Dirt, heat, pain and a land of huge smiles

Cycling the Tour D'Afrique, days 23 to 29, Khartoum to the Ethiopian border.

Distance Cycled: 2923km

Metres Climbed: 7023m

Time on Bike: 104:25:16

Time in Truck: 0:00:00

Race Position: 2nd

After crossing the Sahara (no mean feat, even if I say so myself) the next section saw us trade the endless desert terrain for the spiky Sahlien bush, interspersed with huge Sorghum fields. The terrain got harder and bumpier and the temperature, seriously hot.

Beforehand, however, we enjoyed a rest day in Khartoum, situated at the confluence of the Niles, where the white and blue Niles meet, before heading north together. After the utter chaos and noise of the previous capital city we had been in, Khartoum was surprisingly serene. The level of development was also surprising after the dusty and ramshackle towns we had passed through in the previous week (still within the ‘wealthy’ region of Sudan), it seemed abundantly clear that the wealth of the country is very much concentrated in it’s capital. The downtown, air-conditioned, western style mall, though out of place, provided a welcome restbite, offering ice creams and espresso coffee!

Corrugation!

The cycling stretch began with a couple of long days on the increasingly broken tarmac before beginning the first of our off-road sections of the tour. A three day stretch including the hardest cycling I have ever done. The terrain flowed between smooth dirt roads with the occasional patch of deeper sand threatening to throw you off to the dreaded, bone jarring, corrugation. (I only suffered a small body-bike-floor malfunction, though other riders were not so lucky, coming into camp with a whole range of scrapes and bruises). I cannot emphasise how painful cycling a rigid framed cross bike on corrugation is. Mile after mile we endured, at snails pace, this dreaded terrrain, constantly weaving around the road trying to find a slightly smoother section, always thinking “The grass is always greener...” yet rarely that came to fruition. In fact, still, a week later, I haven’t regained full motor control of right hand! What’s more, the temperatures registered north of 45C, leading to a number of riders suffering from heat exhaustion. Finally we ended with a shortish (when did 100km become short?) stretch of broken tar to the Ethiopian border. As we cannot cycle through Ethiopia this year, the next morning we were then bussed back to Khartoum.

Kid's queuing up to offer us a "donkey shower"

Back in Khartoum for a night, we headed out to watch the Sufi dancing performed every Friday night (Friday being the islamic holy day). Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam, where there is the belief that their path to God can be reached through chanting, singing, music and dance. A true to form the music was hypnotic and the dancing passionate.

Sufi man

Despite the bruising cycling, this section will very much be remember for the incredible hospitality shown by the Sudanese people at every interaction. Whether is was being offered tea in the back streets of Dongola to sit with local elders, beckoned over to join a table at coffee stand to explain our story and offered further coffee, chai and various sweet treats or the general cheeriness of everyone that came over to talk to us at camp. There was also a beautiful moment just outside the Ethiopian border. I was alone in a small village, sipping chai and sheltering from the sun, when a young man entered the shack, saw the sweat dripping on my face and with genuine concern insisted that I should be drinking water and not chai and was adamant that he buy me a cold bottle of water and simply wouldn’t accept me paying for it. Although I had a full bottle of (pretty hot) water on my bike, the interaction and the cooling water certainly helped in that final baking stretch into camp. The hospitality and generosity of the Sudanese continues to amaze me. Perhaps seen through the rose-tinted eyes of a naive traveller but I felt safer walking around the streets of Khartoum at night and more comfortable joining a stranger’s table at a coffee stall than I would ever be in London. Not wishing to dwell too long on the melancholy of current affairs, but this has served to reinforce that the image of Sudan, of Islam and of the Arab world pedalled by our media and politicians, is so far removed from that of my own personal experiences on this trip.