Day 115
Sleeping location: Sama Alsaeeda Hotel, Khartoum, Sudan
Distance (km today/total): 103 / 9253
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 61300
New foods: 5!
Day in three words: Khartoum: car town
After finally throwing out my tattered touring boxers* I went back to the sweet embrace of lycra and put on my bib shorts under my shorts. Of course they were very comfy and it’s a mystery why I forgot about them for the last month. After 950km in 9 days we were both feeling pretty drained and ready for a rest, but the morning was in no mood to help us, supplying a steady cross/headwind and keeping us slow. We stopped for a nice coffee mid morning and discovered that “Captain Majid” biscuits were excellent when dipped in it. The biscuits also promised an “extra stock of energy” which is excellent if true. After the break we picked up speed, perhaps because of a wind change or perhaps because of the extra stock of energy. Along here was the alarming sight of an abandoned bus with a heavily smashed up front, closely followed by a freshly dead cow. The cow had come off worse but had inflicted some real damage in return.
We stopped for lunch on the outskirts of Khartoum and were finally treated to a change from the beans/eggs/possible meat/bread of the past week. The English translation of this new dish is “some crepes with different kinds of wet stuff in a big bowl that you eat with your hands” and it was pretty tasty. On our way into the city we quickly realised that google maps was useless here, and entered into a game of Follow the Tarmac. The traffic was busy but actually not a patch on the chaos of Istanbul/Amman/Cairo. After crossing the bridge at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles we stopped for tea in a park as we hadn’t yet booked any accommodation, but were scuppered by bad internet (yet again). As we left I brushed part of my bike up against an open lamppost and created a 2ft long (per Rebecca) spark with accompanying cartoon zap noise. People on the other side of the street saw and heard it. The only damage was to a small light that’s fixed to my pannier strap, which now switches on and off as it pleases.
This incident appeared to have broken most of Khartoum’s street lighting, as it’s the darkest big city I’ve ever been to. Our search for a hotel was fruitless for a while as places were either full or the wrong kind for us**. Eventually we found a place which was still quite expensive (£15) but nice enough, plus we liked the area. It took a whopping stack of bills to pay, but we can still measure our money in cm. At dinner we decided to play Menu Roulette and pointed at several random things on the Arabic menu. What came was mainly bread based but all tasty, with the bonus of an entire spatchcocked chicken to gnaw on. We think the waiter was on to our game and deliberately ignored some of our orders, which may have been sensible as we had almost too much as was.
*Boxers with padding, very comfortable but they couldn’t cope with my mighty thighs and started to tear after a few days of Jordan. Since then they have been slowly ripping apart but I kept wearing them for some reason.
**There’s a sort of dual hotel market in Khartoum: nicer ones for business travellers (minimum $50 a night and payable in USD) or worse ones for the Sudanese (much less, payable in SDG). We wanted to pay in SDG as we have loads and didn’t want to rinse our USD stocks, or indeed pay loads for a room.
Distance (km today/total): 103 / 9253
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 61300
New foods: 5!
Day in three words: Khartoum: car town
After finally throwing out my tattered touring boxers* I went back to the sweet embrace of lycra and put on my bib shorts under my shorts. Of course they were very comfy and it’s a mystery why I forgot about them for the last month. After 950km in 9 days we were both feeling pretty drained and ready for a rest, but the morning was in no mood to help us, supplying a steady cross/headwind and keeping us slow. We stopped for a nice coffee mid morning and discovered that “Captain Majid” biscuits were excellent when dipped in it. The biscuits also promised an “extra stock of energy” which is excellent if true. After the break we picked up speed, perhaps because of a wind change or perhaps because of the extra stock of energy. Along here was the alarming sight of an abandoned bus with a heavily smashed up front, closely followed by a freshly dead cow. The cow had come off worse but had inflicted some real damage in return.
We stopped for lunch on the outskirts of Khartoum and were finally treated to a change from the beans/eggs/possible meat/bread of the past week. The English translation of this new dish is “some crepes with different kinds of wet stuff in a big bowl that you eat with your hands” and it was pretty tasty. On our way into the city we quickly realised that google maps was useless here, and entered into a game of Follow the Tarmac. The traffic was busy but actually not a patch on the chaos of Istanbul/Amman/Cairo. After crossing the bridge at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles we stopped for tea in a park as we hadn’t yet booked any accommodation, but were scuppered by bad internet (yet again). As we left I brushed part of my bike up against an open lamppost and created a 2ft long (per Rebecca) spark with accompanying cartoon zap noise. People on the other side of the street saw and heard it. The only damage was to a small light that’s fixed to my pannier strap, which now switches on and off as it pleases.
This incident appeared to have broken most of Khartoum’s street lighting, as it’s the darkest big city I’ve ever been to. Our search for a hotel was fruitless for a while as places were either full or the wrong kind for us**. Eventually we found a place which was still quite expensive (£15) but nice enough, plus we liked the area. It took a whopping stack of bills to pay, but we can still measure our money in cm. At dinner we decided to play Menu Roulette and pointed at several random things on the Arabic menu. What came was mainly bread based but all tasty, with the bonus of an entire spatchcocked chicken to gnaw on. We think the waiter was on to our game and deliberately ignored some of our orders, which may have been sensible as we had almost too much as was.
*Boxers with padding, very comfortable but they couldn’t cope with my mighty thighs and started to tear after a few days of Jordan. Since then they have been slowly ripping apart but I kept wearing them for some reason.
**There’s a sort of dual hotel market in Khartoum: nicer ones for business travellers (minimum $50 a night and payable in USD) or worse ones for the Sudanese (much less, payable in SDG). We wanted to pay in SDG as we have loads and didn’t want to rinse our USD stocks, or indeed pay loads for a room.
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