Leaving Sudan - Kosti to Gallabat

As there was no way through South Sudan we had to head eastwards towards the Ethiopian border. That we did. On the way to Gallabat, the last town in Sudan, we had to cycle through the region known in Sudan as the Delta. This land lies in-between the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The landscape is mainly flat and formed by endless fields of cotton, sugarcane, sorghum and acacia tree forests. As it is the dry season all the fields are barren and the land is dry, dry, dry. It is also very, very hot and a dry, almost unbearable wind adds to the discomfort and makes us drying out very quickly. The closest to describing the feeling is having your hair dryer on full power, blowing at your whole body. It starts at 9am and ends at 12pm! There is nowhere to go and hide! There is no cooling wind! There is no shade that helps cooling! NOTHING BUT HEAT! After some hours in the scorching heat, the tongue sticks to the palate and there is no saliva to swallow. In the evening we would usually stop at a village and ask for a place to sleep. We were always invited to stay at someone's place. They seem to have a room/tukul for guests which we were offered! Hospitality is just astonishing over and over again!

These 500 km were a hard test to our endurance at heat, little food and very hot and dry wind. After 4 days we arrived exhausted in Al Qadaref. Here we enjoyed the comfort of a hotel as Yann fell sick, probably due to the water we drank on the way here. Usually we filter our water, but as it was so hot, we sometimes just drank whatever we were offered. When offered water by our hosts, it would have been very rude to refuse! 

Once recovered we cycled the remaining 160 km to the border town of Gallabat. We crossed the bridge, over a river with no water at the time and found ourself in a very different world. 

Family transport

Lunch break, the owner insisted on inviting us!

Invitation to tea, and after that all the women wanted to have their picture taken.

Some little rascals, very sweet.

The road runs along an old railway track, maybe the dislocated train waggons are the explanation to the disuse of the line?

Wood transport.

At Sennar the water of the White Nile gets held back by a dam built by the British 60 years ago to irrigate the land between the White and Blue Nile. Luckily it still holds and the power station that profits from it is also still in use. We were invited to stay with Mohamed, the uncle of our dear friend Mohamed from Kosti. As he is the manager of the hydroelectric power plant in Sennar we were allowed to stay in their guesthouse, the only payment was a short presentation of our trip!

Engineers of the hydroelectric power plant. The lady in orange is a future engineer. Due to security no other pictures were allowed!

I was so proud of our picture of the desert bus in our last blog, I thought it was the last one of the mohicans. But then we found another one and another one and another, and this one. 

Filling up water during lunch break. We tried to stay out of the heat from 12 am to 5 pm. 

Sometimes we found lovely spots! 

Date palms are not only useful for us humans. In this one there is a big bird colony living and breeding. 

Shortcut: ferry in Rabwat.

The ferry is used for people and goods transportation...

… and even entire sheep herds! Do they pay for each one?

Another break with a lovely tea lady and comfy rope bed.

Our first baboons…. to be honest they are quite big and a little bit scary. Luckily they were nibbling at the bush next to the road and not on juicy biker's legs. 

We asked for a place to pitch up our tent and were offered our own tukul, too cool!

Walk-in tailor...

Whirlwind in the streets of Al Qadaref.

"Yes, the air conditioning is working", we were assured, but the truth was more like "ah may be not? so lets take it out and repair it!". A couple of hours later the as-good-as-new air condition was put back in place again. It refused working during the heat hours of the day! But at least in the evenings it brought us some comfort. TIA!

Market in Al Gedaref.

Who is faster, Yann or the boys? (they are: three on one bike, no luggage, young legs!)

These young men belong to a nomad tribe called the Rashidas, they wander in the lands between Eritrea and Sudan. Their wealth and pride are their camels and the nomadic way of living. Proud and beautiful. 

Our last camping night in Sudan. This must be the favorite hunting place of all the scorpions around. All the way down through all these desert areas we have not seen one of this creatures. On this spot there were three around our evening "dinner table". Which means we where sitting on our mattress on the floor when the scorpions were out to hunt. Luckily they were very small but it was not a very relaxed dinner, as we were constantly searching the ground for the black beasts. 

There was also another visitor. What looks like straw is in fact a little insect that came to have a look at us. Probably they all got a bit over excited by the light of our head torches.

Gallabat, our last town in Sudan. 

We say goodbye to a country with a lot of hypocrisy, a not so democratic and just government, a country with harsh living conditions and we say goodbye to the most generous and hospitable people we met so far. 

Thanks to the people of Sudan, we felt very welcomed!  

 

Sudanese family stay - a thousand thanks! شكرا كثيرا

Arriving in Kosti we are welcomed at Mohammed's place. Tom and Matt from www.tomandmattcycle.com stayed at his place in Khartoum, he invited us to stay with his family in Kosti. He lives here when he is not studying in Khartoum.

He is married to Zeinab and they have a freshly born son, Abdullah. Zeinab's mother Sofia and her daughter Neda also live here. Sofia's husband comes every now and then since he is married to another woman too.

Entering the compound the guest room is on the left. on the right there is the shower and toilet house. For men and visitors the shower and toilet to be used are the ones facing the guest room. On the backside of the shower/toilet house there are the shower and toilet of the women who are living in the compound. Water is kept in big plastic tanks beside the 1.5m high wall that draws a line between the guest room and the shower/toilet house. This is to prevent outsiders to view the women when the entrance door is open. In a way it is understandable because the women have to wear the head scarf when men are around, so when men are not around they can take it off. Imagine the stress with an open door!

Behind the wall there is the kitchen, a sleeping room, a closed room and another sleeping room (male area?).

The male guest has to stay in the visitor area, maybe entering into the male area beside the visitor area but is surely not allowed to wander around where the women are! The opposite applies to the female visitor. So until we were "adopted" by the family, Chantal and I spent most of our days separated! It was a strange feeling to be in the same compound and still not see each other except when being in the guest room!

Mohammed and Abdullah

shoe making - Mariann, this one is for you!

do you remember which one belongs to whom? ;-)

cutting the leather for the shoe making

cutting the hair: before...

...after

which one is Sudanese?

Sudanese family - women only! Not Chantal's usual outfit, bit here we went to see the sufis of Kosti, and the guest has to have decent clothing.

                                        

making Zalabiya

riding a bike is fun!

proud Mohammed with his son Abdullah

This is a Sudanese Sauna called Duchaan, it is actually a pottery amphora let into the ground. In this amphora the women lit a fire with acacia wood...

.... the women has to wear a black poncho, and on top of that a woolen blanket. It looks cosy, but it isn't. I would like to remind you that there is fire in the hole underneath my legs and the outside temperature is around 40 °C. From time to time I'm aloud to lift the blanket and get some fresh air under it, it was very hot.....

....after the sauna, you go and take a bucket shower; no soap aloud. The smell lasted for a week...

...then to complete the treatment you have a henna-session, but only married women are aloud to wear henna...

the result -  with it came an incredible change in attitude of both men and women towards Chantal when cycling later on! Everyone noticed it and everyone asked where I got it from and was admiring the good work of the henna-painter. For the people here she now is half Sudanese half Swiss.