Sudan is a wonderful surprise; you hear ‘Welcome to Sudan’ and ‘Do you like Sudan’ everywhere. The food is a blend of Turkish, Western and local dishes. And, for the pastries … we try it all!
Sinful pastries of Sudan!
We arrived at the border post on a Saturday, which overall was maybe not such a good idea. On the Ethiopian side, we had to wait in the hot sun for the Custom officials to finish their loongg extended lunch. This gave a couple of ‘fixers’ enough time to harass us to exchange money and to gossip about the ‘chad chewing’ officials.
On the Sudanese side, things were a lot more organize and clean BUT after all the paperwork for our Carnes were done we waited almost 6 hours for the OFFICIAL MONEY COLLECTOR to release our papers. They filled in all the forms, then proceeded with lunch, then stamped our papers and said “we will be right back, just going to pray” … for SIX HOURS!? Well, this gave us enough time though to use some fellow travellers’ car to do a tube change on my bike.
At 7:30pm when the officials eventually release our papers, we asked to rather camp inside their compound. We heard so many travellers telling us that it is a strange phenomenon, but it seems that headlights are not kept on permanently, only flashed now and again ….?
Sudanese roads and small towns are very different from Ethiopia, for one there are a lot less people and animals on the roads – must be the heat! We did however meet to Italian bikers, doing Milan to CapeTown in a very short time.
Although we are here in Spring time – it feels like the hottest place in South Africa in high summer. The air is hot and everything permanently dusty but this is nothing compared to the strange beauty of this dry and friendly land.