We traveled to The Sudan in January. Planned over a year ahead we succeeded in coinciding our arrival with the day the South voted for separation with the North and amidst stern warnings from Foreign Affairs not to visit....
Once again we were with Dr Michael Birrell and BC Archaeology and our aim was to study the Kingdom of The Black Pharaohs.
In Winter Khartoum is relatively mild for one of the hottest major cities in the World and in January very busy. Not a sign of crowds or protest, the youth and beauty were picnicing on the river banks in the warm evening under the Tuti Island Bridge over the Blue Nile.
Our Hotel, the old and Majestic Holiday Villa, air conditioned in parts and hugely comfortable had Wi Fi no worries, but not a beer in sight as this is a Muslim country. The Blue Nile ran on the other side of the traffic filled Sharia el Nil to the coughing of the one lunger pumps watering the cultivation on Tuti Island. We read in the Foyer that Kitchener and Churchill had stayed and more importantly so had Queen Victoria and her adored Albert.
A bemused search of Wikipedia later on revealed not surprisingly that alas She had not, however She had indeed got to within a good shout having been to Port Sudan for a few days doing the Royal business.
As ever with us we have no idea how to present this material. We will most probably do it by archaelogical site and day by day, letting it unfold as we go on. Pano abound. There is one already in Galleria at :
https://pbase.com/galleria_rusticana/image/132967927 on account of its technical characteristics. It will reappear later at Naga with additional local colour.. We will cross several deserts, go through The Nile Elbow, over several of the six cataracts, nearly wreck on one off them, climb a thousand foot Gebel and go to the Island of Sai almost to the Egyptian border on Lake Nasser.
We are going to include lots of Google Earths to help set the pace. The quality of the Googles varies over the Sudan like the proverbial Curates egg . Would someone please tell us what in heavens name the Curates egg was. And where we can, we will include some links to Wikipedia to fill in gaps.
For now to allow the time needed to do the work there will be sub galleries for varied interests. So dear viewer you can come back if and when with out being whelmed.
We traveled over six weeks in two three week tours firstly to western South Africa thru Caprivi to Johannesburg. The Sudan followed on after Johannesburg and we have decided to tackle the Sudan Galleria first... We could not travel from Johannesburg to Khartoum as the politics were not correct. We flew over the top all the way up the hill to Abu Dahbi waited many hours and flew back to Khartoum in the best of political company to an empty International airport... There are only two thousand visitor visas issued in The Sudan during the year.
Most of our days were in trucks and tented camps and sleeping bags over the six weeks. We marked up over ten thousand kilometres and some interesting bruises and as usual packed far too many clothes.
