42: Kerma to Aswan (Sudan/Egypt)

Kerma Images Here:

Soleb Images Here

Sai Island Images Here:

Abri Images Here

Week 42 Update:

Kerma, Wawa, Sai Island, Abri, Wadi Halfa, Aswan

Day 289:

It was a very, very cold Friday morning in the desert. We woke up with the sun but collectively decided not to brave the outside world before the sand got a little warmer. When we did get up an hour later there were even a few birds around. They were sitting on the granite outcrops fluffing their feathers and communicating with their fellow winged friends. The clock read 8:30, but being a Friday, it was obviously Sudanese Sunday and we were, once again not in any great hurry to leave. It almost seemed like we had intentionally slowed our rate of travel.

While sitting on the desert rug in the warming morning sun we reflected about our time in that fantastically friendly and hospitable country. It took us all a week to reach to capitol, to sort out our paperwork and to start heading north again. Since then we had managed to visit a vastly different and spectacularly impressive ancient site every day. We had however also travelled every day and I was getting ready for a day off. On the other hand, the weekly ferry from Wadi Halfa to Aswan was the thing that kept us moving on. We had a fair amount of sites to see and a limited amount of time to see them in…

Despite our “schedule” we still only left our comfortable hiding place in between the granite rocks just before mid day. We forged a route through the desert to a point on the map marked as “rock engravings”. The route required some pretty fancy off road driving and the 4 wheel drive gearbox was definitely needed. We bounced over sand dunes and passed through rocky hills for about twenty minutes before we saw a massive truck pass us by at great speed. It was about 200m away from us and obviously driving on a spectacularly smooth and brand new tar road… So we headed in that direction.

The rock engravings were however not right next to the new shiny tar road. We found them about 4km closer to the river and I could not actually believe that there was no fence, no ticket office, no walk ways and no signs telling us what was not allowed. We parked up right next to a hill consisting of massive boulders and started clambering all over them. Everywhere you looked you could see figures carved into the ancient rock. There were bulls and camels and giraffes and even a lion. They were perfectly clear and incredibly obvious and even though they were right next to the road, we all felt as if we were the first modern people to discover them. The area we covered was probably about half a hectare big and I would guess the amount of individual engravings at well over 500. The two that I found most interesting were one of a man holding two crosses high up in the air and another of a man on horseback with a spear and a shield.

After our somewhat exhausting and appetite enhancing morning we decided to venture into the nearby village in search of fresh bread. We had also depleted our washing and cleaning water supply and had to fill those containers before the day was out. I found the familiar clay pots at the communal drinking whole and spotted the tap and hose pipe. Andrew and Lucy went in search of sustenance while Catt and I were in charge of water supply. A few young men came around to have a chat and see what we were doing. They also refused to believe that I was from South Africa as I was white and I actually had to show them the Arabic translation in my passport before they believed me. Even then they quizzed me about where I was born and where my family was from. It was amazing! It was as if the decades of South African apartheid was something they no one in Sudan had ever heard of. Then again, they did have their north/south and Darfur issues to deal with at the time.

With a full supply of water we headed to where we could see our friends standing. They were at a structure we thought was a bus stop, next to the village mosque. When we arrived we were promptly introduced by the village elder who could speak a little English. Without any hesitation of any form he beckoned us to sit down on their desert rug in the shade. The bread we had wanted to buy arrived within a minute but as we got up to leave he stopped us. I was still trying to understand reason for the delay when a massive tray of food arrived. It was lunch time, and we were simply not allowed to leave without eating first. So there we were four pale faced travellers in the Nubian land, hosted by people who owned pathetically little compared to us. We feasted on Fuul and bread, fresh salad and amazing Feta cheese. We were served coffee with sugar and milk and washed our hands before and after the feast in water that they carried in metal bowls. We chatted amongst each other and took some photos of the people in the village. When the plates were empty, the coffee done and our bellies full to explosion point we thanked our hosts and got up. I dug into my pocket and produced my wallet and asked the elder if I could contribute something towards the meal. He quickly pulled me aside and told me to put my money away. He then explained that it was “their pleasure” and that we “were welcome” and “guests” and therefore it would be rude of me to insist on paying money.

We piled back into Maggie after our fantastic Sunday (Friday) lunch and started the engine while waving a fond good bye to our brilliant hosts. I selected first gear and as I pulled away the old man stopped me once again. He directed me along the main track through the village and told me to turn left at a certain rock. He explained that there was a big hill and that it was his land. He also said that I could drive to the top of the hill and have the best possible view of the 3rd Cataract in the Nile. So we went straight there. We found out that there were 6 cataracts in the Nile in Sudan. They were little more than rapids in the wide river, but obviously added a little excitement to the mundane task of the water flowing steadily towards the Mediterranean. The old man wasn’t mistaken either. We drove Maggie right to the top of the hill and had a perfect bird’s eye view of the river, and the rapid from there. We walked around the crest and took some photos and almost decided just to hang out there for the rest of the day. Beyond the river you could see massive Date Palm Groves with reddish sand dunes beyond them. On our side there was some grass growing in the shade o9f some trees and the village that we were hosted in was only a stones through away. It was incredibly peaceful and fantastically beautiful.

Our journey took us ever north and to the town of Delgo where we were told we could catch a ferry to the western side of the river. We did not manage to avoid the new tar road for long and the 80km trip took us less than an hour. Delgo was a dusty, deserted town on the Nile that day. The typical Nubian houses stood side by side with closed colourful doors, but we did not see a single other person on the streets. We found the place where the ferry was supposed to be on the edge of the ghost town. It was totally deserted. There was a ten meter sheer drop to the water and not a single water faring vessel in sight. We did find one other man tending to his palm groves and when I asked him about the “bontoon” (Ferry) he pointed downstream and said something about “Kgamsa” (Five). Not knowing whether he meant 5 minutes walk, five minutes drive or even five kilometres away we gave up on that idea and ventures on to the next town. That was called Wawa and we had a phone number of a man who could ferry us to the doorstep of our point of interest on the western bank. That point of interest took the form of an ancient temple by the name of Soleb.

Finding the town was easy as always and finding the point on the GPS indicating the “ferry point” was as simple. It was however a bus station and nowhere near the water, so we were understandably confused. It didn’t take too long for a local to find us and even though it was Friday a man appeared on a tractor, claiming to be our contact’s brother. He asked us if we wanted to cross the Nile and it took a real combined effort to explain that we wanted to see the temple in the early hours of the next day. His son, a young man looking about mid twenty could speak some English and we even managed to establish a meeting time for the next day. What we did not manage to sort out was the price as the owner of the boat was busy drinking tea… which lasted longer than the half an hour we waited for him.

The sun was getting lower and lower at the time so we decided to fix a price at the pre determined time the next day and headed out of town to find a place to sleep. It was no longer done in a stealth kind of way. We had established that overloading a car was absolutely no problem at all and we also manage to find out that camping in the desert was more than acceptable and done by most locals as well as travellers. So all we did was hop over the brand new tar road and chose a straight line into the sandy deserts. We carried on driving until we could not see the town any longer, found a slight rise in the very flat surroundings and parked up.

We pitched camp, set up the shower and after washing the dust of the day off our bodies we watched the sunset. It was insane! The horizon burned blood red as the sun disappeared behind it and the wispy clouds high up in the sky turned a pastel pink as the last rays of light hit them. The desert sand turned an incredible array of colour, making a scene to which we could do nothing but stare. There were simply no words to describe it. It was another freeing cold night in Sudan so after feasting on another very special meal it did not take long for us to retreat to the relative warmth of our tents and sleeping bags.

Day 290:

We had agreed to meet our boatman at 8:30 that morning. That meant waking up with sunrise and in the very cold desert winds. We made some coffee and packed up camp and drove our fifteen minutes back into town to actually find our friendly transported waiting for us. As with so many things in the friendly Sudan, we were first invited to tea at his house before we could even think about travelling further.

We were ushered through a small metal door in a high wall and entered a fantastic world of Nubian courtyards and rooms leading off them. The concrete floor had an intriguing motive carved into it and the walls were a mustardy yellow colour. The contrast between the floors, walls and brilliantly blue sky was an amazing sight to behold! We walked into one room with a big table and some chairs around it and after sitting down were served piping hot and very sweet minty tea and freshly baked biscuits. The room was bizarrely warm compared to the world outside and the drinks acted like central heating to half frozen people. The ceremony took an hour and in that time we had even managed to establish a price for his services. The deal was that he would take us to the other bank and come back to get us at 17:00 in the afternoon and the total cost was about $15. That seemed pretty fair to us.

He led us to the river, about one kilometre from his house and loaded us onto a metal hull flat bottomed boat. He had two oars sticking up at the back and the familiar and the seemingly very popular Yamaha 15HP Enduro outboard motor we had seen on similar sized vessels all over Africa. The river was perfectly camp making an astonishing mirror image of its surroundings with a thin layer of mist on the cold water. The engine seemed much less keen than us to get started in the cold of the early morning, but eventually purred into life with the expert hand movements of its owner. It was only once we left the relative safety of the bank we were moored to that we realized how fast that river was actually flowing! Our transported expertly took us upstream along the east bank before making a diagonal crossing to the western side we wished to be on. The journey took a comfortable fifteen minutes to complete and with every minute that went by the price we had agreed on seemed more and more like a bargain.

On the western bank we moored up and disembarked onto a steam sandy hill. At the top we were met by our boatman’s friend, who also just happened to be the gaffer for the Soleb Ruins. He led us through a date palm grove and some vegetable plots and even through the trees we managed to catch our first glimpses of the breathtaking old temple. The closer we got the more impressive the place became with its bright yellow sand stone pillars and arches. It was quite hard to believe that it was built in the 14 century BC by an Egyptian man named Amenhoteb III, who just happened to be the same pharaoh who was behind the building of the famous Luxor in Egypt.

Once again there were n fences, no signs telling you what not to do and most importantly, no a single other tourist in sight. The place was eerily deserted offering us the privileged opportunity to circumnavigate it in the early morning sun. We inspected the massive pillars and what seemed to be the central courtyard from a distance, taking photographs at every angle and theorising about the purpose of all the places we thought to be rooms. We moved in concentric circles and by the third pass we had made it to the centre. That was also the time the gaffer got bored and told us to meet him and our boatman at his house when we are done with our exploration. I stood in the centre of the centre room, staring up at the perfectly clear blue sky and marvelling about the efforts it had to take to erect even one of the seven fifteen meter high pillars surrounding me. As if on cue a Peregrine Falcon landed on the highest one, looked at me with some astonishment for while and then simply took off again. If I believed in reincarnation, that could have been a very spooky experience indeed!

On closer inspection of the pillars I started noticing the ancient carvings as well. Our old friend Amun was there with his lady friend and there were hieroglyphics of birds and bulls and an owl. We saw snakes and geckos and all kinds of inexplicable signage and the closer we looked, the more we found. That place had to be simply out of this world when it was built and inhabited! We found the head of a Lion on a pillar that was buried deep into the sand and we found soldiers names carved into the soft stone that was dated around 1881. It seemed you even had vandalous idiots then! Every time we thought we had seen it all one of us would discover something new and interesting and call the rest over. It took another hour before we deemed our visit complete and by that time our friendly hosts also seemed to have had enough tea. The boatman told us he would pick us up later and the gaffer invited us to breakfast (of course) and said he would show us some tombs that were not really open to tourists… just because he liked us.

A very quick pow-wow established that we did not need more than another hour on the western side and we asked the boatman to wait for us instead. He seemed pleased at the idea of more tea, so led us back to his friend’s house. The house was typical Nubian with the colourful wall and small gate into the property. It had the familiar courtyards and sitting areas and the proud owner even told us that he had chairs for foreigners who did not seem to grasp the concept of relaxing on a bed instead. The term he used for “lounging on a bed” actually translated to “elbowing” and sounded pretty comfortable, so I had instant on lessons while drowning my next hit of insanely sweet minty tea.

True to his word, after tea and after us declining his breakfast invitation at mid morning, he showed us the secret tombs. It was about a two kilometre walk straight into the desert and I thought it would have been easy to drive right by them without noticing what they were. We could see the caves into the ground which were the tombs themselves and it was very clear to see the footprints of the pyramids that used to mark them. A very sad phenomenon about Sudan showed itself again though. They did not seem to have a single rubbish bin or skip or land fill site in the country. It seemed that everyone just simply discarded their litter outside of their houses. That meant that every village with electricity turned into a rubbish dump and all villages without seemed slightly cleaner, but still had plastic bags blown against the walls. The tombs in the middle of the desert where we were had obviously been used to discard large quantities of plastic as well. I asked our guide about it and he simply shrugged and said something about the tombs being plundered centuries before. They were not Muslim graves after all and he really did not seem to find the slightest thing wrong with turning them into rubbish heaps. I found it all a little sad.

We walked back towards the ruins and as we approached we saw villagers passing by, simply going about their daily lives. It was kind of strange to think that normal people lived so close to something that incredibly spectacular and just saw it as part of the landscape. Some rode their donkey carts past the entrance while others simply walked the straight line through the middle to the other side. It was as if that ancient temple of an ancient God was nothing more than a row of trees or a rocky hill. Our boatman and his friend were no different either. They walked right through the middle of everything and out the other side towards the place we had left the boat. Andrew and I lingered at the back and found another Lion statue buried deep into the ground. It struck me that the temple was originally built to be seen from the Nile, yet the way we saw it a large amount of centuries later, the entrance looked like it was on the desert side. The view from the middle of the palm grove was something else though. Without seeing the finer detail of the collapsing pillars and buried Lions we could clearly see how spectacular the place would have been for the unsuspecting traveller who just happened to be floating down the Nile on his Felucca. (Dhow like sailing boat)

Our return trip was slightly more interesting in our little metal boat. The wind had come out to play and the river had some fairly serious waves on it. We had also acquired a new passenger. He was a very skinny but very tall man with a smile to match his show size. He spoke no English, but somehow we managed to communicate with him. He explained that we could not cross the river in a straight line as the waves would capsize our measly vessel. Instead we had to go downstream and into wind for about a kilometre and then turn down upstream and down wind at a slight angle to make it safely to our mooring. The small outboard engine was just enough to manage this expertly made manoeuvre and the boatman was visibly relived when we tied the boat to the eastern bank and got off one at a time. We walked back to the car where we paid him his dues and before we could actually get into Maggie we were all invited to lunch at his house. That included our new very tall friend.

Anyone who had travelled Sudan will know that it is not really possible to refuse n invitation for food, so we filed back into the mustard yellow house and into the comfortable room with chairs and beds. I “elbowed”, showing off my newly acquired skill and the rest of my clan lazed around in a similar fashion. It had been a very cold day for some reason and even though it was past mid day, the mercury still pushed no higher than the mid teens. The dining room was out the wind and comfortably warm and when the food arrived it warmed up even more. I had to laugh out loud at that point. Lunch was served on a massive round silver platter and consisted of no less than five different dishes.

We had Fuul and cheese and salad and bread and some chilly concoction mixed with an aubergine paste and a massive pot of mint tea to wash it all down with. It seemed like the etiquette was for the host to eat with us and our new tall friend joined in as well. We feasted until we could eat no more and even then the bowls had enough food left on them to feed another two or three people. It was amazing to share such a basic but insanely tasty meal with people we had met that day and whose language we could not speak. Yet, somehow, as with so many other people in Sudan we managed to communicate and hold a simple conversation by using “shukran” (Thank you) and “mumpkin” possible as our two basic words.

It was mid afternoon by the time we managed to tear ourselves away from the friendly yellow house. Even that was after we had to humbly decline an invitation to spend the night. I put that invitation down to my newly acquired skill of expert elbowing. Still, we had other places to see and other people to meet, so the time to move on had arrived. We filed back into the front seats of Maggie, fired up the engine and drove out of town waving at old men and small children alike. Even the village dog came out to say good bye and once again it felt like we were leaving behind old friends. It was a truly magnificent place with truly fantastic people inhabiting it. Continuing the spirit of adventure we worked very hard at avoiding the new tar road and meandered through villages along the river and in between the palm groves until we reached a point where we believed another ferry would be found.

That time we did find the ferry. It was 10km south of the town of Abri and the “bontoon” (Boat) in question was the only link between the mainland and the island of Sai. We just happened to get onto the last ferry for the day as well and we made it in the nick of time! We nestled Maggie in between two local Toyota pick ups which took all my driving skill and the expert directions of Catt and Andrew. I climbed out the driver side window as there was simply no way to open a door. When I looked back at my handiwork I saw that there was at least two centimetres spare on each side of us. Saying that, we did have to fold back the wing mirrors of all three vehicles to make it work. Through all that we were trying very hard to find out what the cost of our little island adventure was going to be, but failed miserably. We knew that there was a normal fee of SDG 20 per person to see the sites on the island, but no one could tell us the price of the ferry.

The ride was no longer than five minutes and we were the first to get off. We asked where to go and where to park and everyone was immensely helpful with advice and directions. I started Maggie up and drove off the barge, up the steep hill and parked off the road. We walked back to the barge, but no one was really interested in us. We found the gaffer and paid the fee for the island, but even he could not tell us what the cost for the ferry was, so we just left… and no one seemed to care in the slightest.

It was still pretty cold and the day was drawing to a close. None of us were really in the mood for site seeing and we really just wanted to find a place to sleep for the night. We decided to follow the one road we could see around the island to look for a suitable hiding place from the wind and cold. That road took us around the island and right past an old mud brick structure which we thought looked like a fort. So we stopped and hopped out and went to investigate. Within a few minutes we were discovered by an elderly man and his adult son. They indicated that we should follow them and they pretty much took us on a tour of the facilities. They didn’t seem to know anything about it, and besides, we could not understand each other, but they also seemed to take great pleasure in leading us around. When the tour was done we thanked them and waved them good bye, but the old man frowned and said “chai” (Tea) and insisted that we follow him again. He led us into a house which did not seem to belong to him. He introduced us to the owners as best he could and beckoned us to “elbow” down on the provided beds. We met the wife and children and eve the grandmother came by to greet us. We were served sweet mint tea with freshly bakes biscuits and I was seriously starting to worry about our sugar consumption for the day.

While we elbowing away on the simple beds it seemed like the whole village came by to say hello. Woman with small children greeted us by hand and men walked past with friendly faces, offering us more food and more tea. The elderly found us fascinating to look at and talk to and the smallest children seemed to find us quite scary. I did wonder how many visitors they actually had every year, but there was just no way of asking. With our fill of tea inside our bodies we gracefully declined another invitation to stay the night and explained that we simply loved camping in the desert. The oldest man seemed to know exactly what I was talking about and pointed to a hill not so far away. What I understood was that we could find a place there to hide from the wind with soft sand underfoot, so we headed in that direction.

We found that place with relative ease. It was a small valley in between two rocky hills with an old river bed providing comfortable ground to sleep on. Maggie was parked perfectly level, our friends pitched their tent on the soft sand and after rolling out the desert rug we had a cosy and perfectly wind still room in the open. We could not see another person or signs of other people from where we were and even managed to have a shower in the open air before the sun went down. When sunset finally occurred though, it was phenomenal! The sun was perfectly round and blood red and the sky a pale and perfect blue around it. The familiar wispy clouds were lit up pink and the moon, growing in size, was rising at the same time the sun was setting. It was the kind of desert sunsets poets would get famous for writing about and we could just be there. We could just exist in that place with its hospitable and incredibly generous people and we could sleep in their desert and were absolutely safe and very welcome.

Day 291:

It was Khawaja Sunday and we treated it like one. We woke up late on our Island paradise and moved no where fast in no particular hurry. The sun was baking on the tents before we crawled out of them and by then the sand and the desert rug were warming up nicely. We brewed some coffee and chatted away the morning hours until it really was time to get a move on. We packed up camp and headed out of our hide away, driving back to the ferry and past the big mud brick fort ruin. We had not really planned on stopping there as the site looked fairly small and insignificant when we drove past the previous day. However, on our Sunday saw some archaeologists hard at work and decided to investigate.

We were met by a French man called Vincent at the edge of the site. He was friendly and accommodating and I think quite surprised that we showed some interest. He explained that they were excavating an ancient cemetery. They had one month every year for the dig and he had a team of people who were working on the data that they managed to retrieve. There were boxes of skeletons on the edges of tombs but he explained that they were not old enough to be of interest. Apparently the Nubian people re-used graves and the remains they had recovered were of either grave robbers or later families who had decided to use the layers of earth above their ancient forefathers. We chatted to him about our experiences in Sudan and how we had found Kawa hidden below the surface. We impressed him by knowing that Kawa was excavated in the 1930’s and he explained that he and his colleges had a habit of burying their works in Sudan. Apparently that was the most effective and cheapest way to actually preserve the sites. I asked about Soleb which we found to interesting and so incredibly exposed and he simply said that it would not last another century unless someone did something to preserve it. That seemed quite sad, but he also added that the Lions we saw were standing on three meter high pillars which had been excavated before, but reburied to preserve. We chatted about the Meroe pyramids which we loved to see in amongst the dunes and the colourful sand. He told us that when that was built the area would have been completely flat, as other cemeteries in the ancient world were. We never really considered that when we were there, but it made sense. We told him how impressed we had been with all the sites we had seen and especially as they all seemed really different from each other. There he had to agree and as he gave us a guided tour of his dig he explained a little bit of the Nubian history which was far more advanced than what my brain could retain. He was a passionate man and we wished him all the best as we walked away and drove on to the next site.

Site number two was much closer to the Nile and there we were met by an elderly French lady. She took a few minutes to establish that we were independent travellers and not archaeologists or grave robbers. She warmed to us instantly and gave us another lesson in ancient history. She explained how the pharaohs of Egypt came down the Nile and fought the Nubians for the border land, which we happened to be standing on. She pointed at the ancient mud fort and told us that it was built on an even older temple, which they were trying to excavate. From our close up vantage point the place was much more impressive and ten times the size of what we had though the day before. We had a walk around and marvelled at the quality of the ancient carvings in the walls and the absolute precision of the building styles of the fort. We found clay pots and reminisce of pillars and even saw the top of the temple the French lady was so excited about. I could clearly see why the ancients would have chosen that spot. It was on a bend in the river and high on a rise. It offered vantage points in all directions and was in idyllically beautiful surroundings.

We left the stunning site after a thorough investigation and fantastically educational chat to the people studying it and drove back to where the ferry was. We find the old blue boat tied up to the bank and only one other person in sight… the man who sold us some chillies the day before. He shook his head and said “Sunday” and “No ferry” but I was sceptical. Besides, Friday was Sunday in Sudan and Sunday was just another working day. However he was adamant. He told us that he would phone the captain to take us to the other side, but it would cost us a little “baksheesh” to get him from his bed to his job. I was very sceptical then! As far as we understood the ferry left every two hours and we had about half an hour to wait, so we decided to whip up some lunch and hang out in the shade of the big Mango tree while we wait.

14:00 came and 14:00 went and by 14:30 we had to admit that the man asking for baksheesh was perhaps not just there to take money of us for no reason at all. We asked him to phone the captain and I insisted that it would be a private ferry if we had to pay extra. The captain arrived Shorty after the phone call was made. He made a spectacular entrance on the back of a galloping mule dressed in bright orange overhauls and a black and white head scarf. He had a big smile with missing teeth and was eagle to help despite the day the week. We parked Maggie on the deck as he fired up the engine and sailed over the smooth rive Nile. He did come to collect his fee before docking on the other side though. Keeping in mind that we never paid for the trip to the island, I handed over a very precise SDG 52.50 which included his SDG 30 extra. That all equated to $17.50 to get the four of us and Maggie to and from the island, which we thought was fair enough. The captain expertly docked us on the muddy bank where we needed to be and we waved a strangely fond good bye to him and the island as we drove up the dusty bank and into the mangroves.

We were a little confused as to whether we found ourselves on a day where people worked or not. As we meandered through the dusty tracks and the villages on the banks of the River we saw very few people indeed, but it was in the afternoon and it was windy outside. It could have meant nothing more than people were hiding from the weather. We managed to successfully avoid the tar road all the way to the town of Abri where we found the bus station as the most suitable place to park Maggie while we explored. It was on the very edge of the souk (Market) which meant that we could start our new adventure with some ghawa (coffee). We were still locking the car when a youngish man approached us and welcomed us to his village. He seemed really keen to help us with anything we wanted so I asked for the most difficult thing I could think of.

Our MSR stove was absolutely filthy from the paraffin we had used for the preceding 10 months and the best way I could think of cleaning it was with carburettor cleaner. I asked our new friend if he knew what a carburettor was and when we said he did I explained that I was after something that came in an aerosol can that was used to clean them. “Ah, carburettor cleaner” he said and led me to a shop a few blocks away where I managed to buy some. I was impressed! On the way back to where we had left the others I invited him to coffee, which he accepted instantly. He showed us to the best ghawa shop in town and while we drank the sweet dark blend he started smoking some tobacco from a one meter high shisha (water) pipe.

His name was Magzoub and he seemed to the self appointed Mr tourism in the dusty settlement on the Nile. He told us that he used to work in tourism in Khartoum, but decided to return to his native village to start a traditional Nubian guest house. We knew there were only one hotel in town and a very dirty and scummy one at that, so the market was obviously screaming for competition. What we did not know was that the Chinese were building a new bridge over the river some 50km north of Abri. That, according to Magzoub was to link the road from Abu Simbel in Egypt to Abri in his beloved Sudan. He was really excited about that prospect and told us it would void the necessity for the dreaded ferry over Lake Nasser which we still had to use to link the two neighbouring countries. I listened intently at the times and dates that he described and did not have the heart to tell him that I read a newspaper article two years before promising the completion of that bridge in 2009.

After we had our fill of ghawa and Magzoub had finished smoking his pipe he asked us where we were staying for the night. I answered with my standard “we like finding a quiet place in the desert” routine but he would have nothing of it. He asked if we had a tent and we said that we did he simply invited us to camp on his land. He walked us through the market to the river bank and showed us the place where his guest house was scheduled to be. It was a perfect location with fantastic views of the river and the beautiful sand dunes of the desert on the opposite side. I wished him all the best of luck with his project, but also explained that it was very windy there and quite busy, so not really suitable for our needs. His answer was simple: “I’ll take you top my fathers land” he said. We followed the piper through the village and past his own date palm fields to a ruined house right on the water. He explained that that house was built by his father’s grandfather and was more than 300 years old. It was mud brick and the foundations were still perfectly sound. Most of the walls were still standing strong and it really only needed a roof to be restored to an inhabitable palace on the Nile. He seemed to have no interest in that site, apart from offering it to us for a camping place. It was perfect! We tucked Maggie into a corner where there was not a breath of wind. Our friends found a patch of soft sand to pitch their tent and we had the perfect position for our desert rug, table and chairs. Hi mother came by to greet us and she assured us that we had not a thing to worry about. She was an elderly lady with a humped back, but in her eyes you could see the authority that she exuded was absolute.

The last hours of the day was spent relaxing by the river and purifying some water. It was nice to be able to use the equipment we had carried all that way and it was astonishing to see how the muddy brown Nile water turned into crystal clear and pure drinking water right before our eyes. We “Cobbed” our very last supply of pork chops for dinner with a magical amount of fresh vegetables from the market and actually enjoyed sitting out in the open, but out of the freezing cold wind.

Day 292:

Magzoub found us after 9:00 in our little secluded camp. His mother obviously let it be known that we were protected by her as we did not have a single other visitor in the time we spent there. First he was confused about the late hour we got up, but also understood that we were hiding from the cold. We walked back to the market where he informed his fellow countrymen that we were his guests and had to be treated as such. We had some breakfast and ghawa by the gallon before Catt and Lucy went off on a tour of the local medical facility.

We were all reunited my mid morning and our fabulous host recommended a place for an early lunch. We ordered our usual plates of Fuul and bread and with all that dealt with it was time for Catt and I to hit the road. Our friends were staying behind as they had no real reason to reach Wadi Halfa early. We on the other hand had to meet Mr Magdi, our Sudanese fixer to help with all things customs related. This time we did not try to avoid the magical new tar road. People used to take two days to drive from Abri to Wadi Halfa on horribly corrugated desert tracks. We took two and a half hours without driving fast. The desert changed face from sand dunes to rocky mountains and I actually started wishing that we had more time in Sudan. I started thinking about the other things that I wanted to do and see in the country and started day dreaming about our next visit to the land. We had still not heard any news about the referendum we were scared about and we had still not seen any change in the place with its breathtaking landscapes and warm hearted hospitality. My day dreaming took me to an older age of a retired photographer/writer living out his days in a traditional Nubian house on the banks of the Nile. I liked that image a lot!

In Wadi Halfa town we found the house belonging to our Mr Magdi with the help of some GPS co ordinates. It was predictably traditional and in a very quiet part of town, but no one was home. I got hold of him by phone and made an appointment to see him at his office the next morning. We decided to drive into the centre of town to check out accommodations and found the Kilopatra Hotel. (No, that’s not a typo) The place was a square concrete building with rooms leading onto the street, but I really did not like the feel of it. Instead we headed back out of town in search of a desert hideaway for two.

We managed that without any problem… The desert was quite vast and empty and we tucked Maggie in behind a low sandy ridge and out of the wind. We pitched camp and had a fantastically satisfying outdoor shower in the warm afternoon sun. With wasteful bliss we used the whole 20l drum of water on ourselves and felt wonderful! The day was not over yet though. We pulled our backpacks from their dusty hiding place in the car and packed them for our onward journey. We had a probably five days without Maggie and had to be prepared. We emptied the fridge and freezer, turned it off and started cleaning that before pitching the rest of camp and tending to dinner.

I had saved one beef fillet for that night and it was mouth watering! It was incredibly tender and had aged really well in the 8 weeks since we bought it in Nairobi. We had two potatoes each and a mountain of vegetables to try and deplete our stores, which was no easy task! The desert seemed kind to us that night. It seemed warmer than it had been the week before and the wind even subsided as the night grew longer, but we went to bed fairly early regardless.

Day 293:

Meeting Magdi at 8:30 in town meant getting up early. The alarm woke us at 7:30 and the sun was just trying to peak over the far away sand dunes. The ripples on the sand around Maggie were pink in the early morning light and the wind was totally gone. It was cold, but not as cold as we had expected it to be. We packed up camp and drove back to town, coffee in hand. We reached the office of Mr Magdi with perfect timing and were welcomed by a young, confident man. It took a very short discussion to establish the fees we had to pay to leave Sudan. There was the obvious fees for the ferry and the barge for Maggie and a set fee for departure tax totalling $441. I asked Magdi about his fee and he said the standard was $30, which I thought was acceptable, so we made our bargain.

The man shot into action immediately! He handed us some forms to fill in and disappeared with our passports for about ten minutes. On his return he explained that he had our first immigration stamps done already and had booked our ferry tickets for second class as requested. He took our Carnet and said that he would deal with that the same day and invited us back to his house for breakfast. That sounded like a great idea! However, we had agreed to meet Andrew and Lucy when their bus arrived at 11:00… or something like that. I explained that to our fixer man who simply told me to invite them back to his house as well. He would just not take “no” for answer, so the three of us piles into Maggie’s front and drove back to the Nubian wall surrounding his humble dwelling.

He introduced us to his wife and said that they had been married for 4 days. She couldn’t speak much English, but had a beautiful smile to welcome us into her new home. He wedding Henna was still perfect and breathtakingly impressive to see. Catt made a comment about it and saw her blush slightly, but she was obviously pleased by our appreciation of the art. We sat around a table and got served a massive plate of traditional food with coffee and tea and freshly squeezed orange juice. With stomachs so full that we could hardly move Magdi showed us to a room with three beds and a TV and simply said: “You sleep here tonight”. It was hard to argue.

To return some kindness I drove him back to his office for a meeting and after paying SDG 1 at the local cell phone shop for one day’s unlimited internet access on a 3G card and actually finding our two friends by the bus station, I drove back to the house.; Magdi’s instruction was to “rest” until 15:00 when he was planning to be home again.

Andrew and Lucy found it hard to believe that they were also invited to the house. As soon as we walked in though, the lady of the castle brought us more fresh juice, followed by more tea and enough biscuits to sink an average battle ship. Magdi came home at 15:00 as he had said and within minutes another mountain of food arrived for us to feast on. Once again it was evident that the man of the house ate with the guests. The platter had the usual brown beans and vegetables on with a plate of cheese and a whole roast chicken on it. There was more bread than we could finish and the tea just kept on coming!

As the sun disappeared behind the furthest dunes, Magdi came into our little room once again and handed over the required forms for Andrew and Lucy. He gave back our Carnet with all the correct stamps for exciting the country and bade us a restful night. We carried a 4th bed from a courtyard into the room and “elbowed” our way though conversations until our eyelids became so heavy that we fell asleep.

Day 294:

There we no alarms to wake us that morning. We were to get to the ferry port at 13:30 that afternoon and didn’t really have that much to tend to in the morning. That was, to be fair, mostly due to the fact that Magdi had all our paperwork done and under control. It was after 8:00 before the first of us ventured outside and within ten minutes the first flask of coffee arrived in the room. Magdi’s wife had it all worked out! She fed us breakfast and showed us the shower, indicating that we could use it freely. It was like being a guest in a boutique hotel and we did not really know how much it would cost us, but did not really care. It had been a brilliant cultural experience and we would not have had that opportunity in any other place we had been.

We managed to empty our fridge at last and we cooked all the food that we could for the ferry ride. We filled our water bottles and locked everything we could in the compartments we had in the car. We left our phenomenal host with a bad of tomatoes and chillies we could not fit in and judges by her smile that it was the correct thing to do. It was 13:20 by the time we had packed everything we needed onto Maggie’s roof, filed into the front row and headed towards town. Magdi’s office was empty and when I phoned him he said he was waiting for us at the ferry port.

It was a little strange to arrive at the police post with four people sitting on two seats, but they did not seem to care in the least. They checked the paperwork that Magdi had in his hand and let us pass. We parked at the immigration building to offload our friends who were also led to the right place by our fixer. Catt and I followed another car right to the dock and walked back into the big building to start procedures. I was already dreading the afternoon and could see much hardship ahead of us.

However, I could not have been more wrong. Magdi gave us all one more piece of paper to fill in before marching us off to the security counter. Our passports were checked and Andrew and Lucy who had over stayed their visa by three days sailed though the securitization as quickly as we did. We got our exit stamps within twenty minutes and followed our local hero to the car. We saw a Korean cyclist who was not so lucky. He had not done the immigration checks in town and had to return there to get the correct forms. The poor man had no local money left and asked if we could help. I was in the process of opening my wallet when Magdi produced SDG 10 and sent him on his way with instruction. He did not ask for payment and did not propose to help the guy any more than sponsoring his taxi fare. It was incredible to see that kind of generosity at work! By Maggie’s side the customs guy checked out our chassis number and instead of searching the inside of the car he told me stories about how bad alcohol and loose woman were. It was all a little strange and I could not help but ask him if he was talking from experience. Luckily he saw the humour in my statement and laughed from the deepest parts of his belly before wishing us safe travels and sending us on our way.

We needed two vessels to get to Egypt. The passenger ferry was the one we were on, but Maggie had to go on a cargo barge. The latter was not in port yet, so I had to leave a set of keys behind for Magdi to drive her onto the barge the next morning. I wasn’t too pleased with that outcome, but also not unprepared for it. Hundreds of travellers before us had had the same problem and had used the same solution. I still made a show of writing down the mileage on the odometer and double checking all the padlocks on all the stowage boxes. There was really nothing that could disappear without forceful entry. It still felt wrong to leave her standing on the dock while we walked off.

I couldn’t believe it though! There we were, walking towards the ferry to Aswan with all our paperwork done. It was easy and comfortable and made totally effortless by a man with knowledge and friends who only cost us $30. In fact, by that time we had not handed over a single penny yet and Magdi simply told us that he would walk us onto the ferry and show us a comfortable place to sit. That was another thing we had heard nightmare stories about. The ferry was said to be so full all the time that you did not even have space to sit on the deck. We heard horror stories about the ablution facilities and were told the food was absolutely disgusting, hence our passion for pre cooking our own. I felt confident that we were well prepared and we marched onto the 2nd class deck three hours before departure, so I also thought that we would be able to choose our space well.

When we arrived on deck we were the only people there. We met John, a cyclist from Britain and Hesham, a photographer from Cairo after a while, but the boat seemed quite deserted. Catt and I strung up our hammocks and made ourselves totally comfortable, blocking off a corner out of the wind. Magdi complemented us on our choice of location while we concluded our business transaction. We paid him the agreed fee and when we asked if we could pay something towards the accommodation and the food his lovely wife prepared for us he waved his hand and simply said “you were welcome in my home”. Andrew and Lucy, whose immigration forms were also handles by him, did not even have to pay a fee. He explained that he was paid by us to help with customs and our friends were no extra work for him. What a fantastically refreshingly outlook on life he had!

While sitting in dock waiting for the last people to load their goods and their families onto the boat I started having flashbacks of the Ilala in Malawi. The boat was simi8lar in size, but never designed as a steamer. It had massive diesel engines and a metal upper deck which, to our utter surprise was not filling up at all. The strangest thing was that it left within a minute of its scheduled time and even then I counted no more than 8 passengers on the entire deck. I went for a walk below decks and saw a few more in third class and a few others with cabins, trying to hide from the cold night, but could actually not believe how empty the vessel was. The captain later told us that we were 400 people on board that night and that the average was usually about 6 000.

For dinner we decided to brave the first class restaurant. We sat on leather benches and were served traditional Nubian food as we had preferred to eat all though Sudan. It was perfectly well prepared and the quantity was enough to satisfy even the hungriest of us. I really could not understand why others rated it so poorly. Then again, the people we had spoken to about the ferry had all travelled the other direction. They had probably lived off their food supply from their home countries until then and had a bit of a culture shock when served brown bean Fuul and had to eat with their hands. For us it was scrumptious feast and a very pleasant surprise. When I walked back outside I could not believe that we were actually moving! The boat was more solid in the water than anything I had experienced before and much smoother than any aircraft of vehicle that I had been in. We were travelling at a fair rate of knots and I could even see the bow wave as the hull cleft through the water of the lake. The captain even sounded the horn to let us know that we were about to pass Abu Simbel.

Although it was more than an hour after sunset the moon was almost full and the temples on the banks of Lake Nasser had a light show happening just as we sailed up to them. We saw the massive structures and looked in awe at the mountains in the laser lights and bright moon light. I knew that the structures had been moved when the lake was formed, but was still incredibly impressed by their size and shapes. Right then we decided to make the effort to drive back to them when once we were reunited with our Maggie on the Egyptian side.

The night was getting cold at that that time and we expertly avoided it by climbing into our warm sleeping bags and into our comfortable hammocks. We turned the IPod on to provide some light entertainment in the form of music and swayed a little from side to side as we fell asleep under the beautiful desert sky.

We were woken up at 23:00 by member of staff. It was apparently our turn to see the Egyptian immigration officer and he would not wait until morning. So we got up, got dressed again and marched down into the first class restaurant. There we were asked to pay $15 each for visas, which was not unexpected at all. The visa man however only had three visas left and there were 4 of us. That problem was solved fairly soon though. Apparently a South African passport holder did not require a visa and entry was free. The others got their stamps and completed their forms and I was told to wait until morning to see the other immigration officer. We were then allowed to go back to our hammocks and our warm down sleeping bags and fell asleep quickly while hiding every millimetre of our skins from exposure.

Day 295:

The first thing that woke us up was the onboard mosque. It was pitch dark, Arctically cold and apart from my one eye and half my nose I kept myself inside my warm and fluffy sleeping bag (Thanks Pete!!!) for another two hours. The deck started filling up with sleepy passengers wanting to see the sun rise over the far away Sudanese sand dunes and I became aware of the day dawning on the other side of the bulkhead we were hiding behind. It was about 8:00 when nature’s call became too loud to ignore.

We slowly got up; dressed in all the clothes we owned and went into the first class dining room. We were told that breakfast was “mumpkin” (Possible). The first round of coffees hardly touched the sides of our throats and by the time we managed to drown the second one the pretty substantial breakfast arrived. There were eggs and bread and jams and cheese and beans and chicken and salad and stuff and even the table ended up being too small for the feast. It was hard to believe that the whole of Sudan was not obese after experiencing their eating cultures. A third round of hot drinks concluded our feasting and within minutes we were asked to vacate the room. It was time for the immigration officer to spring back into action again.

When we got outside we noticed that we were actually in port. The ride had been so incredibly smooth that we never even noticed that we stopped. The sun was nice and warm reflecting of the metal deck and we packed our stuff away, eager to get onto dry land and enter a new country once again. We had heard that no one was allowed off the boat before everyone had completed their immigration procedures, so there was no real hurray.

Within an hour we started seeing people leave the ferry. Cargo was being offloaded and the masses were allowed to walk up a ramp. We were still in no hurry and I was still waiting for my passport. I walked back down to the restaurant and saw the officials at work. I did make a tentative enquiry about my travel documents, but were only told to wait some more… which I did. Another hour later I was summoned. Everyone who had managed to get their visas the night before was free to go, but I had to be interviewed again. So Andrew and Lucy and John the mad cyclist took their leave and agreed to meet us at the arrivals building to share a taxi into Aswan. I was told it would only take a few minutes to sort my paperwork out. Catt and I patiently waited in the restaurant while watching the official interview the man in front of me. He was obviously in no hurry at all! He smoked about five cigarettes every ten minutes and had that familiar air of a bully to him. He obviously loved the fact that he had somehow managed to obtain a position of power and was just not going to do the job that he was employed to do in a timely, effective or dynamic way. I took a deep breath and relaxed, knowing that the “few minutes” was not going realize.

When finally my turn came I was beckoned closer and asked to sit down. I smiled and said “salaam alykum” and got no response at all. The first question to me was “why did you not get a visa from a consulate?” and even that was asked by a translator as MR “I am unable to get respect from my fellow humans without having a shitty little governmental job”, who happened to be the man who was appointed to deal with foreigners, could only speak Arabic… I took another deep breath, trying not to choke on his stale cigarette smoke and said that I did not know what dates I would arrive in Egypt and therefore could not apply for an entrance visa before the time. I said that I was reliably informed by the immigration apartment of Egypt that I did not require a visa before hand and that I could get the relevant entry permission on the ferry. Although that was all true, my new smoking friend obviously did not like anyone who actually knew what they were talking about. He then proceeded in asking me which counties I had visited outside of my home country. He asked me about my academic qualifications and I had a really hard time explaining the principal of making a living as a skydiving instructor. I didn’t think “photographer” would go down well at all. He wrote two full pages on my information took my passport and indicated that he would go off to get the stamps and then return. We were finally done with the hour long interrogation and I obviously felt warmly welcomed to Egypt.

When I reached Catt she had already put her rucksack on her back and was ready to walk off the boat and re-unite with our friends. I shook my head and said nothing. I was not impressed! Within a few minutes the captain of the ferry kicked us out of the restaurant. He ushered us upstairs and out onto the deck. The boat had moved up the dock and was moored for another four days and they had even turned off the engines and generators rendering the inside of the ferry as dark as a cave. On the deck we joined the hand full of other “problem children” who were being bullied by the wanker in dirty uniform and were just told to wait. So we did…

Mid day came and went and I was really thankful that we had pre cooked some food the day before as the lunch hour sailed by. The sun was hot and the flies were gathering in great swarms and there was just no end to our ordeal in site. I was phoned by our fixer in Egypt, Mr Khamal and told that he would wait for us at customs, but still we were not allowed to leave the boat. I suggested that Catt try and find our friends and wait for me there, but it had been so long that we actually hoped that they had given up on us and left for town. We shared the vegetarian food that we had with a few of the passengers and handed a 5l bottle of drinking water to a family with two small children to drink. There was a policeman detailed to make sure that no one left the boat and we saw a few fairly heated arguments between him and some of the other detainees. He had a gun though, so I wasn’t getting involved.

In the end we got off the ferry at 15:00 in the afternoon. That was five and a half hours after it had made port and I could not for the life of me understand that the idiot immigration officer could possibly take that long to deal with about fifteen passports. He must have gone to tea, mosque, smoke break, toilet brake, lunch and smoke break before and after every key stroke of the computer to be able to do that. We were free at last though and walked the couple of hundred meters to the building sign posted as the “Arrivals hole” (No spelling error there). I was handed my passport with a stamp inside it and we followed the others into a room with metal detectors. I mean seriously! We had spent five and a half fucking hours on a boat within spitting distance of the building and then they decided to see if we had guns and bombs? Catt put her rucksack on the conveyer belt and as I put my down with two cameras, for lenses, a GPS and two laptops with batteries and chargers in them I took another deep breath and said “here we go…”

There were no alarms and no issue at all though and to my utter surprise the security official asked Catt to put her rucksack back on the machine. Mine was free to pass. I asked what the problem was and the man pointed at a shape on his screen asking what that was. I had no idea! It was like a big metal eye, but we could not figure it out at all. We suggested that we unpack the rucksack right there, but they were not happy with that idea at all! Eventually we could take out one thing at a time and after we ran the bag through the machine for the seventh time, taking another half an hour of our time we found the problem at last! It was the metal strong point of the hammock. So just to clarify this: My rucksack had a hammock in it and a bag full of electronics and coiled wires and even my pocket knife. Catt’s had a hammock and a razor as the only metallic things and they decided to stop her bag in the machine.

We walked the last few meters to the exit gate and were found by our fixer outside. I felt like screaming “welcome to Egypt suckers”, but managed to count to ten in Arabic instead. Mr Khamal said that Andrew and Lucy waited for us for four hours but then decided to go into town. I didn’t blame them! We got into his 1970’s Peugeot station wagon and after picking up another passenger we drove out of the port. I was not looking forward to returning there to deal with things as complex as car importation! The other passenger ended up being the head of customs in port though. He was a friendly and agreeable man who checked our Carnet and assured us that the process would be done as quickly as possible. I could feel my wallet scratching at my thigh again, but just smiled and said “shukran” (Thank you).

We actually saw our friends in another taxi on the end of town. We managed to communicate the name of the hotel we were heading to and Mr Khamal dropped us at the door with instructions to phone him the next evening for an arrival time for Maggie. We thanked him for his patience and help, waited for our friends and ascended the stairs into the reception area of the Hathor hotel. I was tired, dirty and utterly grumpy! The hotel had been recommended to us by other travellers and they did have rooms available that night. Catt and Lucy went for an inspection and returned with smiles on their faces. The rate for the rooms were 120 Egyptian Pounds (E£) a night which was about $20. They had massive double beds and piping hot showers with the first “sit down” toilets we had seen since Ethiopia. There was really no need to look any further so we checked in.

The Lonely Planet which we had fondly renamed to the “Lying Planet” wrote about a place called the sunset Bar. That was reportedly the best place to get a beer and watch the sun set over the Nile. As Sudan had been a dry country we were fairly keen on that idea, so after spending an obscene amount of time under the ridiculously hot and nice showers we decided to venture out. We walked along the river and said “La” (No) at three second intervals to people offering us boat rides and souvenirs and taxi trips and transport on horse drawn carriages. It was ridiculous how many touts they managed to fit into the small space! I could see why though. The fancy cruise ships were docked four abreast and the passengers were filing off them to “explore” all things Aswan in the late afternoon.

It took an hour’s walk to find the Sunset Bar. It was as if it was in another city all together and the “view” was of a construction site. If you stood on one corner of the property and hoisted yourself onto the fence you could just catch a glimpse of a slither of the river and the sun was totally hidden by a hill in the west. At that time we were tired and thirsty so didn’t really care too much about the view. We walked into the compound, found a table out of the wind and behind a cloth screen obscuring the construction and asked for beer. “No Alcohol here” came the reply. I pointed at the sign with the word “Bar” flashing in luminous pink and just shook my head. I would have loved to know how much they had bribed the Lying Planet to include their name in their book but out of principal we got up and walked away. We passed a five start hotel who told us that they did not serve beer to none residents and that we were not welcome in their restaurant and eventually after asking many people along the way we found the holy grail of a pub!

It was on the main street, about a three minute walk from our hotel and had a bar on the second floor. We sat in a bay window with glass so dirty that we could not see outside, but we knew the river was just beyond the noise of the road outside. The place smelled of stale smoke and spilled beer but we did not care that much. We had succeeded in finding the stuff and that was all that mattered at that point. We drank a couple of pints each with very little conversation before admitting that the place was a filthy hole which we should probably not be in. So we left…

We found a suitable restaurant where we had a fairly interesting traditional Egyptian meal. I made a mental note not to repeat that mistake as my dish consisted 90% of rice and soggy bread. It was cheap though, so I couldn’t argue too much. It was about 22:00 by the time we finally got back to our hotel and walking up the stairs I looked at my lovely wife and said “Can we go back to Sudan now please?”

If I had to do it again:

Only one thing there really: Sudan deserves much more time than what we gave it. We were a little scared of the repercussions of the referendum but knowing now that it all went off without problems in the north, I would have loved to stay another week and drive on the western side of the river.

As for leaving Sudan… Magdi was a legend and I will recommend him to anyone who has to run the gauntlet of paperwork there.