First Steps in the Outpost of Tyranny

3rd to 4th November 2009 – Days 36 and 37 – Wadi Halfa to Abri, Sudan


The ferry ride to Wadi Halfa took roughly 20 hours, and sadly we had passed the temple of Abu Simbel in the dark so we did not get to see it from the lake. Upon arrival we were faced with the sight of a dry and dusty desert town with not much going for it. The original Wadi Halfa drowned as a result of the building of the Aswan dam in Egypt so the population had to relocate, and the newly built Wadi Halfa really seems like it has lost its soul in the process. Together with some of the other foreigners from the ferry we spent the day sitting in the couple of cafeteria/restaurants in town enjoying some beverages and having a chat with the friendly owner of one of the places and following the amusing anger sprouts of the owner of the other one. We pulled back to our lokanda early for the night, in preparation of sorting our way out and down south from here the next day.

One small step for a man... One giant leap into Sudan

The next morning T and I slept late again to compensate for our hardships of sleeping on the ferry the night before. Around noon we eventually went looking for the registration office where we completed the lengthy and hierarchical process within two hours. In this time we were pushed around to walk between four different clerks at least ten times, filled another form and had to provide copies of our passport info page and Sudanese visa page with one photo each. The result of the registration was a stamp on our passports for the price of SP100 each – price seems to have gone up quite a bit from the SP57 in the guidebook from four years ago. We then swooshed quickly by the bus station to ask for bus times to Abri, the next town down the Nile, as we agreed that we wanted to suck in as much of the Northern desert atmosphere as possible. There was one going in an hour’s time so we headed off to pack our bags there and then. Back at the lokanda we bumped into Richard who had decided to take the direct bus down to Khartoum, so we said our goodbyes and seeyalaters with him, hoping to catch up with him further along the way.

Downtown Wadi Halfa and its many entertainment options

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With a new registration sticker in passports we hopped on an infamous truck-bus, equipped with musical horns and a driver happy to use them, we tooted and bumped our way along the mostly tarmac, occasionally gravel road towards Abri, stopping at a “service station” of sorts along the way. The Sudanese service station is a patch of sand by the road (much like anywhere else in northern Sudan) with a shelter of palm tree branches propped up by wooden poles. Underneath this, woven mats are placed on the floor and people lounge on them, swatting flies. The most important man in the whole place is the one who owns the key to the chest fridge where piles of bottles are stacked. In this particular service station the fridge was sadly empty so we whiled away the time in the shade before being moved onto another truck-bus towards Abri. The truck-bus is another curious typically Sudanese contraption – the body of a bus is welded onto a truck, seats are bolted to the floor, and any semblance of suspension is removed. These were used before the tarmac road was finished this year, which has cut travel time between Wadi Halfa and Khartoum from 4 days to 12 hours. Air conditioned buses are now running the roads but truck-buses are still used on shorter routes.

Sudan's new fleet of luxury buses

Two women are sat over the aisle from us and, in marked contrast from Egypt, they are quite happy to strike up conversation with us. The language barrier prevents us from actually talking about anything but they are happy to point things out to us, such as the South African cyclists we met on the ferry. I’m already feeling a much more relaxed vibe in Sudan than in Egypt, and the feeling is reinforced on arrival in Abri, a small town with one storey buildings and sandy streets. We rolled up at the only lokanda in town and got a mud-floor room for the night. Here, we met up with Dixon, Lucas, Sean and Rui who we met on the ferry and went for falafel sandwiches before the two of us went to the house of Mugzoub, our new acquaintance. It’s a funny evening – Mugzoub seems happy in our company but we spend half of the time in silence and Mugzoub only becomes more animated on the phone to his girlfriend in Cairo. After a few cups of tea, he invites us to a Nubian wedding but we’re so tired that we have to turn down the invitation. We are in a similar tired state and wouldn’t mind going to have a look but getting roped into a full blown wedding until the early hours of the morning would be a bit tougher, and we are heading to Dongola tomorrow so we want to get some sleep.