Cycling Northern Sudan: Blowing in the Wind
6 - 26 January 2020
6-9 Jan (196,3 km, 122 mi) - Wadi Halfa to Abri
10-12 Jan (243.0 km, 151 mi) - Abri to Dongola
11-17 Jan (200.4 km, 124.5 mi) - Dongola to Merowe
18-22 Jan (290.2 km, 180.3 mi) - Merowe to Atbara
23-26 Jan (362.4 km, 225.2 mi) - Atbara to Khartoum
What a difference a ferry ride makes. One day we were jostling with throngs of people in the mayhem of Egyptian life along the Nile, and the next we were rolling into the dusty, frontier town of Wadi Halfa, Sudan. Everything about Sudan is much lower-key than Egypt. It’s quieter, less crowded, slower paced, and overall just more relaxing to cycle in Sudan. We reveled in the tranquility of the desert, and the soft-spoken hospitality of the Sudanese people we met.
Sudan is a land of mystery for many outsiders, with an air of danger based on media reports of civil strife and revolution (about a year ago). But traveling through the Sudanese heartland along the Nile River, and through the northern desert, those news stories can seem quite distant. Village life in rural Sudan remains deeply connected to the past with livelihoods and lifestyles that could have existed in the time of the pharaohs - punctuated with modern conveniences like pickup trucks and cell phones. On the whole, the people we met were generous, warmly polite, and enthusiastic about having visitors from America.
There is no way to fully capture all facets of our 20-day bicycle ride across Northern Sudan, but here are a few of our impressions from the road.
Bureaucracy as an Art Form
Our first encounter with Sudanese bureaucracy had been our application for Sudanese visas in Cairo, where we literally had to walk our paperwork through the line at the Sudanese embassy six times. We had another brush with the system when we bought our tickets for the ferry to Sudan in Aswan, Egypt. The tickets are sold from a small storefront in town. Sitting in the ferry office, we watched in quiet astonishment as the ticket agent painstakingly produced no less than four boarding documents per person, each filled out by hand, in triplicate, using carbon paper, and involving multiple checks of our passports. Moreover, the ticket, receipt, and meal voucher were each recorded in separate ledgers by hand, in a carefully orchestrated, step-by-step process that included filing each copy, in turn, in its appropriate folder. Generating just two tickets for the ferry soaked up at least 45 minutes of paperwork time. It was impressive.
The gentleman seen through this doorway knows his way around a stack of bureaucratic forms. He’s the ticket agent for the Aswan-to-Sudan ferry, in Aswan, Egypt. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
The final 150 m of land as we boarded the ferry was another bureaucratic gauntlet, with a mesmerizing six different lines to pass through. These included one to pay for taking our bikes on the ferry, one to pay the Egypt exit fee, and a couple to pay for some unexplained “services.” Since we weren’t expecting all these fees we started to get concerned as our small number of Egyptian Pounds diminished to almost nothing, but we managed to make it just far enough.
Then there were the separate immigration and customs lines, which involved unloading everything off of our bikes, including the water bottles, to run them through a luggage scanner. And, finally, of course, there was the last stop before boarding the ferry, where an official checked all of our receipts, stamps, and paperwork from the previous lines to make sure everything was in order. All the while, you can see the ferry at the dock, just a few dozen steps away. And yet it seems, at times, like you’ll never make it that far. Fortunately, our final check went smoothly, and we were not sent back to some other line in purgatory to plead, pay, or otherwise correct any mistakes we might have made along the way. We were finally allowed to board after 2+ hours spent waiting in the lines.
Another successful run of the bureaucratic gauntlet. We’re now ready to board the ferry to Sudan. Aswan, Egypt. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
The ferry ride is an adventure in itself. We had booked one of the cabins, expecting that we would be able to secure our luggage in the room while we were out-and-about on the boat. But, alas, there was no lock on the door. At first we weren’t sure that it would be a good idea to leave our stuff in the room unattended. But the room was so tiny, we finally felt the need to get out and stretch our legs. Luckily, none of our things disappeared when we were gone. The trip comes with a pre-paid meal voucher. However, it’s still advisable to bring your own food. The meal we were served was of questionable edibility.
Not exactly appetizing. We didn’t eat too much of the pre-paid meal that is served on the Aswan-to-Sudan ferry. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Now, as the ferry approached Sudan, we became immersed in the border-crossing bureaucracy. The first step was the collection of our passports by a Sudanese immigration officer for our entry stamp. We were asked to wait in our cramped, little cabin for the passports to be returned.
Hanging out in our cabin on the Aswan-to-Sudan ferry, awaiting the return of our (hopefully stamped) passports. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
When the stamped passports were returned in relatively short order, we were very pleased - mistakenly believing that the process was complete. Not so fast.
We had gone up onto the ship’s top deck, to watch the desert scenery roll by as we approached the southern end of Lake Nasser…
The Aswan High Dam, which created Lake Nasser, flooded the fertile Nile floodplain for over 350 km. Now, the lake is bordered by the desert mountains that once rose along the edge of the plain. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
But then we were approached by the immigration officer again. Apparently, he needed our passports a second time, to conduct a health check. So we turned over our passports and awaited our next instructions. The health check included a visit with the ship’s doctor, where he scanned our faces with an infrared camera, apparently looking for signs of a fever. A hand-written list of passenger names was then marked by the doctor as pass-or-fail. The system was pretty reliant on the doctor taking accurate account of who he had seen, and whether they passed the test. Fortunately, we were both in good health, and didn’t have any problems with the test. But the passports were not given back to us right away. We were told to return to our cabins, and that our passports would be brought back to us there.
And so we waited. And waited. And waited. And our passports did not show up. We started to get fidgety. When it became clear that the boat had been docked in Sudan for a while, we decided that I should wait in the cabin in case the passports did, in fact, get returned to us there while PedalingGuy went looking for the passports. In addition, since the lock on the cabin door was broken, and all our gear was inside, leaving someone with the gear seemed like a good idea.
What PedalingGuy found as he hunted down the passports was confusion. At first, everybody was being held on board the ferry because the doctor was not convinced he had seen all foreign visitors. This was a little uncomfortable, since there were over 200 people and only a handful of foreign visitors, including us, that seemed to be part of the problem. No one knew exactly who the doctor had not examined yet, which added to the uncertainty. The doctor and captain of the boat got into a shouting match, which was then followed by a few other people getting involved in the shouting. As PedalingGuy looked on, he was happy that he didn’t speak any Arabic.
The doctor and his police helpers were not going to give back any passports until they were satisfied he had examined everyone. At the same time, two additional police officers on board were demanding passports from all foreign visitors. They were surprised and confused to discover that no one seemed to have their passports. In response, the immigration police just kept asking for everyone’s passports, over and over. There was a lot of consternation and shouting, back and forth, on all fronts, with absolutely no resolution in sight. This went on for more than an hour. In the mean time, all 200 plus passengers kept pressing forward trying to get off the boat, creating an increasingly uncomfortable situation for everyone.
The impasse was finally broken when a high ranking police officer boarded the boat with a sense of urgency. He started hunting down the passports one-by-one, and giving them back to the foreign passengers, despite complaints from the doctor and his police escort. The senior police officer’s authority was probably enhanced by the fact that he was a big guy - large enough to play offensive tackle in the NFL (that is, at least 6 foot 5 inches tall and over 300 pounds). He started making demands. From a combination of his authority, everyone else’s exhaustion with the situation, and the officer’s massive presence, the deadlock started to get resolved. PedalingGuy immediately asked for the officer’s help finding our passports.
After some effort, PedalingGuy was able get his passport returned. But, for some unexplained reason, PedalingGal’s passport could not be found. Both passports were handed over to the authorities at the same time, so we assumed that they should both be together. The senior police officer spent the next 20 minutes asking a series of other police officers for the passport. There was some more shouting before he finally circled back to an officer who had previously denied having the passport, but was told to look again. He started hurriedly searching his pockets, his briefcase and folders but could not find it. The 300+ pound, senior police officer just stood there looking at the subordinate as he hurriedly started once again searching through everything a 3rd or 4th time. At this point PedalingGuy thought the passport was lost, but miraculously, with yet another search of his belongings, and a 300+ pound officer glaring at him with the look of death, the passport was produced.
Finally, with all passports returned everyone could start disembarking. But that was not the end of our fun. Our bikes had been blocked in by a small fleet of tuktuks that were not scheduled to be taken off the boat for another couple of hours. With the help of the boat’s cook, PedalingGuy was able to lift the bikes over his head and hand them to the cook through a stairwell opening. It was a very tight fit, but they were able to squeeze the bikes through the opening while PedalingGal disembarked and guarded the rest of our luggage on land.
But, wait… there was actually still one more step. Departing the dock in Wadi Halfa, we passed through a building where people with piles of luggage were queueing up at a long line of desks and having their belongings searched, piece by piece. It wasn’t clear that whatever was going on applied to us, so we just rolled our bikes past the desks and attempted to leave while trying to avoid eye contact with anyone in authority. We have crossed many police checkpoints this way, and found that our loaded touring bikes are unusual enough that it takes the police several minutes to mentally process what they are seeing, which sometimes gives us enough time to slip by without having to stop. Once we are past the checkpoint, the police usually are not motivated enough to come after us to check passports and ask their usual questions.
Unfortunately, in this case, an officer by the door, stopped us, turned us around, and sent us back. Another officer came over to give us a hand since we were as bewildered as we must have looked. Apparently this was a final customs check, and we needed to jump through the hoops. With the police officer’s help, we were ushered to the front of a line where a clerk asked us how many bags we each had. Based on that number, he handed us a strip of small stickers. We then placed a sticker on each of our bags. The final step was to take our stuff over to the exit desk, where another officer dutifully made a mark on each one of the stickers with a black magic marker. No questions were asked, and no bags were actually checked. But we finally were allowed to leave.
Over the last couple years we have been on many ferry’s with our bikes, but have never had so much excitement. Part of what makes bike touring in Africa “special” is that often things can be a little more difficult or challenging. The ride from Aswan to Wadi Halfa is but one example. Over and over again, we get to the end of a day and find ourselves saying, “Wow, what a day.” It’s not always bureaucracy, but a whole host of things that combine to make each day in Africa special, and often unforgettable. We like to say that our time cycling in Africa is like dog years, every bike touring day here counts as seven in the United States or Europe. It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun, since everyday is such an adventure.
From Crowded Chaos to Tranquil Desert
Wadi Halfa, Sudan (pop. 15,725) is a modest-sized frontier town. All of the businesses and services are jumbled together within about eight blocks on several, parallel streets. That made it pretty straightforward to find all of the things we needed on arrival: a new SIM card for our phones, some descent food (it’s generous to say that the ferry food was unappealing), and supplies for our first ride across the desert. While we were shopping, we ran into the senior police officer, otherwise known as a superhero to us, who helped us hunt down our passports on the ferry. He greeted us warmly, and even suggested a restaurant on the main road for our dinner. We’re not sure we ended up in the right restaurant, but we had a satisfying chicken and rice meal, regardless.
The next day we headed out into the Nubian Desert - the easternmost section of the great Sahara Desert. It is a very quiet place. We traveled over 1,250 km (775 mi) on Sudanese roads and, for most of the way, traffic was quite light. We were only occasionally disturbed by the rumble and honking of a passing cargo truck, minibus, or the ubiquitous white Toyota pickup trucks with red lettering - with anywhere from two to eight guys hitching a ride and hunkered down in the back. Otherwise, the silence was only broken by the occasional chirp or whistle from a dry-land bird, and the constant rush of the wind.
Once you get away from the narrow, fertile strip along the Nile River, the Sahara Desert takes over. Hardly anyone lives there, and it’s blissfully quiet. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
It was a major change from Egypt’s Nile Valley, with its constant crush of noise, crowded streets and highways, and people trying to get your attention by yelling, “Hallo!” And, “Welcome to Egypt!”
At first, there were a whole lot of mountains with almost no vegetation. Many areas were reminiscent of places in the American West - like Monument Valley in Arizona, or the ridge and valley deserts of Nevada. The conical profiles of ancient volcanoes were interspersed with darkly-hued, rocky hills fringed with sand-dune slopes. And everything was framed by the bright blue, cloudless sky.
The northern Nubian Desert is very rugged, with lots of barren, rocky hills. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Less than 5 inches (13 cm) of rain each year means that there really isn’t any surface water over most of the landscape. But people still move through the area, by foot (either along the roads, or herding goats over the hills), or even on camels. To ensure no one runs out of water, some highways have periodic water stops - comprised of big, clay pots filled with Nile water. The water doesn’t look like it would be particularly healthy to drink, and we were fortunate not to have to use any of it. But that water could be a lifesaver if you ever really needed it.
At dawn and dusk the desert sky takes on a rosy-pink hue that we’ve not seen anywhere else in our travels. And as the sun sinks deeper below the horizon, the sky becomes a vibrantly-colored rainbow, with a deep orange glow along the horizon blending through a blue-green band that fades into the midnight blue of the nighttime. And, of course, the stars at night are spectacular. So many stars are visible that it’s actually hard to pick out the constellations. But one thing that does stand out is the Milky Way. Our galaxy becomes a bright, glowing river of light shimmering across the sky. Sitting under the stars in the desert, we weren’t inclined to talk that much. We just gazed up and became one with the quiet night.
The rosy hue of the evening sky was unlike anything we had seen before. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
After heading south parallel to the Nile for about 440 km, we headed east out of the city of Dongola. Striking out across the desert, we left all signs of civilization behind. For several days - between Dongola and Karima, and then again between Merowe and Atbara - we rode across a nearly flat landscape of constant wind and blowing sand. The first stretch was particularly challenging because we didn’t bring quite enough water. Luckily, we were able to refill two of our 1.5 L bottles when we stopped at a remote orphanage on the second day. But even with the water from the orphanage, we still ran short and suffered from dehydration before arriving in town. We were surprised by how much water we used. The high winds and the very dry air seemed to suck water out of our bodies. It was so dry that it appeared that we never perspired, even when cycling hard, because the perspiration would immediately evaporate off our skin just leaving behind a salty crust. After that, we carried up to 15 L each for a three-day ride. That’s 33 lbs (15 kg) of water, each! At least when you’re going through water that quickly, the weight drops as you go.
The mountains disappeared in the desert east of Dongola, Sudan, and we found ourselves riding across a vast, windswept plain. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
In spite of the fact that there was almost no vegetation, we would periodically see small groups of camels wandering by the road. We wondered if they were domestic, or semi wild camels - kind of like the mustangs that roam the American West. And at one point we crossed under a massive set of electrical transmission lines, marching across the desert in the middle of nowhere. We wondered if the lines were carrying electricity from the Aswan High Dam down to population centers further south in Sudan.
Wind Dominates All
The Sudanese desert is always windy. No matter where we were, the wind was blowing at least 15 mph, and often much more. As we crossed the open desert from Dongola to Atbara, the land was mostly flat, with virtually nothing to stop the wind. At times it seemed to be howling out of the North at 30-50 mph. And, unfortunately, we were heading east so the wind was often working against us.
Out here, there’s nothing to stop the wind. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
As you might expect, when you’re on a bicycle, a wind like that begins to dominate your thoughts. I was constantly looking ahead into the distance. I wanted to see if the road would be turning to the right (Yes! Maybe we’d get a bit of a tailwind), or to the left (Oh, no! Turning towards the north would result in a headwind). When we started to tire, we would take turns of about 2 km, riding on the windward side to partially block some of the wind from the other person, and give each other a small rest from fighting the full blunt of the wind. Every chance we’d get, we would try to find some shelter from the gale. We even started taking our lunch and snack breaks on the downwind side of small drainage culverts. Built of stone, these mini-bridges blocked the wind pretty well, even if they didn’t provide the most comfortable places to sit.
Savoring a moment out of the wind. We regularly took our snack and lunch breaks in the shelter provided by road culverts. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Even our bikes needed a rest. After having the wind blow them over several times, we stopped trying to use the kickstands, and just laid our bike on the ground. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Other opportunities to get out of the wind came from the occasional water shelter, and even rocky outcrops along the way. On our second day out of Dongola, when we were running low on water, the shade of a large, overhanging boulder was particularly welcome. Just watch out for scorpions and snakes!
Before reaching the town of Karima, we found that the wind would die down at night, so that pitching the tent and getting a good night’s sleep were relatively straightforward. Once we caught on to the fact that nights were less windy, we even chose to ride at night. We quickly discovered that we could cover twice the distance at night that we could during the same amount of time during the day - because we weren’t having to fight the wind.
Cycling at night was one way to cover more ground, because we spent less energy fighting the wind. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
But once we headed eastward out of Merowe, the winds continued in force all through the night. That became a huge factor in trying to find a good campsite. There were very few places where the hills provided enough protection. The best camping spot we found was snuggled up next to a wall in an old, abandoned building.
A near-perfect campsite, sheltered from the wind by the wall of an abandoned house. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Another night we camped on the downwind side of a scruffy cedar tree. It provided a great windbreak throughout our dinner. But later the wind shifted, and buffeted our tent throughout the night. In the morning, we were covered with desert dust. Fortunately, as we got closer to Khartoum, the number of trees started to increase. If we could find a campsite behind a group of trees, we were pretty well sheltered from the wind, especially after adding our bikes to block the wind that might come through any gaps in the trees (photo below).
On some stretches of the road, blowing sand was a real nuisance. On these days, sand got in everything, filling our pockets, encrusting our water bottles, and leaving little dents in the lenses of our sunglasses. Even our ears would have to be emptied of sand, which demonstrated the utility of the turbans and headscarves that so many people wear in the desert to keep the sand out.
Dang that crosswind. On days like this, sand got into everything we own. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
No, it’s not an alien being. It’s just PedalingGuy trying not to breathe in too much sand. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Frontier Hospitality
Out in the desert, people look out for each other. In some areas, there are occasional “cafeterias” - basically scruffy, makeshift buildings where you can get a meal cooked over a wood fire, get out of the wind, and sit in the shade. Sometimes they even have a small grocery with drinks kept cold in a generator-powered refrigerator. These stops can seem like heaven when you’ve been biking in the sun and wind for hours. The guys who run the cafeterias are friendly and often curious about where we’re from and where we’re going. At one cafeteria in El Beer (definitely not named after the beverage, which is totally lacking in the Sudan), PedalingGuy had quite an audience as he showed the guys a map of our planned ride, and talked with them about the places we had been. One of them was originally from Ethiopia, and he was very interested to hear that we would be going there.
Some cafeterias are run by families with kids. These kids ran the whole show, with the help of a blind older gentleman who would sit and dictate prices. They were eager to pose for a photo with the strange visitors on bicycles. Nubian Desert, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
But there are other times when there aren’t any formal cafeterias available for days of riding. Even then, people who live along the road will wave, encouraging us to stop and visit, over a cup of tea. We had tea with a man, his son and his grandson in a tiny house made from old tarps and scrap wood near a water station, out in the middle of the desert.
Another time, we were getting low on water, when we passed a cluster of buildings and a young man waved to us and offered tea. We accepted his offer. As we entered the compound, we were surrounded by about 50 young boys, and half a dozen men ranging widely in age, who ran the small orphanage. Over tea, PedalingGuy used Google Translate to speak with the elder of the group. We shared our enthusiasm for visiting Sudan, and talked about some of the towns we would visit. For fun, PedalingGuy allowed the young man who originally flagged us down to try riding his fully loaded bike. Everyone had a great time. They kindly filled two of our 1.5 L bottles with water, and we were on our way.
Everyone was excited to pose for a photo with the visitors. PedalingGuy even allowed his new friend (white scarf at the back) to try riding his fully loaded bicycle. The guy actually handled it pretty well. Nubian Desert, Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Another example of Sudanese generosity came when we were looking to buy some gasoline for our camp stove. Sudan subsidizes gasoline prices, and all of its petrol is imported. That’s resulted in a gasoline shortage. Cycling along the highway, we passed lots of former gas stations, that are now closed. Then one day, we saw a group of guys and a couple of cars stopped near the pumps of a gas station by the highway. We quickly pedaled over, hoping we had discovered an open gas station.
But, alas, the guys who were there were just visiting, and there wan’t any gasoline to be had. But they were curious why two folks on bicycles would need gas in the first place. When PedalingGuy pulled out the fuel canister, and explained that it was for cooking, the guys took pity on us - especially since the nearest, functioning gas station was not very close. One of the guys offered to fill our bottle, and proceeded to drain gasoline right out of the tank of his motorcycle and into our fuel canister. It took a while, because the fuel drained out in just a trickle. But when he was done, he refused to take any money for the effort. We were really grateful, because it meant we would be able to eat hot meals in the cool desert evenings.
Nubian Village Life
Northern Sudan is part of the ancient region of Nubia, and it still retains some traditions that are distinctive to that culture. One of the most obvious traits is the way they build their towns. A single home is made up of a cluster of rooms around an open courtyard, with a separate kitchen area. All homes and buildings are only one story high, and the small houses combined with the enclosed areas can be quite large. As a result of this structure, towns sprawl out along the Nile Valley, covering a significant portion of the landscape near the river. The unassuming, mud-brick walls blend into the surrounding barren lands. But they do like to decorate their doors. The main gates through the outer walls are often painted in brightly-colored, geometric designs.
Nubian homes cover large areas, with multiple rooms arranged around an enclosed, open-air courtyard. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
As we moved further south, we saw some variations in housing. Near Merowe, there were mud-walled compounds built on terraced hillsides. And just north of Khartoum, there were whole communities of stick-and-straw buildings that probably got their building materials from the reeds growing along the Nile.
In the village of Abri, we stayed in a guesthouse that is patterned after the traditional home design. Our domed-roof room opened onto a peaceful, central courtyard with a guava tree in the center. Abri, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Learning to eat properly has taken some practice. The Sudanese don’t use utensils. They eat all their meals out of communal bowls, using their right hand. Bread takes the place of the utensils, and is used as a general-purpose, scooping devise to pick up stewed fava beans (fuhl), chicken, rice, vegetables, and anything else that is served. We were lucky to get a lesson in Sudanese dining from the owner of the guesthouse in Abri, who invited us to his home for lunch. While his 4-year old daughter played nearby, we shared a lunch of salad and stewed meat with beans. There, we were able to practice picking up the food with our bread, without using our left hands, and try to get the hang of not dropping any food on the way to our mouths. It’s harder than it looks.
Fava beans are one of the biggest crops in the Nile Valley of Sudan. They’re the main ingredient in fuhl, Sudan’s most widely eaten dish, as well as felafels which are sold on almost every corner in Sudanese markets. Abr, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Shopping in Sudan has its own, unique twists. The country is still laboring under international sanctions that were applied against the previous government (which was in power before last year’s revolution). The current U.S. administration is looking at trying to lift the sanctions but it is a slow process, requiring help from other countries.
One consequence of the sanctions is that credit cards are not used at all, and ATM machines only dispense money to people who have accounts with local Sudanese banks. US dollars are the most widely exchanged currency, with the black market rate being about double the official bank rate. Inflation is very high. In the last 30 days, the Sudanese pound has depreciated against the dollar by about 13%. That’s around 156% annualized inflation. At that rate of inflation, you order two cups of coffee together because the second will have increased in price before it cools (smile). But in all seriousness, the high inflation rate is what is fueling the black market demand for dollars, and contributing to social unrest.
Sudan does not have a lot of trade with other countries because of the international sanctions and high price of imports. You can’t expect to find too many familiar brands. Sudanese market areas are lined with very small shops, mostly selling varying combinations of the same stuff. Generally, you can stand at the entrance of a shop and see all the products the shop offers. If you don’t see what you are after, you move on to the next shop.
A lot of their meals are made from scratch, so the stores don’t carry a lot of pre-made foods that are handy for carrying on a bike. With some experimentation, we’ve been able to find Sudanese food items that we like, including jellies and pasta. But a single shopping trip is likely to take you to half a dozen different stores, and it can take up most of the morning to get all of the items you need. If you also need bread, it will take much longer.
Scoring some bread is particularly tricky. Apparently, only sanctioned bakeries are allowed to sell bread and these are often unlabeled, not easy to find, and they can close unexpectedly. The cost of bread is subsidized by the government, so it’s extremely inexpensive (about 1 SDP per piece, or about $0.12 for 10 big pieces of flatbread), and usually in short supply. There’s always a long line of people waiting for the next batch of fresh bread to be taken out of the oven and distributed. The bread is always warm when purchased because it goes directly from the oven, to bags, to the consumer, within a few minutes. Bread never sits on a shelf.
So we’ve spent our share of time waiting in bread lines. The Sudanese are almost always easy going calm people. But this can change when they are in line for bread. Some lines are orderly with one line for women and another for men. In other cases, order breaks down and bread goes to the most aggressive shoppers. Since all the bread in a batch is sold immediately after being taken out of the oven, there is a rush to get a bag so that you do not have to wait another 20-30 minutes for the next batch to be made.
Bread bakers sell only one item, and spend all day churning out hearty pieces of flatbread from traditional ovens. Since bread is the main utensil for dining, the Sudanese go through a LOT of bread with their meals. People wait in lines to buy bags of 10 or 20 pieces of bread, at prices close to a penny per piece. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
If you look at the picture below of PedalingGuy (purple vest) waiting in line for bread, you see only him and some kids and a few women left in the line. That’s because he’s not very good at being forceful when buying his bread. Lots of more aggressive kids, men and women were able to buy bread ahead of him. But PedalingGuy was still standing in line at the end of the day, waiting. The baker took pity after seeing almost everyone else get their bread, and finally gave him a special bag that had been set aside, just before they closed the bakery for the day.
People really go through a lot of bread in Sudan. It’s always served generously at restaurants - more than we can eat. And it’s common to see half-eaten pieces of bread left on tables in restaurants after a meal. Sudanese families tend to be pretty large (averaging six people per household), and could easily go through 30 pieces or more of bread a day. Reports about the demonstrations in Sudan that toppled the previous government last year said that one of the drivers of unrest was an increase in the price of bread, which used to be even lower than the current cost of 1¢ per piece.
The bigger towns we visited were a lot like the smaller villages, except that they just had more of everything jumbled together. The streets are a buzz of activity, with pedestrians, tuktuks, donkey carts, mini buses, other cars and vendors all jostling with each other along the roads. Most pedestrians walk in the streets because the sidewalks are usually in such disarray that they are impossible to use. The sprawling markets contain a bewildering number of tiny stores. In places like Atbara, we wandered around for quite a while searching for stores that carried the few groceries we were looking for. It seems like it is rare for us to be able to find more than one thing we need in each store. Luckily, if we got tired we could just hop into a tuktuk to head back to our hotel. It’s usually pretty easy to flag one down, and a trip across town never costs more than 50 SDP (about 55¢).
Market shops in Atbara, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Wherever you stay in town, there undoubtedly will be a mosque nearby. Sudanese mosques are often quite lovely, with decorative minarets and evocative lighting at night. We’ve grown accustomed to the regular chanting of the calls to prayer, and are finally reaching the point where we can even sleep through the dawn call to prayer, which often happens as early as 5:30am.
Sudan’s Ancient Civilizations
Most people don’t realize it, but Sudan has nearly twice as many pyramids as Egypt. Yes, that’s right. There are up to 255 known pyramids in Sudan, and only 138 in Egypt.
Part of the reason the Egyptian pyramids are more famous is that they’re a lot bigger, rising 4-5 times higher than the tallest Sudanese pyramids. But one of the fascinating things about the pyramids in Sudan is that they were constructed 500-1000 years after the Egyptians stopped building them. In the Sudanese Kingdom of Kush, royal tombs continued to use the pyramid design until 350 AD.
One of the best places to see Sudan’s pyramids is at Meroe, a remote area south of the city of Atbara. Talk about off the beaten path. When we visited Meroe, there was only one other tourist - a backpacker from Slovakia. It was incredibly refreshing to be able to wander among the pyramids, and essentially have the whole site to ourselves.
Wandering among the tombs of Kushite kings and queens. Meroe, Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Sudanese pyramids have their own, distinctive look. They’re much narrower at the base than Egyptian pyramids, and have steeper sides. Each one had an entry chapel, decorated with many of the same motifs as Egyptian tombs, such as images of the king making offerings to the gods. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of wear and tear on these pyramids, so most of the images carved in the tombs are damaged and difficult to see. But on some of the faces, it’s possible to discern some distinctly African features, including close-cropped, curly hair on the pharaohs.
Another cool feature of the site is that, because of its remote location, it’s possible to camp right outside the gates. We spent the night just on the other side of a hill from the pyramids, and were able to walk back into the archaeological sight just after sunrise to see the pyramids in the morning light.
Even though the site is remote, we had a couple guys with camels come by in the morning when we were packing up. They were fascinated by our bicycles, and sat down only a few feet away to closely watch our activity. In some places this would be considered rude, but here personal space is different, and we have come to accept this as fairly normal. As they watched they became eager to help and participated in taking down the tent. They helped us dump sand out, that had collected in the tent overnight, pack up the poles and roll up the tent. After we were all packed up, we posed together with them and one of the camels for a photo (see below).
Wildlife in the Desert
The Sahara Desert is a pretty inhospitable place for animals, but there are some life forms around. One of the most numerous animals is the scorpion. We found the one pictured below, which seemed to be particularly large. It was almost as long as our hand. We normally put one of our hands in the picture for scale but in this case we were not taking any chances. It was a good thing. We have since taken some time to identify the species, and this one is called the Deathstalker Scorpion. How is that for an ominous name? It is supposedly one of the most toxic species of scorpion in the world.
This is the Deathstalker scorpion. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
By far the easiest species to see are the birds. Wherever there is a tiny bit of vegetation, there are insects that attract birds. We’ve seen more than half a dozen species of these rugged birds, making a living in some pretty harsh conditions. It’s a treat to hear their chirps and whistles out in the desert, reminding us of life’s resilience.
A Greater Hoopoe Lark chases down a grasshopper in the Nubian Desert. Sudan. Copyright © 2019-2020 Pedals and Puffins.
Mammals have been harder to come by in the desert. Most of what we’ve seen are the domestic and semi-wild herds of goats and camels. But there was one sighting we’ll never forget. The night we camped near the Meroe Pyramids, PedalingGuy looked up onto a rocky hillside just behind our tent, after dark, while he was brushing his teeth. In the light of his headlamp, he spotted a pair of Ruppell’s foxes slinking among the rocks. I hurried over, and we both watched as the pair of foxes searched among the rocks, apparently looking for prey. They didn’t seem that scared of us at first. But when PedalingGuy went to get his camera, they disappeared. Ah, well. It was still exciting to see them.
