Day 110
Sleeping location: Mystery hotel, Dongola, Sudan
Distance (km today/total): 119 / 8711
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 60200
Bat skyscrapers: 1
Day in three words: Getting more African
After the usual sunrise alarm clock we cycled about 10km to a cafe for breakfast. Due to the usual language issues (ours of course) we accidentally didn't order food for an hour. We just thought the service was really slow. Once we did order it promptly arrived and was pretty tasty. Sudanese food so far consists of various things like eggs, beans, lentils or meat stews, all brought to the table in small bowls and eaten with bread (no cutlery).* Very simple but always pretty well done. The shop had “nice crimty” biscuits, which sounds like nonsense until you realise it means cream tea. The picture on the packet also shows biscuits with “bisciut” written on them.
Due to our mixup we didn’t really get going until 10am, but thankfully there was a powerful tailwind and we sped along. Mid morning I stopped at a cafe to fill up my water and freshen up. When I went to the washing water** a man followed me to help, or perhaps to cause mischief. I had my hat held out in front of me and he unexpectedly filled it with about a litre of water before motioning for me to put it on. I went along with this Sudanese shower technique and enjoyed it very much, but when I told him so he made the expression for “yeh obviously”. Funny guy.
Midway through the day the scenery changed to a sort of sandy farmland, with much more greenery than before. Suddenly it felt a lot more African. Here we came across a huge (maybe 7m) conical mud building which had been abandoned and was now filled with bats, or had been built by bats and was still in use, who knows. It was very smelly but also very interesting. For lunch we bought some bread and had a picnic under a nice shady tree. The bread was purchased from a bakery where the baker was soundly asleep on a bed next to the oven; I didn’t want to wake him so I just took a bag and left what was hopefully the appropriate money. We are starting to make the mesh work for us now, as we have discovered that it works well with tomato.
We ended the day in Dongola, which is by far the biggest town/city we have seen in Sudan. On the bridge into town, which was the first Nile-crossing bridge since Aswan some 800km ago, the two lane road was completely blocked by a man herding cows across to the other side. Dongola was nice in a ramshackle way, and a guy at a hardware store gave me some petrol (I think/hope) for my stove and wouldn’t take any money for it. We stayed at a strange hotel that was very grand looking but so quiet that we thought it was closed and/or not a hotel. Once a man appeared we were able to take a big, decent enough room with hot water*** and a bath, for the princely sum of a fiver. We had heard good things about Dongola’s pizza and chicken so we found a restaurant that did both. The chicken was great, the pizza was great for two slices but then you realised that it was very rich and weirdly sweet and actually maybe you just liked the first two slices because you cycled 119km that day. But we ate it all because did I mention we cycled 119km that day.
*Rebecca had considered giving up bread for a bit, but as this would essentially require her to stick her face in the bowls like a pig at a trough, Sudan is not the place for it
**There is hardly any bottled water here as people are too poor. Instead the Nile water is filtered and cooled using clay jars. There are various “grades” for different things: unfiltered for washing, filtered for drinking in the cafe (usually from a cool box) and part filtered for any passers by to take (from the clay jars themselves). The filtration really works, as the water tastes good and we have been drinking it for a week with no ill effects.
***Not a given since the start of Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 119 / 8711
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 60200
Bat skyscrapers: 1
Day in three words: Getting more African
After the usual sunrise alarm clock we cycled about 10km to a cafe for breakfast. Due to the usual language issues (ours of course) we accidentally didn't order food for an hour. We just thought the service was really slow. Once we did order it promptly arrived and was pretty tasty. Sudanese food so far consists of various things like eggs, beans, lentils or meat stews, all brought to the table in small bowls and eaten with bread (no cutlery).* Very simple but always pretty well done. The shop had “nice crimty” biscuits, which sounds like nonsense until you realise it means cream tea. The picture on the packet also shows biscuits with “bisciut” written on them.
Due to our mixup we didn’t really get going until 10am, but thankfully there was a powerful tailwind and we sped along. Mid morning I stopped at a cafe to fill up my water and freshen up. When I went to the washing water** a man followed me to help, or perhaps to cause mischief. I had my hat held out in front of me and he unexpectedly filled it with about a litre of water before motioning for me to put it on. I went along with this Sudanese shower technique and enjoyed it very much, but when I told him so he made the expression for “yeh obviously”. Funny guy.
Midway through the day the scenery changed to a sort of sandy farmland, with much more greenery than before. Suddenly it felt a lot more African. Here we came across a huge (maybe 7m) conical mud building which had been abandoned and was now filled with bats, or had been built by bats and was still in use, who knows. It was very smelly but also very interesting. For lunch we bought some bread and had a picnic under a nice shady tree. The bread was purchased from a bakery where the baker was soundly asleep on a bed next to the oven; I didn’t want to wake him so I just took a bag and left what was hopefully the appropriate money. We are starting to make the mesh work for us now, as we have discovered that it works well with tomato.
We ended the day in Dongola, which is by far the biggest town/city we have seen in Sudan. On the bridge into town, which was the first Nile-crossing bridge since Aswan some 800km ago, the two lane road was completely blocked by a man herding cows across to the other side. Dongola was nice in a ramshackle way, and a guy at a hardware store gave me some petrol (I think/hope) for my stove and wouldn’t take any money for it. We stayed at a strange hotel that was very grand looking but so quiet that we thought it was closed and/or not a hotel. Once a man appeared we were able to take a big, decent enough room with hot water*** and a bath, for the princely sum of a fiver. We had heard good things about Dongola’s pizza and chicken so we found a restaurant that did both. The chicken was great, the pizza was great for two slices but then you realised that it was very rich and weirdly sweet and actually maybe you just liked the first two slices because you cycled 119km that day. But we ate it all because did I mention we cycled 119km that day.
*Rebecca had considered giving up bread for a bit, but as this would essentially require her to stick her face in the bowls like a pig at a trough, Sudan is not the place for it
**There is hardly any bottled water here as people are too poor. Instead the Nile water is filtered and cooled using clay jars. There are various “grades” for different things: unfiltered for washing, filtered for drinking in the cafe (usually from a cool box) and part filtered for any passers by to take (from the clay jars themselves). The filtration really works, as the water tastes good and we have been drinking it for a week with no ill effects.
***Not a given since the start of Egypt
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