Nov 11th-14th
We walked to Gonder's bus station in the darkness of night. Street-boys waved as we passed. A microbus touter shouted "Matema, Matema", the border town just east of Sudan. We were soon on our way towards the Sudan. The landscape progressively changing from mountainous and lush, to flat and arid.
I had noticed a sign saying Ethiopian Customs and we thought that we had arrived. We exited the microbus with the other passengers and made our way to customs. We asked someone where the border was and he pointed towards a desolate stretch of highway. We started walking but soon realized that we did not see the distinct border-crossing we were expecting. After yelling "Habesha, Habesha" (Ethiopian, Ethiopian) and "Ante, Ante" (you, you) in Amharic to little Ethiopian urchins yelling "Forenji, Forenji" and "youyouyou" incessantly to us, we finally escaped them and took a tok tok to "customs". It was actually a customs office for people arriving from Sudan. It turned out we weren't in Matema after all, but in a city called Maganan and this would explain why we couldn't find the border.
After feeling like idiots for an-hour-and-a-half, we hailed another microbus and traveled another 30-kilometers to reach Matema. Leaving Ethiopia took 5-seconds and a stamp. We then walked onto the dusty no-man's land between the two countries and were greeted by a young man. He told us what we needed to do in order to enter the Sudan.
- We got royally ripped-off getting black-market Sudanese pounds for US dollars.
- An adolescent, street-clothed man rifled through our bags in "Ethiopian Customs".
- We had our Visas and information slips verified and stamped.
- We went through Sudanese Customs
- We went through the Sudanese Security Office
After finally getting through the three border offices, we were now in the Sudan, in their border town called Gallabat. The cool, mountainous climate of Gonder had been stifled by the sea-level desert climate of Gallabat. It was easily 40 degrees Celsius, and this was before noon! We had found a bus heading towards Gederaf and would be able to catch a bus to the Sudanese Capital, Khartoum, from there.
As we drove over the impeccable Chinese roads at breakneck speeds, we passed a cyclist named Kevin we had met in Gonder, He was doing a solo ride from Capetown to Cairo and his sunken eyes and frail torso did not make me envy him. We waved from our window and left him behind in our van's torrid wake.
Despite 10 army checkpoints in a mere 2-hours, we arrived in the sprawling town of Gederaf. We made our way to the bus station and a man who had taken the same bus from Gallabat had already bought us two tickets to Khartoum on a bus leaving very shortly. We thanked him repeatedly, gave him the money and took our seats on the bus.
The next three hours were uneventful and the looping landscape of infinite sandy plains and straight, tarmac roads became my visual mantra. What is rather humorous, is that we started off by watching Arabic music videos, which was immediately followed by WWE Wrestlemania highlights. The entire bus was mesmerized by the streak vs. retirement match between the Undertaker and Shawn "the Heartbreak Kid" Michaels. It was quite hilarious to see a bus full of Sudanese Muslims, in their white Jalabiya and turbans, absolutely entranced by these North-American staged fights.
As night had fallen, our bus had seemed to run over something. The bus pulled over and everyone exited the bus to investigate. Along the road were scores of unidentifiable animal parts and innards making the road look like a scene out of a horror film. The animals were not only hit, but absolutely disemboweled and dismembered.
Within minutes, another truck had seen the animals and had swerved to avoid them, but in doing so, rammed another oncoming truck head-on. The impact of two trucks hitting each other, traveling at nearly 100-km/h each was deafening. All the people on our bus and others stopped their cars to assess the damage. Actually, it was more like wail uncontrollably and start utter pandemonium.
As the masses ran from all directions to gauge the deaths and damage, Chris and I stood at the side of the highway and watched the calamity unfold. This two-lane road saw no shortage of cars, which were still traveling at high speeds, swerving off the road at the last minute upon seeing the crash. The imminent danger of being hit by oncoming and swerving cars, combined with the calamitous rescue attempts, made our decision to protect ourselves an unselfish one.
Another bus showed up, and as we left, the image of a badly injured man from one of the trucks involved in the wreck, with his pristine white Jalabiya now caked in blood, failed to leave my thoughts. This next bus then broke down and it took a good half-an-hour to fix it before we were back on our way to Khartoum.
After our arrival in Khartoum, well after nightfall, we had a frustrating and confusing cab ride to find reasonably priced accommodations. We finally managed to find a lokanda, or guest house and passed out from exhaustion following our exasperating and emotional 20-hour journey.
Our arrival in Sudan coincided with the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, equivalent to Christmas in Christianity in terms of importance. But unlike the commercialization of western holidays, absolutely everything was closed all throughout Khartoum and Sudan for that matter. As a stipulation to our tourist Visa, we had to register in Khartoum within 3-days of our arrival, as well as acquire travel permits to head north, and get a photography permit to take pictures of Sudan's Meroe antiquities. Unfortunately, because of Eid, all government buildings and ministries would be closed for a full week. As we walked through the empty streets in search of anyone with a command of the English language, the only common response we received was that we were shit out of luck.
We figured our best option was to check out the Blue Nile Sailing Club: the only overlander/backpacker-esque accommodation in the entire city. Once there, we spoke to a kind, English-speaking Sudanese man who made a few phone-calls and told us we could register at the airport. We had also met two other travelers, Dina from Lithuania and Martin from Italy, who were able to register before Eid had started and therefore could not help us out in regards to information or tips.
We made our way to the airport and thankfully were able to register there. We were also told that travel permits were not required to travel to the north of Sudan. I still really wanted to take pictures, but after confusingly being given the right to take photos of the airport due to the language barrier and misunderstanding regarding my request, I figured I would take my chances without the permit and claim that it was literally impossible to acquire one.
Now that our registration was in order, I could relax and enjoy some Sudanese culture: this means eating shawarma and drinking iced, sugary fruit-juices ad nauseam throughout the day. Quite glorious considering it was in excess of 40 centigrade everyday, and this was their winter!
On our way back to our lokanda, we crossed paths with Martin, Dina and a few other tourists. They were on their way to Omdurman, Khartoum's sister-city, to watch the Halgt Zikr perform at the Hamed el-Nil mosque. The Halgt Zikr are a troupe of whirling dervishes who worship Allah in an outdoor spectacle every Friday before sunset. We wanted to see them perform, so we happily joined their group.
We arrived and took our places around a group already gathered to watch this Sufi ritual. Shortly after, a group of men started singing and playing drums.
Other men, colorfully- dressed and carrying various props, started to dance or "whirl" rhythmically to the intensifying beat.
As the energy swelled, the dancing became more erratic and entertaining. Some men even appeared to be lost in worship, totally oblivious to the world around them.
I had seen dervishes in Turkey and they were downright boring compared to these frenzied Sudanese men.
The whole performance was over within 30-minutes, but the energy resounded all throughout the night.
Due to Sharia or Islamic law in Sudan, most entertainment (i.e. alcohol, bars, clubs) are forbidden, so Chris and I found the only thing left to do was pass our time eating yet more shawarma and drinking more fruit-juice. Due to the non-existent night-life and excessive vitamin intake, I felt absolutely fantastic! Even trying to pollute our lungs with delightful shisha was difficult due to a recent crackdown due to too many women smoking it. We still managed to find a sketchy place behind a hotel: men would sit, take a few puffs and then leave as fast as they had entered. It felt like an opium den might have in the Victorian era, minus the opioids.
We did eventually manage to visit some of Khartoum's "tourist attractions", the most famous of which was the confluence of the White and Blue Niles, forming The Nile River. Symbolically it was huge considering I had seen both the source of the White and Blue Niles in Uganda and Ethiopia respectively; but visually it was quite underwhelming. To add insult to injury, you were not even allowed to take pictures of this lackluster natural phenomena. We also visited the Omdurman Souq (or market), but the stifling heat and copious amounts of people made the experience rather forgettable as well.
After our 4-night stint in the surprisingly modern city of Khartoum, we woke up early and caught a taxi to the bus station where we had previously bought our ferry tickets to Egypt. After being screamed at and ushered towards several different buses, we found one leaving towards Atbara. Although Atbara was our final destination, we would be exiting prematurely in order to explore the amazing Meroe Pyramids.
We exited the bus and followed a sign towards the pyramids, despite the fact that they could be seen from the side of the highway. In the distance, we saw men riding camels. These men, aware of our whiteness due to the over-sized backpacks we were wearing, started galloping towards us. It almost appeared as if they were going to attack us. However, the only projectile they used was the saliva emanating from their mouths as they tried to convince us to ride their camels the half-kilometer it would take to reach the gate of the pyramids. We kindly declined.
Once there, we paid the curator, left our packs at the entrance and walked over the sandy slopes to see these ancient wonders. The Meroe pyramids are separated into three groups comprising as many as 200 pyramids in total. These pyramids were built by the kingdom of Kush between 800 BC and 350 AD. While many of these structures are in ruins or buried, a large number still remain intact or have been restored by the relatively small amount of foreign archaeologists and organizations allowed into the country.
Since we had arrived at Meroe by 9:00am, we were virtually alone at the site, save for the camel-riding touters. Sudan receives a very small quantity of tourists and because of this, it's sights are unknown to most westerners. Pyramids in Sudan, who knew?!
Although the pyramids of Sudan are smaller and more sharply angled than their Egyptian counterparts, I was still enthralled with the quantity of pyramids and near-abandoned nature of this archaeological site.
This Nubian site could be explored in only a few hours and we decided that we would avoid the sun's most scalding stretch and leave before we collapsed from dehydration. Since there were no buses leaving directly from the site, our only option was to stand at the side of the highway with our thumbs extended.
Two Caucasians with big backpacks, standing at the side of a desert highway, waiting to hitch a ride in the Sudan with over one-hundred steep pyramids as their backdrop. Now there's something you don't see everyday, but I thank my lucky stars that I did!
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