tower and did the maths. I do a lot of maths on the bike, I am constantly doing distance/speed/time calculation's, but that maths this time wasn't good. At my current speed it was going to take at the best another 8 hours to get there and at worst another 11. This was assuming that the cafeteria was 100km away and not any further. I thought about it some more and carried on hoping that conditions would improve but by the time I had done 40km it was 12.30pm and I needed to get out of the sun.

I improvised some shelter out of an old collapsed house, ate some noddles and had a nap. I had been on the move for 5 hours and I hadn't seen a single inhabited building anywhere. I was more than half way through my water and I didn't know what was ahead, if anything, other than desert.
 
Riding a bike means you are making decisions all the time. Speed/food/water/distance/shelter/weather/road conditions and fatigue all need to be considered in the decision making process. Some of the decisions work out well and some don't but I hadn't come across a situation like this before and the decision that I made next was going to be really important.

Do I carry on or do I turn back?

All I could think about was a conversation I had with my sister Jenny before I left and the two things I promised her. First was to always wear a helmet and the second was to make decisions that keep me safe. 

I turned back. I wasn't happy about it and biked along the road yelling obscenities for 10 minutes. I biked back to Ed Debba and took the bus to Khartoum. If the wind hadn't changed direction, if I hadn't had two days rest due to dehydration, if the was a cafeteria closer I could have easily made it to Khartoum but things didn't go my way and I was on a bus. 

I found out during the bus ride it was 150km to the first cafeteria.

I took this photo just as I got back to Ed Dabbah. The desert had kicked my ass again and I wasn't happy about it. After this I went behind the building (it was a petrol station) and used the water I had left for my first shower in 3 days.


Since then I have had a few days in Khartoum waiting for the Ethopian embassy to open again after the festival of Eid. I got my visa today and its back on the road tomorrow. 

I have unfinished business in the desert.

Cairo - Aswan 14 Days - 280km

Egypt

The utter madness that is Egypt begins as soon as you get off the plane. While waiting at customs you are accosted by taxi drivers wanting to take you somewhere via a souvenir shop at a ridiculously inflated price. I guess they think that as you have just got off the plane you will have no idea of things actually cost. Unfortunately this welcome is just the beginning of the "Egyptian Experience". I have been to Egypt before and had a pretty good idea of what Egypt would be like but I had thought that after the revolution things may have got better. They haven't.

I spent around 10 days in Cairo, mostly just recovering from the past 3 months efforts, watching movies and going out to have a look around every day. I checked out the museum, Tahrir square but I mostly just wandered around looking at things. There is plenty to see and being the middle east its totally different from European cities. 

In that way it was interesting but the Egyptian experience means that you are constantly hassled by people wanting to sell you stuff, ripped off because there are no prices on anything and treated poorly because you are clearly not Egyptian.

The Egyptians seem to view all tourists as a walking ATM's and its their duty to try and make the largest withdrawal they can before you leave. Then there is the killing, rape and sexual harassment of tourists that happens on a regular basis that mean that Egypt really isn't very nice. This article sums up the rest of the pproblem's.

Don't get me wrong there are many friendly, honest and helpful people there too but there just isn't enough of them.

My major concern in Egypt was security. Would it be safe to bike? So I went to the New Zealand Embassy in Cairo to register that I was I country and inform them of what my plans were. I had a good chat with the Consul there and her advice was to get back on a plane and leave as soon as possible. So probably not that safe.

The other issue was how safe would the road be. The rate of road deaths in Egypt is 183 people for ever 100000 cars. In New Zealand its 10 people per 100000 cars. So again not that safe. Here are some things I noticed while out and about on the roads in Egypt

• Seat belts along with indicators are not used
• 1 honk on the horn means I am coming through
• 2 honks means get out of the way I am coming through
• Helmets are never used on motorcycles
• The maximum number of people per motorcycle is 4. 
• The 4 people can be 4 men, or more often 1 man, 1 or 2 women sitting side saddle and 1 or 2 babies/children
• You can go the wrong way up a one way street if you are riding a motorcycle
•  If you are in a large truck you can overtake anywhere as the traffic coming the other way must get out of the way or they will be killed
• There are more lanes on the road than indicated. A 3 lane road will operate as 5 lanes and a two lane road has 3 and sometimes 4 lanes.
• Almost every car in Cairo had some kind of panel damage. Mostly along the side due to the extra lanes rule.

The road to the pyramid's at Giza. This was a highway reduced to 1 lane each way because of the sand and the rubbish on the road.

The sphinx and the pyramid's at Giza. There is something about this place that is very special. You walk up to the sphinx and the pyramid's are there in the background and its just amazing. Then you carry on up to the pyramid's and you get to see how massive they are. I sat there for an hour sitting between two of the pyramid's (they are around 200m apart)  and the sphinx just looking at them watching the sun rise over Cairo.

This is the step pyramid of Djoser. This what the pyramid look like from the inside.

The sphinx of Memphis

There was a heavy Police and Army presence all over Egypt. All government offices had armed Police outside mostly with AK-47's and Shotguns but also occasionally with heavy machine guns. There were also concrete blast shields to offer protection from bombs.
Here are two police vans, one covered with barbed wire and the other just a large van with 20/30 armed police inside. Little did I know I would get to spend some time with Egyptian police soon.

I left Cairo and the plan was to follow the Nile to Aswan. Not very complicated but I was a little worried about security so rather than camp in the desert I would make sure there was a roof over my head each night.

The 5000km mark

About half way through the 3rd day I was somewhere near Al Minah when I was stopped by the police. They checked my passport and visa and I continued on. Around half an hour later I looked behind me and there was the police following me. This lasted for around an hour until I got to a police checkpoint. There I was stopped again, my passport checked again and they wanted to know where I was going. I was then told I would be escorted to Al Minah. It was around lunch time so I told them I would need to eat and then I would go. The police followed me to a cafe, sat inside and waited for me to finish then it was back on the road.

This is the police van escorting me. 

After around15km the police stopped and I was then handed off to another set of police. This time I had to put my bike in the back of the van (its a Toyota Hilux with a canopy).
This is the view out the back.

It was all a bit surreal. Im sitting in the back of an Egyptian police van there is a Beretta sub machine gun at my feet and a bullet proof vest on the seat next to me. The friendly policeman is busy telling me in broken English about his friend who has 4 wives and how he doesn't like one of them.

We drive for about 15 minutes then we stop at another Police check point. I get out as they want to see my passport again and I see a large Egyptian man wearing a balaclava and carrying an AK-47 start walking towards me. He seems to be the man in charge and we go though the passport/visa/where are you going again. Then its back in the van for the final stretch into Al Minah. We arrive at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the town where I am told to get out again. The man in the balaclava tells me that I will be escorted to a hotel and that I am to report to the police station in the morning before I go anywhere.
So I follow a police van into town and to the hotel.

The view over the Nile from my police recommended hotel.

The next day I head down to the police station as requested. Today would need to a rest day as the Egyptian police are well known for their bureaucracy and brutality so I thought this might take a while and that I must be very polite.

I went in, told them why I was here and I was put into an office with a guy sitting behind a desk with 2 mobile phones in front of him. He was dressed in plain clothes so I wasn't really sure who he was. I went through the story again of why I was here and he told me to wait.

Various other people came in and out and asked my who I was and why I was here. Some in uniforms, others in plain clothes with hand guns stuffed down the back of their trousers.

The man behind the desk got all my details, filled out some forms, made some calls and then sent someone to the hotel to check that I did have a bicycle and my story checked out.

We talked about my plans, drank some tea and it was suggested that it would be best if I took the train to Luxor. After 3 hours I was allowed to leave. So I went to the train station and got a ticket for the next day.

After arriving in Luxor I took a few days rest again and decided to get back on the train again to Aswan. I had to wait again in Aswan to get a visa for Sudan and then wait for the ferry to Wadi Haifa.
 
I have very mixed feeling about having to take the train and Egypt in general so that's why its taken me so long to write about it - well that and Karthoum is the first place in Sudan that has Internet.

I don't think that I was in any danger on the bike but in reality I have no way of knowing if it was dangerous or not. Its pretty easy to bundle a cyclist into the back of a car and drive off without anyone ever knowing so I guess that taking the train was the right thing to do.

I have read of of other cyclists who have been escorted by the police across Egypt so maybe I could have done that, but I didn't enjoy my time being followed by the police anyway. The police are hated in Egypt for very good reason's and spending time with them made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

There was always going to be parts of Africa that I couldn't bike but I didn't think it was going to be in Egypt. The whole experience was pretty disappointing and it lead me to question what I was doing here. Was biking across Europe enough already? Was it safe to doing this? Can I do this? Should I carry on?

Waiting in Aswan gave me time to think about all these things and what I came up with was this. I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't finish this ride and oddly the famous Steve Hansen (All Black coach) quote "flush the dunny and move on" seemed to sum up the situation perfectly. 
 
Egypt had been shit but the friendliest country in Africa was next - Sudan