A Hasty Escape...

20^th-22^nd November 2009 – Days 53-55 – Khartoum to Gedaref, Sudan

Sudan is a lovely place, it really is. Aside from cold beer, it only lacks one thing – ATMs which are accessible to khawajas. You come in with cash, and make sure it’s enough to get you to the next country. This had already caused us to miss Port Sudan and, as we got to the bus station in Khartoum, it became clear that we might have to miss out on Kassala as well. With that, we got onto a bus to Wad Medani, the furthest we could go at that time in the afternoon. It’s apparently a big honeymoon destination but I suppose that people who come here reserve their hotel rooms in advance as we ended up on a 2 hour trudge around town trying to find any spare beds at a price which suited our rapidly dwindling reserves. One place finally had space for us and knocked over 50% off the price for the poor khawajas. Another desperate search for cheap food ensued, leading us to very little aside from a small pack of barking dogs and a pizzeria, in which we got the largest, cheapest pizza to split between us. Very luxurious.

Just a highly comical picture!

In a rare display of discipline, we managed to get up early (read: reasonably early) and headed off to the bus station, where we quickly discovered that we indeed didn’t have enough money to go to Kassala so we headed off on the cheapest bus possible (found with the friendly help of yet another Sudanese happy to help out a khawaja for nothing) and trundled off to Gedaref, the closest town of any size at all to the only open border crossing between Sudan and Ethiopia. It’s a classic border town with plenty of business, plenty of rip-offs and nothing much of interest. We checked into a cheap hotel and enjoyed the last of Sudanese hospitality, unsure of what to expect from Ethiopia. Sudanese friends, taxi drivers and casual acquaintances alike have all expressed the same opinion on Ethiopia – “very beautiful country, very... difficult people...”.

The #1 enduring memory of Sudan - the tea ladies who provided us with so much...

Not much happened in Gedaref – a few bites to eat, a bit of walking around, lots of lazing. The room was hot enough to stop us sleeping until we passed out early in the morning and this contributed to yet another spectacular failure to wake up in time to get to Ethiopia, so we had another enforced night in Sudan. Hurrah! The next day featured equally small amounts of activity and a trip to a hotel restaurant to celebrate our last night in Sudan “in style”. This involves a Fanta and a pizza each – the Fanta came quickly and the waiter appeared to have forgotten our pizza which was slightly bizarre given that we were the only people eating there. Finally we had our typical Sudanese meal – Margherita with ketchup. Very luxurious again.

After another largely unsuccessful night, where the heat of the room combined with an electricity cut which eliminated the overhead fan, we slept in pools of our own sweat for a few hours and finally got up on time to head to the Gallabat/Metemma crossing. Very exciting.

Goodbye Sudan - we'll be back!