It Doesn’t Rain but it Pours – Sudan

Wadi Halfa

Upon my first step into Sudan, which had always been the most fear-inspiring country on my map, I have a major problem with my bike. The chances of finding spares is laughable and they would have to be imported, under  a regime of sanctions that will double the prices, to Khartoum which is a harsh 5 or 6 day ride from here in Wadi Halfa. And I don’t even really know what the problem is, just an intermittent loss of power. My instincts tell me it is a fuel problem, maybe dirt in the system so I set about finding an injector cleaner, some hose and fresh petrol.

Keeping the fluids flowing. The bedside table of an intrepid explorer, Wadi Halfa

All this swirls in my head through the night and as I eat my delicious fuul & tamiya breakfast, blearily surveying Wadi Halfa’s less than confidence-inspiring  shacks and rutted sandtracks.

Wadi Halfa

It’s all just a story, I tell myself, and stories have endings. After a lot of asking  I do manage to find the cleaner and hose and when I ask for a 5 litre container, a man next to me says wait here and comes back ten minutes later with one he has fetched from his house. This starts a pattern that continues throughout my time in Sudan. Complete strangers, with no ulterior motives, bend over backwards to help me and refuse all offers of payment. They rightly pride themselves on their hospitality and see a stranger as someone they are responsible for.

Fryin' up the tamiya, Wadi Halfa

Petrol is however not as freely-flowing as the goodwill. I walk to the various little petrol stations. On my way to the petrol station,  I get talking to Mahmoud, a buzzy 20-year-old geology student and his friend Omer. They are absolutely lovely and we walk along the dusty road together in the burning heat swapping English and Arabic idioms. At the station, there are only vague predictions of a mythical truck that might come tomorrow or maybe the next day. Eventually my hotel owner’s brother sells me a couple of litres he has stockpiled – enough to test the engine at least.

After a delirious and fitful siesta, I siphon out the petrol (always pleasant when your stomach is feeling wobbly to start with) and run the cleaner through the engine. Gradually the engine’s hesitations smooth out and I take the bike out for a test on the desert just out of the town and all is zippy and happy. Maybe I got away with it..

Over a cup of warm sugary milk, I meet Tom. He is a deeply intelligent and well-spoken Ethiopian-Yemeni. Fled the war in Yemen  to a refugee camp in Djibouti in 2014. He couldn’t stand the conditions there so he started walking. So this is where I find him, 4 years later, after some seriously inhospitable terrain and warzones. He speaks Yemeni, Amharic, Arabic, English and Chinese fluently. He quizzes me about my route around the lake and talks of walking into Egypt. I say take a lot of water and watch out for the Egyptian army who I’m pretty sure will shoot him on sight. We talk at length about the philosophical side of travelling.  I ask him where he is staying. He says he is like a cat and he sleeps wherever he is when he feels tired.

Mahmoud finds me and he takes me off to climb a little hill on the edge of town and walk another perfect sunset. From here the little clump of humanity that is Wadi Halfa resembles a moonbase.

Mahmoud, Wadi Halfa

The glow in the sky blossoms, the mosquitos put their tray-tables into an upright position and the sides of the street fill with clumps of men praying together like synchronized swimmers. Mahmoud, in the office of the little import/export company he works in, kneels and bends and sings. Then he jumps on the back of my bike and we go in search of benzene. At the pump there is a festival atmosphere.

Benzine station party, Wadi Halfa

Several lines of more than 100 tuk-tuks snake their way around a rabble of cars and trucks scattered in idling supplication to the petrol altar. I am greeted like a football star and ushered to the front of the queue and there is a scrum around the bike. The truck arrives and dispenses its precious cargo but then the pump is not working and the attendant gets out a screwdriver with about 25 people shining their mobiles  torchlight and poking their fingers helpfully in his way.

Wadi Halfa

Abri

I take what is left of the old road south  – mostly it has been replaced by  a tar road but I find the first 30km which takes me on a beautiful sandy track past Lake Nubia and a lagoon thronging with pelicans.

Road out of Wadi Halfa

Near Lake Nubia

Pelicans in Lagoon off Lake Nubia

Just as my mojo is really starting to kick in, the bike abruptly dies. Immediately, with the lack of forward motion I start to sweat. My phone overheats and dies. The spanners come out and I find a loose battery connection and I am off again. I hit the tar and really start to move. To be moving. Maybe it’s my mercurial Gemini nature. Between point A and point B, which contain and corral all my cares I am free. Sudan is definitely not A and it is assuredly not B. I love the simplicity and otherness of this starkly beautiful black gravel landscape. I find a little shack where gold miners are supping Jabena (ginger-spiced coffee) and take a rest.

Gold Miner, road to Abri

Gold Miners, road to Abri

I hear the unmistakeable thump of a single cylinder and a motorbike goes by. I wave but Jordan does not see me so I take off after him. But the bike is unhappy to get going top speed in this heat and after a few miles I start to get a horribly familiar lurching of the bike. My heart sinks to the depths and I kangaroo the last 15km into Abri forlorn. This is exactly the same performance as in Peru six years ago and I know what a saga that became.  I try to put my cares to one side. I find Jordan and we pitch our tents in the “Nubian House” guesthouse on the riverbank.

Abri

Camped at Nubia House, Abri

We eat in the village and I have to pinch myself to know that the place is real, such is the sense of immersion.

Abri

Abri

Abri

As anticipated, the bike behaves itself for shorter distances and we ride off to find the ferry to visit Sai Island. We ride through various fields and pop out in random places on the riverbank but eventually find the ferry in a plague of flies.

In search of the Ferry to Sai Island, Abri

In search of the Ferry to Sai Island, Abri

The Ferry to Sai Island, Abri

The engine is started by holding the cables to the battery terminals with bare feet, spraying a almighty shower of sparks across the petrol-soaked planks and partly dismembered crankshaft. The desolate island is a dream to ride a motorbike around and we forge a path to a medieval Christian church, just a couple of pillars gently merging with the sand in an unhurried sort of way. Then we find, and it really feels like we discovered it ourselves, such is the sense of solitude, a pharaonic ruin with Ottoman walls. The island is a précis of Sudan’s rich history.

Ottoman ruins, Sai Island

Sai Island

We ascend a challenging rocky path to a lookout

Sai Island

  

and there in the far distance, among the spider-scratched paths in the sand we see a tiny solitary figure walking, seemingly from nowhere to nowhere.

Sai Island

Sai Island

Sai Island

We gingerly make our way back down the hill and head to some intriguing round tombs.

Sai Island

There, the tiny speck becomes a little round man who turns out to be a ticket collector. My jaw drops a little when he pulls out a palm-sized printer and prints our tickets from his smartphone. I give him a lift on my bike to the ferry and, his days work done, he vanishes into the wastes.

We work on my bike which has developed another wrinkle – the bashplate that protects the underneath of the engine has come loose.  Jordan is a star and together we design a new way to fix it involving splicing in pieces of fuel hose as shock absorption. We try to secure his exhaust pipe, wobbly since an Egyptian soldier gave it a kick when they locked him up for straying too near Libya. We make repeated trips to the petrol pump on the basis of Chinese whispers but all it does is empty our tanks further.

We share a boat with a couple of slightly lost-looking Japanese guys to find the ruins of Amara West. We scramble up a sandy bank and find two Brits with a few locals dragging a large stone covered with hieroglyphs through the sand. They are from the British museum and look exactly how I imagine archaeologists to look. Bespectacled, sporting panama hats, scarves and shorts, as if they stepped out of a Tintin book, they are genuinely baffled as to how we found the place. They are just completing 3 months of work here and about to head back to Blighty. One of them is called Niall which is just the icing on the cake.

Niall and his team of British Museum archeologists, Amara West, Abri

Removing the loot, Amara West, Abri

This all occurs in the blast of a minor sandstorm and we lurch around the ruins, eyes stinging in the onslaught. The place is a former island fort and capital of Kush (Upper Nubia). An Egyptian outpost in occupied Nubia, unusual in that there was quite a bit of Nubian culture integrated in terms of types of tombs and pottery and so forth.

Amara West, Abri

Mohamed, our host at Nubian House, Abri

We head down towards Wawa, still failing to score any fuel on the way. At yet another fake petrol station we drink shai with a group of men, one of whom looks like Samuel L Jackson

Shai with the guys, near Wawa

and directs us off into the desert to ‘the market’ which turns out to be something out of Mad Max. Sandblown shacks in the dust made of sticks and rags with men hunched around murky brown pools panning for gold. Strung-out characters, barefoot  in threadbare fatigues finger AK47s and we feel many hungry eyes on us as we sidle around asking for benzine. It feels like a long few minutes until we find a man with a few plastic barrels under a tarp from whom we are able to score a few gallons.

Scoring Benzine in the Market, near Wawa

Samuel L Jackson passes in a ute and we greet each other like long-lost cousins – it’s the kind of place you feel like you need a friend and we do not tarry even though it is simultaneously somehow heart-in-the-mouth beautiful.

Wawa

Jordan takes a slither as we make camp north of Delgo

Camp north of Delgo

Sharp rocks, at camp north of Delgo

We camp in a little ravine north of Delgo, where the rocks look and sound like broken glass to walk on. A little down the road I have a puncture. The rock sticking out of my tyre is like a stone age axe and it takes three attempts to get it to finally seal. This is what happens when you 'walk on gilded splinters'

We decompress over breakfast of surprisingly tasty Kibda (liver) and fuul in the little village of Wawa, the softly-lit scene of the villagers going about their routine made even more cinematic by the thick smoke of an incense burner pouring fumes from the kitchen hatch  in the ongoing battle with the belligerent flies. We buy fruit from the back of a truck from two women

Buying fruit in Wawa

and take a succession of conflicting directions from random people in fields

Sara, Wawa

Snuff seller, Wawa

and a man selling snuff until finally we get a solid fix on where the banton kbeer is, that being the big ferry, as opposed to the canoes they have been trying to convince us will take our bikes without capsizing. On the way we see a donkey up on an elevated section, apparently grazing by the side of a raised road. Jordan piles up the bank and then comedically disappears nose first into the irrigation ditch that the ‘road’ is revealed to be. The donkey stands munching on the other side of the crevasse unimpressed.

Jordan in the ditch, south of Wawa

What is impressive is that Jordan does not actually fall off his bike in the process but it requires quite a bit of thought and a leap of faith to get him out again.

I talk with a lovely old blind man while awaiting the ferry

Waiting for the river man, south of Wawa

and on the other side we head north towards Soleb along rough tracks hopping between beautiful villages throwing us friendly smiles. At one we find a little market and can finally fully charge our tanks.

Petrol Station, on the road to Soleb

We find drinking yogurt which is heaven in the 40 degree heat and a bakery that has fresh aish (bread). In common with most villages there are immense pottery urns filled with Nile water kept surprisingly cool and we fill all our numerous water containers. We pass more interesting old mudbrick structures

Fort, on the road to Soleb

Water wheel, on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

and I get slightly obsessed with the decorated gates all the houses have

on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

on the road to Soleb

and yet again my bike shudders to a halt. The rough roads have dislodged my battery terminals again so it is at least an easy fix and not the fuel pump but as I toil in the furnace of the Sudanese sun, my sweaty fingers drop a screw into the depths of my engine and we fiddle around in vain for a while to retrieve it. I can hardly believe how many tech issues I have had since arriving in Sudan. We bushcamp in a gully a little way off the main track under a full moon.

Camp on way to Soleb

Camp on way to Soleb

Camp on way to Soleb

Camp on way to Soleb

Further north we find the ruins at Seidunga, just a few stones here and there but a few carvings of Hathor are nice. The temples at Soleb are more impressive. As with most of the sights in Sudan it’s the atmosphere of the location and the journey to find them that really captivates.

Hathor carving, Seidunga

Soleb

Soleb

Soleb

Dongola

We turn around and head south to Dongola along the smooth new tar roads. I glide along listening to spacious Nubian music. We head to a recommended guesthouse only to find it locked-up and a heart-breaking report of the Korean owners being arrested and interrogated for 3 weeks before fleeing the country, a hint of maybe the dark, paranoid and xenophobic side of the country’s leadership. The second guesthouse is not accepting foreigners but the helpful guy there sends us to a cheap place called Al Asra Wa Wara. The toilet/showers are a little challenging but at least we can squeeze the bikes onto their terrace behind a grille and it costs $2.

Breakfast of Talabia - mini doughnutballs with icing sugar, Dongola

Ali at Al Asra Wa Wara hotel, Dongola

Next day we upgrade to a place that is all of $4 because it has a central courtyard where we can work on the bikes and the toilets actually have some signs of having been cleaned this year.

I change some money which involves getting in a car with a stranger, driving a few blocks and then waiting while he meets a shadowy someone and counts out a pile several inches thick on the tailgate. Then I in turn spend ten minutes counting the wad on his dashboard. It is 200 pounds short and I look at him questioningly. He hands over the missing couple of bills expressionlessly and I finally hand over my single solitary 100 dollar bill. This process gets me nearly twice the official exchange rate.

I spend the afternoon elbow deep in hot petrol, searching for fuel filters, eating dry chicken and being eaten in turn by spiteful mosquitos.

Working on the bike, Al Muallem hotel, Dongola

Local teacher, Dongola

Fruit seller, Dongola

Driver, Dongola

Teti

We cross the bridge to Kawa and follow a sign to ‘architectural site’, a soldier checks my passport and doesn’t want to give it back and I have to yank it out of his hand. The track is deep sand and soon we are both struggling and decide it’s too hard work and turn back. On the way back my front wheel has a difference of opinion with the rear and I find myself with a mouthful of sand and 270 kilos of bike to lift at gas mark 7. Back past the bemused soldier and after a few kilometers of tarmac the road abruptly ends. There is a car inexplicably unattended here. We literally plough on and presently I find myself digging myself a deep hole with the rear tyre. All the luggage comes off and Jordan and I, with no little effort, manage to disinter the bike and point it in the direction of full retreat.

getting stuck in - the road to Teti

At the tiny village of Teti the next track we try vanishes completely into open sand dunes and we decide to call it a day and make camp under some palms. One man says he can take us in his Toyota Hilux, one of about thirty identically ancient and battered examples that seem to be the only vehicle allowed here, to Mulwad, the next village which is where there is a ferry. We mull it over – it’s a long way back around by Dongola.

Teti

Kids chasing Jordan on his bike over a dune, Teti

Kids, Teti

Teti

near Teti

Someone I found in my tent this morning, Teti

The kids are all over us. Until, that is, Hussein comes out to greet us and they scarper, clearly he is not to be trifled with. He brings us Jabena in a thermos

Hussein and his welcome Jabena, Teti

and then invites us for food. Amidst sacks of fuul that they grow, we sit with the males of his family, in the one room they all sleep in and eat silently from a big tray. The old men look as if they just stepped out of the bible. A spider the size of my hand and with legs the thickness of my fingers crawls over my foot and I manage not to flinch.

In the morning, I call the helpful Mohammed Nasir, a biker in Khartoum, to translate and we manage to arrange with Abdallah to drive with us to Mulwad, carrying our luggage in his HiLux. He makes us breakfast,

Breakfast with Abdallah, Teti

lets down his tyres,

Abdallah and his daughter, Teti

rasps his engine into life and we are off, deliciously unencumbered and levitating across the virgin dunes. It’s an intoxicating feeling and I grin from ear to ear as I crest and glide back to the gullies. Then suddenly I find myself arriving at a sheer drop and just about have time to think ‘oh well…’ before I am flying through the air at 50 miles an hour. The unscheduled flight lasts a supernaturally long 2 or 3 seconds and ends with an almighty crunch and yet unbelievably I do not fall. I come to a standstill and survey the damage.

The instruments have been ripped off their supports and the handlebar is bent but mostly I am thankful to be alive. I do a little first aid with gaffer tape and we continue. We hit some harsh corrugations and Jordan, behind me, sees a shower of plastic and electronics evacuate from above my rear tyre. It seems that during my Evel Knievel, the rear wheel slammed into the underseat and we wander around picking up bits of plastic and circuit boards. I put it all in a plastic bag and head on, suitably chastened. Even this disaster can’t diminish my sunny mood. The bike is running, I am in one piece and just look where we are…

Stopping to pick up the pieces, between Teti and Mulwad

Old Dongola

We sit with a couple of policemen while we wait for the ferry

waiting for ferry with policemen at Mulwad

and then zip down the other bank to Al Dabba, cross the bridge there and backtrack north to Old Dongola and catch a lovely sunset at the pointy sufi tombs there.

Sufi tombs, Old Dongola

Sufi tombs and other Muslim graves, Old Dongola

We scramble around the back of a big dune and make camp. I take my sleeping bag up to the top for a utterly serene nights sleep.

Under the stars, Old Dongola

Old Dongola

View over Sufi tombs, Old Dongola

Camp near Old Dongola

Sands of time, Old Dongola

Sunrise, camp near Old Dongola

near Old Dongola

At a little village downstream, after Jordan takes a little tumble in the bulldust, Sevedi, the local muezzin, insists we eat with him.

That bulldust is slippery! Road to Karima

Sevedi and his brother feed us, road to Karima

Karima

In Karima, it’s too hot to think. All we can do is melt in the shade. We find our way through some goats and thorns to the river’s edge and take a blissful dip.

looking for the Nile, Karima

looking for the Nile, Karima 

a welcome dip in the Nile, Karima

We ask a man with some camels about crocodiles and he says, don’t worry, you only see them on the opposite bank! He also helpfully points out a treacherous whirlpool a few metres downstream. Some teenagers arrive and want me to find some music on my phone to breakdance to.

a welcome dip in the Nile, Karima

I try a plug of their chewing tobacco which oddly makes me hiccup and they giggle uncontrollably. Then some 20-somethings come and offer me some bongo. I take a couple of puffs and spend the rest of the day in a hazy hug of equanimity. All decisions are left to Jordan and I just practice my thousand yard stare and cook a mean dahl at our camp across the road from the Merowe pyramids which are spectacular at dawn the next day.

view from Gebel Barkal, Karima

Merowe pyramids, Karima

Merowe pyramids, Karima

Temple of Amun, Karima

Mut Temple, Karima

The tombs at Kurru have some nice paintings but the most fun is talking to Nacho, from Valencia, who is there helping to restore them.

Kurru tombs, Karima

Nacho, Kurru tombs, Karima

Across the river at Nurri, we find the biggest Sudanese pyramids, again just lazily becoming one with the sand.

Nurri pyramids, Karima

We camp halfway to Atbara and overnight the wind picks up and find ourselves packing up in a gale which becomes a sandstorm as we put our shoulders into the ride. I start having more frustrating power problems which I assume are more fallout from my aerialism. These manifest as a beep from my horn or my indicators flashing and then progress to a reduction or complete loss of power. I practice origami with electrical tape while being blasted with sand.

In a chai stall in Atbara I hear some lovely music on the radio and I ask the man there to write down the name for me in Arabic. I then spend the next two weeks searching in vain for this music. Eventually someone translates the note which simply says “Please help this man, he likes music”

Fatteh, Atbara

Kids by river, near Begrawiya pyramids

Donkeys taking a dust bath while we take a water one, near Begrawiya pyramids

Begrawiya

At the Begrawiya pyramids at Meroe, we follow a track around behind them to a known camping spot. There we find a petite woman on a motorbike with two camel drivers pushing her through a sandy morass. This is Caitlin and once we have slithered our way through the sandpit we also meet Chris on his bike. They are from Colorado and have spent the last six months travelling up from Cape Town. He is a soldier and we have a lovely evening swapping war stories and exchanging tips. Chris gives me a GPS track for the infamous Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. At dawn I steal over the dune and into the pyramids before they can charge me the absurd $20 entrance fee.

Begrawiya pyramids

camp behind Begrawiya pyramids

Caitlin, camp behind Begrawiya pyramids

Begrawiya pyramids

Begrawiya pyramids

Begrawiya pyramids

camping with Chris and Caitlin, Bergrawiya pyramids

With my wheel arch broken there is a gaping hole under my seat and I wonder if dirt being thrown up by the rear wheel is causing my electrical problems so in Shendi I find a plastic paint bucket and whittle myself a new wheel arch. The large crowd that has of course gathered murmurs approvingly at my very African repair job.

Fuul place in Shendi

My plastic bucket repair, Shendi

We ride a lovely sandy track out to the temples at Naga'a but at every corrugation my horn bleats pathetically and my bike soon grinds to a halt. Then it occurs to me to check the battery connection and abracadabra, one twist of a screwdriver and I am back in business and we celebrate with some proper crazy sand riding, up on the pegs, both wheels sliding in all directions.

The temples are another of Sudan’s rough and rare treasures. I meet another pair of archaeologists among the ruins, this time French. I go get water from the well where a family is filling scores of water containers, raising a bucket with a very long rope drawn by a donkey. It must be about 100 metres down to the water table here.

Temple of Amun, Naga'a

Temple of Amun, Naga'a

Naga'a

Temple of Amun, Naga'a

Temple of Amun, Naga'a

Amun Ra holding the hair of his enemies as he smites them, Temple of Apedemak, Naga'a

near Naga'a

Roman Kiosk, Naga'a

From here to Khartoum there is the first real traffic we have encountered in Sudan, an unbroken line of rattling grinding smoke-belching trucks which sometimes swerve violently without warning around the huge potholes. They go too slowly to avoid a lot of overtaking. It is some of the more dangerous riding I’ve done especially as the last part is done in darkness as we were delayed by my tech issues. Many of the trucks have no lights and of course the road is unlit. I do as I have done before and choose a car that seems to be driving somewhat rationally and stick to it like glue. He knows where the potholes are and as long as I keep to his right hand tyre track all is good.

Khartoum

In Khartoum we stay at the Youth Hostel where we meet some other overlanders. A Dutch couple in a jeep that they completely rebuilt from spares after they rolled it near Lake Turkana. Gilberto, a Brazilian biker on the road for 2 years, Nic from Australia, 7 years on his bike and Olaf from Belgium who has been riding with Nic on and off since Mauretania. Nic and Olaf are an amazing mine of information as their bikes are very similar to mine and Nic in particular has a lot more experience than me. He also carries an insane 150 kilos of luggage – twice what I have – and has every tool and spare imaginable. Much of my ten days in Khartoum is spent in the courtyard there with everyone working on their bikes. We are joined after a day or two by Nico, a quietly spoken 22 year-old physics student from Stuttgart. He rode from Cape Town to Nairobi with his mother on the back.

Olaf, Nic and Jordan, Youth Hostel, Khartoum

I hit the various wild and wooly souks looking for parts. In one shop I am halfway through an enquiry about a fuel pump when all the dozen or so staff down tools, form a line in front of the counter and pray. Ten minutes later I get to finish my sentence.

A old guy with a lurching gait like a drunk homeless man, leads me from tiny shop to tiny shop and finally I find a Korean pump for $25 for a Toyota Corolla. The same thing cost me 20 times that six years ago when I ordered it from Europe.

In search of a fuel pump, Khartoum

In Souk Arabi, a city version of the Mad Max encounter up north a guy from Chad fixes up my temporary repair on my wheel arch. He instructs a frail little old man to cut a sheet of steel into the right shapes and finds some foam rubber to seal the gaps. In my head I had imagined finding someone to perfect mould something from aluminium as good as new but in the end it is only marginally better than my own repair and I keep my paint bucket in there for good measure.

bike food and guy food lines are blurred, Khartoum

Cutting my new wheel arch, Souk Arabi, Khartoum

I meet the Sudan bikers. Mohammed Nasir in particular has been lovely on my way here as I messaged him for advice several times and we go on a big outing, around 40 bikes all told, tearing up the road out to the dam and Jebel Aulia and a huge meal of Nile Perch and Talapia. Locals along the way cheer us as if it were the Tour de France. Of course they refuse to let us pay a cent.

Nile Perch and Talapia, Jebel Aulia

Some of the 40-odd bikes of the Sudan bikers, Jebel Aulia

Jordan, Osama, Nico, Zuhair, Nic, Olaf and I, Gebel Aulia

One of them, Zuhair, owns a workshop that makes crankshafts and lets us use his yard and staff to make some repairs. I have discovered that the shock absorber’s bolt is badly bent from the Evel Knievel antics, the frame too a bit and as a result my ground clearance is way too low so there is a performance involving huge hammers.

Zuhair, Tahir Engineering, Khartoum

Welding Nic's subframe, Tahir Engineering, Khartoum

My bent subframe bolt, Tahir engineering, Khartoum

The answer is usually a large hammer, Tahir engineering, Khartoum

Zuhair and Nic, Tahir engineering, Khartoum

I meet Amjad, cousin of Sami, a good friend and filmmaker I work with in London who spent his early childhood here. Amjad is crazy busy with work and an imminent first child but still manages to find time to meet me for a couple of meals which he refuses to let me pay for.

I visit Tutti Island which is where the two Niles meet. At the northernmost spit of beach you can clearly see the confluence of the White Nile with its chalky, muddy waters, coming all the way from Lake Victoria and the Blue Nile with its clearer water coming from Ethiopia.

The White Nile (left) meets the Blue Nile, Tutti Island, Khatoum

Tutti Island, Khartoum

Tutti Island, Khartoum

My mornings fall into a lovely ritual of drinking shai labana or jebana with talabia and sometimes tamiya from a particular little corner of one street. The shai ladies are lovely and usually I get talking to one or other local too.

Shai Lady, Khartoum

Talabia Lady, Khartoum

Khartoum

Another daily ritual is repairing my mattress which has sprung a leak. I use patch after patch and a special chemical that Olaf gives me. Every time the stupid thing goes limp after an hour or so. In the end I repair it ten times before it is finally usable.

It’s suffocatingly hot at night and I often get up in the wee hours to take a cold shower just to get a brief respite. Another of the Sudanese bikers, Hisham, tells me how the temperature in Khartoum has actually increased by about 10 degrees since 2003 when there was an oil boom. The Sudanese badly neglected their agriculture in favour of this new easy money and, around 100km south from here, what used to be forest is now barren desert. Since the crash in the oil price a few years ago they are starting to try to reverse the process but it is easier said than done.

We go to Hamad Alnil to see the Sufi dervishes. It’s a large cemetery and we ride into the middle next to the mosque where everyone is congregating. Before the dancing there is music from a band of blind musicians. It’s mesmerizing. Then all the Sufis form a huge circle and there is chanting and drums and the dervishes spin. Each one has a totally different outfit. I talk quite a bit with one of them beforehand and then, during the ritual, he calls out to me pointing up and down “Hey English! No Earth! No Sky!” The atmosphere is intense and before I know it the sun has set. After the ceremony breaks up, one of the dervishes passes out. “Too much wine” someone tells me. Not having had so much as a beer since Egypt I am slightly jealous. We have to get the bikes out quick as everyone is beginning to pray and we edge between them to the exit. On the way a guy jumps on the back of my bike, standing on the seat and leaning on my shoulders and shouting his head off. Nic passes me after a while and says someone told him to tell me that that man is crazy. He falls off after a while.

Sufi Dancer, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Sufi, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Blind musicians, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Sufi Dancer, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Sufi Dancer, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Sufi Mosque, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Sufi Dancer, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Sufi, Hamad Alnil, Khartoum

Tailor, Khartoum

Kassala

I head off from Khartoum alone – Jordan has to be in Cape Town by July while I am moving at a slower pace. It was great to have a partner in crime for a while but equally I am glad to be solo once more. It’s a more immersive experience to travel alone. You meet locals much more readily and your whole experience is direct and unfiltered.

Having Jabena with the guys at the Benzine station

The dial says it's 46 degrees. An unbelievably long hot ride brings me to Kassala. It’s dark and my bike starts to misbehave again. My fuel pump problem is back and again it is related to how hot it is which means partly how long I have been riding. I limp through the craziness of the huge souk and find a hotel but they won’t give me a room unless I go to the police first. I go to another hotel and they do check me in but tell me I must go to the police tomorrow. I have so far avoided being registered and the 500 pound fee it entails so I am evasive and in fact manage to leave the country without ever being registered.

I visit the Khatmiyah mosque, a beautiful mudbrick oasis of calm, climb the curvy Taka mountains that are its backdrop and meet the Imam. A man brings his daughter to him. Some problem with her foot. I watch the Imam pray at the tomb of Hassan, a Wali (like a saint) of Sufi Islam which is in a dovecot. The sound of the man’s gentle incantations and the beating of wings meld and dance in my head for days.

Prayer at the tomb of Hassan, Khatmiyah mosque, Kassla

I meet Hisham. He is an environmental engineer who studied in St. Petersburg and designs special incinerators for animals and medical waste. He shows me some great hidden places to eat and where the best jabbena is made. He wants me to introduce him to businesses in London that want furnaces. He says he will show me where authentic Sudanese music is to be found and waxes lyrical about Sting.

Hisham, Kassala

I meet Omer and Saddam. Omer teaches me the Arabic alphabet, helps me get my laptop fixed when its hard drive dies (so sick of things breaking!) and takes me to the sad little zoo, the River Gash, the open air mosque that looks like a cross between a bandstand and a flying saucer. He wants me to tell the embassy to invite him to the UK and to live in my flat. While we sit in the park he tells me that if he does not cut his hair short enough, someone from the government comes and does it for him. When we part he gives me a little plastic Bob Marley ‘One Love’ bracelet.

Omer, Saddam and I, Kassla

Omer and I, Kassala

Several people try to convert me to Islam. They sit down with me and have a sort of staring contest while issuing quite threatening ultimatums about my eternal soul. One asks me how I feel when I hear the call to prayer and when I say ‘peaceful’ nods approvingly and mentally measures me up for a galabiya. Another sees me smoking a cigarette and, in order to prove how bad it is, subjects me to a hand-squeezing contest along with the evangelism.

I get a tailor to make me special bags to carry water which is a convoluted process of wandering the souk looking for suitably tough material and bottles, drawing designs and bringing the bike to the tailor repeatedly to get the fit right, drawing a large crowd at all turns.

I meet a man called Ozeiki, a neurologist who studied at Queens College London. He is just emerging from the grand mosque and it turns out it was him coming over the speaker, educating people about hygiene and disease. He says he can tell me all about Sudanese history and music. We go sit in a shady area and he summons up youtube and shows me BBC documentaries narrated by Joanna Lumley.

Al Qedarif

I head for the border and the stopover town of Al Qedarif. On the way I head off the road to chase and photograph one of the many mini-tornados that are sucking up sand and plastic bottles. My wheels churn in the bulldust, which is earth so powdery that it flows like water. Another 30km later, the huge refugee camp on both sides, my fuel pump problem comes back to haunt me and I have to perform open heart surgery in the shade of a thorn tree. This is when I find my camera is missing. I try to focus on the one disaster at a time and once I have cleaned out my fuel filter again I spend the remaining hours until sunset searching the ditch along the previous 30km at a snail’s pace trying laboriously to explain to the police at the various checkpoints what on earth I am up to. I lose the light, bushcamp and continue searching at dawn. But by 10am I finally come to a state of acceptance and set sail for Al Qedarif. My fuel pump has different ideas and throws a fit. I find space under a tree with some nice guys who feed me watermelon and put my fuel pump in their fridge, and get my arms elbow-deep in gasoline once more.

Changing my fuel pump, road to Al Qedarif

I meet more interesting characters in Gedarif as I eat chicken on the wasteland opposite the hotel. Samani is from Sudan and went to France illegally but got papers via his Ethiopian wife and now lives in Marseilles. He translates for his friend Ibrahim, a local truck mechanic who cannot understand why someone would take a holiday in Africa when they could do so in Europe. We talk quite deeply about politics and compare cultures and arrange to meet when Samani is in Addis Ababa in two weeks time.

Al Qedarif

Hosham is a vet from Darfur. He tells me how he cannot go home and how everyone there sticks to the towns as out in the villages they are in grave danger of being robbed and killed. He says it is a war between black and white. By white he means Arabs. He approves of the president’s current policy of an arms amnesty but it’s hard to believe once the guns have been handed in that they won’t simply be replaced from the freely available supply from Libya.

Trent, a South African biker I met in Khartoum, very generously runs around in the city looking for a replacement camera for me but in the end it is a wild goose chase and nothing suitable has made it past the sanctions.

On the way to the border the landscape starts to change. The word savannah swims into my head. A profusion of dessicated life in intricate trees and burnt grasses. I stop just to breathe it in.

Road to Ethiopian border

Road to Ethiopian border

A puncture bursts my bubble. Should have had that permanent repair in Khartoum… I labour twice in the searing heat.

The border goes relatively easily. I say a fond goodbye for now to the Arabic world and the thought catches in my throat a little when I consider the breathless beauty and adversity I have been shown in the last five months.