Leaving Gondar, Ethiopia...
The road begins its descent from the highlands of Ethiopia...
The ride to the Sudanese border, 200 km to the north east of Gondar went smoothly enough, and I thoroughly enjoyed the winding strip of good tarmac that stretched between the turnoff at Azezo to where it left the escarpment and headed down into the eastern lowlands and on towards the Sudanese border.
The road bisects the tiny village of Aykel on its way to the border...
There were a lot less people on the road in this part of Ethiopia than I had expected. The countryside was drier, and as the road descended from the heights of Gondar through the settlement of Aykel, and on towards the little town of Shededi, the temperature began to climb… It was 38 degrees at the border of Metema when I arrived there, and formalities on the Ethiopian side were over in 20 minutes…
Ethiopian Immigration office at Metema Border Post...
The Immigration office was an eye-opener… New offices were being built to house both customs and Immigration, and judging by the activity on the building site, these offices should be complete by 2012, or thereabouts… In the mean time, officials are working from a mud walled structure that is in danger of collapsing, should a strong wind ever pass through Metema… The area is little more than a rubbish dump, with plastic bags and other litter strewn all over the place…
I was pestered by a group of moneychangers that would not take no for an answer, until I caught the eye of a soldier lounging under a tree and pointed at the group and shook my head in the negative… The soldier put a whistle to his lips, blew a shrill blast on it, which scattered the pests and left me in peace… I had changed all the Ethiopian Birr I had for Sudanese Pounds in Gondar, where I was lucky to obtain a very good rate from a supermarket owner, desperate to rid himself of the pile of Sudanese currency that he had with him…
Ficus tree on the skyline above Aykel, Ethiopia...
Thinking big... The first high rise shack I had seen...
Surprised to find the Immigration office was no more than mud hut...
I had to explain how the Carnet worked to the customs official, and stamped the document myself, as he wasn’t sure what the procedure was… He then asked to see my laptop and cameras, which I had registered on entry… This was a pain, as I had to move my duffel bag to get into my pannier. I lifted the lid, pointed to it and then shut it firmly again… He hesitated for a while, his eyes going from mine to the pannier and back again, until with a shrug of his shoulders, he turned on his heel and made his way back to the shade of his hut…
I left Ethiopia on the 19th of April 2002 at about 6.00pm… A hundred metres further on, in Sudan, it was the 27th of May 2010, 12 noon… Like I said, Ethiopians are a quirky lot, and do things a little differently… I rode across a fairly new bridge and into the town of Gallabat on the Sudanese side… There was a large sign in Arabic, just past the first control point, and I assume that it says. “The Heat Starts Here…” It was like entering an oven…
I spent more than an hour at the border, first clearing Immigration, and then watching as reams of paper were filled in by three separate officials to get the bike cleared… The Carnet was scrutinized; one guy wrote all the bike’s details in a large ledger, and then passed the carnet to another guy who filled in a form in quadruplicate… These forms were then taken to yet another officer, who checked them again, and signed his name, and then the forms took another trip to yet another office to have them stamped by “the guardian of the stamp”…
I was summoned into a dingy little office and politely asked to sit down while all the forms were checked again… I paid SDP 15.00 (about R50.00) Customs Duty, and was then told to register myself in Khartoum within 3 days… I wanted to tell them that my parents had already registered me many years ago, but thought better of it… The heat had long ago driven away any sense of humour these guys might once have had…
Despite the heat, I kept a little smile plastered on my face, determined to remain as patient as possible for as long as possible… In Sudan, you do not have rights…you are granted favours, and must show appreciation for them at all times… These officials can make your life very difficult… I had been warned about this by a couple of South Africans in an old Landrover, who were heading south after being turned back from the Egyptian border because their documentation had not in order… I asked if I could take a photo of my bike outside the Immigration office, but was waved away by an official, who said,
“No, no..!! It is not permitted…!! You must get permit for photography in Khartoum…!”
“So that’s how you want to play it…!” I said… (To myself, of course…!)
I made absolutely certain that I had visited all the offices that I needed to, before mounting up and heading towards Gedaref, 155 km away…Within minutes, I felt as though I was cooking inside my gear… Sweat ran down from my eyebrows and into my eyes, and it felt as though I had a heavy weight attached to my back… I would have loved to have strapped my jacket to the bags behind to ride in my T-shirt, but I knew that this would have me dehydrated in a very short space of time… The combination of heat and wind dries the sweat on your skin that much faster, causing you to perspire even more, until eventually, a sharp gust of wind blows the shriveled husk that was once your body, clean off the bike and adds it to all the other bits of dust on the side of the road… What happens to the bike after that…nobody knows… Perhaps there’s a mythical “bike graveyard” somewhere out there in the desert…
Mushkala !! (Problem...!) A Sudanese driver comes to grief on the road to Gedaref...
For the first five minutes, I rode with my visor open, but the heat coming into the helmet was so intense that I closed it again… These few minutes did however have some value, as I discovered a surefire solution to all sinus problems… The hot wind that blows through an open visor will first shrivel the hairs in your nostrils, and then it will work itself into your nasal passages like a blow torch, drying everything out in minutes… But be warned, prolonged use of this treatment might cause your brain to shrivel as well, turning it to dust in your cranium… Consider yourselves warned…
Sudan is the largest country in Africa. This might change in the near future, as the South tries desperately to disassociate itself from the north. A referendum is to be held later this year to decide “the will of the people”… The northerners have no love for their southern cousins and you would think that the outcome of this referendum would therefore be academic… Not so… Sudan’s oilfields are located in the south you see, and the north has….well, just a lot of sand… Things should start getting interesting in these parts in the months to come… I will be monitoring things very closely…from the far side of the Mediterranean!!
Ship of the Desert... Hobbled and looking for something to eat...
Sudan also has the world’s largest population of camels, 3.4 million at the last count, and more than 47 million sheep, far exceeding the country’s population of about 33 million “sun and sand-blasted souls”… Herds of camels seemed to wander aimlessly about, looking hopefully into the branches of any of the stunted trees they come across, where usually, not a single leaf was to be found…
Gone are the mud-walled houses of Ethiopia, which are made by plastering a mixture of cattle dung and mud over a framework of wooden poles… Trees are in very short supply in Sudan, so houses out in the countryside are made entirely of thatch… The Big Bad Wolf would have a field day here… The landscape reminded me northern Kenya, but without the volcanic rocks… Whatever grass there once might have been, was long gone, munched by the scrawny cattle that stood listlessly on the roadside…
Thatch huts... There is nothing stronger to buld with out here...
We rode through Tiworeet and Humra, and on to Sabun and Kassab, where only the foolhardy stood out in the sun… I had drunk all the water I had with me, and was beginning to pant inside my helmet… The road surface was very good here and in an effort to get the day over and done with, I gave the throttle a firm twist and within seconds had the Big Fella gliding through the arid landscape at around 160 km/h… I overshot the tarred turnoff to the town, and continued on to a t-junction a mile or so away, my GPS still pointing the way… The tar road came to an abrupt end, and I was faced with a myriad of tracks all leading in the general direction of town…
"Which way to Gedaref...?" The tar road disappears...
I followed what seemed to be the widest one and after a few kilometres was bumping through the back streets of town, in between mud-brick houses, down rubbish strewn alleys, still faithfully following the purple line on my screen… While riding down a narrow dusty little street, a stone was thrown at me, and hit me in the middle of my neck. I skidded to a stop and looked behind me, just in time to see the head of a teen-aged boy ducking down behind a wall… I would have liked to get my hands around his scrawny little neck, but rode on instead, looking for a way back to some semblance of a main road…
I eventually found one, turned onto it and found myself in a traffic jam… Tuk-Tuks, donkey carts, a few Camels…you name it, and they were there to delay the end to a baking day… I punched in the co-ordinates of the Elmotwakil Hotel, and a short while later saw the hotel up ahead, but pulled into the service station across the road from it to refuel first. At R5.75 / litre, fuel in Sudan is a whole lot cheaper than anywhere else… The usual crowd gathered around, jabbering in Arabic, while I continually shrugged my shoulders to indicate that I no idea what they were asking of me… Eventually a few questions in English were asked and I was able to fill the crowd in on my travels thus far…
The Elmotwakil Hotel, Gedaref...
The hotel is not the cheapest in town, but is probably the best… I was shown to a small room on the 1st floor and immediately stripped off for a cold shower… No chance of that…the water coming from the cold tap had me checking to see if I had not switched the hot tap on by mistake…!! It was uncomfortably warm, but at least it got the sweat and the dust off…
I went down to the little compound behind the hotel to check if the bike was OK, and while I pottered around tying things down, the old security guard wandered over and stood quietly by… Using sign language, I asked if he would keep an eye on the bike… He nodded enthusiastically and then went to a little metal shed and brought out a stretcher, which he placed next to bike…
“Ah… I like a guy who takes his job literally!” I told him… He just nodded happily and mumbled something in Arabic, which it took to mean, “You better pay me well for my efforts…!”
By the time I had got back to my room, and looked out the window to see what he was doing, he was already in a horizontal position on the stretcher… I made a mental note to deduct money from his fee for “sleeping on the job”…
Not exactly what I had in mind when I asked him to keep a close eye on the Big Fella...
The bathroom in my room was the usual “all in one affair”… Shower head in the centre of the room, basin off to one side, toilet on the other, and a drain in the very centre of the floor… Next to the toilet, a tap with four feet of hosepipe attached to it…
My room in the Elmotwakil Hotel...
A word of advice: Better have your own roll of the soft white stuff with you when traveling in rural Sudan, or learn to use the “hose method” before you leave home… What I can’t understand is that these things do not come with any instructions…!! It seems simple enough, but exactly how are you supposed to use the darn thing…?? Are you supposed to strip down naked…?? Should you stand in the shower trough, or balance precariously on the edge of the toilet bowl…?? No, no, don’t tell me… I really don’t want to know…!! I will ALWAYS make sure I have my own supply of toilet paper wherever I go…
The pizza I had for supper was surprisingly good, and after a strong cup of coffee, I was ready for bed… I had earlier turned the air conditioner on to its coldest setting, and got the ceiling fan going at the same time…
This made matter slightly more bearable, and about 10 degrees cooler than in the passage outside my room… And 20 degrees cooler than it was outside on the streets below…
Yeah…. Sudan is not the coolest place I have been in…
The Heat is On ! Looks like you are in for some hot weather ! Enjoy !