Our route over the last days.

The Sudanese make you jump through a lot of hoops before you’re good to go for an overland travel. After the registration with the police we had to get a travel and photo permission, which was not possible since Friday and Saturday are weekend days here. Luckily, our fixer Midhat could help us out with that as well. Perfect! So on Saturday morning we headed off with Grant to Midhats place to get the permit, since Grant also needed one we could do it all in one go.

We also had not paid Midhat so far and did it while we were there. I have to say this guy is amazing. He moved mountains to get our bikes and paperwork in order. If you ever find you self in need of what ever in Sudan, call Midhat Mahir (www.tour-sudan.com). Great guy!

Back when we were in Turkey I was chatting with Simon, a friend from Frankfurt and he asked me what will happen to our transport crates once we are in Sudan. Jokingly, I said they probably warm some once home or become some once home. Turns out that wasn’t all that wrong. Midhat bought our transport crates to build a partition in his flat.

After this pleasant morning we hit the road, but first stopping at the merging of the white and blue Nil in Khartoum and taking the obligatory picture.

We rode up along the Nil towards the Meroe pyramids, some 250 km out of Khartoum. It was a pretty easy ride apart from the unmarked speed bumps on the road which really wake you up. Also, while riding in the dessert you often face strong winds. You have to lean into the wind and drive always in an angle which results in the funny effect that you sometimes have to lean to the right in a left corner.

What is really annoying here are the frequent checkpoints along the road. Usually the guys are just bored out and see some bikes coming and want to have a chat, so you always get pulled over. In most cases they want a copy of the travel permit and or passport. God knows what they are doing with them. But they collect them like little kids collect stickers (or whatever kids collect these days).

There is no road from the highway to the pyramids in the dessert, which meant some off road action with the loaded bikes through some deep sand. I dropped my bike when I hit some deep sand that disguised itself as a solid surface. No problem, just the lifting of the bike in the dessert heat is a toughy. Grant had a brilliant definition for this kind of endeavor and we have his permission to steal it. He calls this “type II fun”. Type I fun are things that are fun planning, fun doing and fun remembering. Type II fun are things that are fun planning, no fun at all doing and fun remembering. Spot on! Type III fun would be something that is no fun planning, no fun doing and no fun remembering, commonly known as “no fun”.

After some more type II fun we reached the pyramids. They are in the middle of nowhere, no tourists nothing. But still, there is a small building with two souvenir sellers and one official to whom you give 50 Sudanese pounds each, get a recede and then can walk around the pyramids. As the name might give it away, they are from the Meroe kingdom which reigned from 800 BC to 350 AD in this region. They look different than the once in Egypt, especially due to their steeper angle.

It was fairly late once we finished our tour around the pyramids and we still had to find a place to camp/sleep before sunset. Problem was the very strong wind and the lack of wind protection, which rendered sleeping in the dessert close to impossible unless we wanted to be sand blasted.

We found a “truck stop” nearby and they let us pitch our tents inside some walls. Due to the heat we only set up the inner tent. We were quite relieved to have found a place to sleep without much searching. Yet, after a lot of trying with their satellite dish they unfortunately got a signal. The truckers and sheep herders from the dessert all gathered around the old TV and we watched with them the probably trashiest TV show ever made. It was a Bollywood adaptation of Aladin poorly dubbed to Arabic. We know some people back home love trash movies. They will have a blast if they can ever get hold of this Aladin production.

We were pretty tiered and called it an early day. Problem was that our tents were rather close to the TV which was still roaring on sound level “deaf granny”. On top of this was the lack of air movement behind the walls (yeah I know we wanted wind protection). What followed was the worst night of our lives, we all agreed on that. It was crazy hot and with the TV no sleep was possible. We have never sweated this much in our lives. Whoever claimed its getting freezing cold at night in the dessert has clearly never tried to sleep in the Sudanese dessert.

On the upside, we left the truck stop the next day fairly early and did a lot of riding before the midday heat kicked in. We drove 250 something km along the dessert highway to Karima in northern Sudan. Just a great ride. No civilization or traffic, just dessert, mountains, camels and strong wind. Luckily we started with full gasoline tanks. We even had some rain in the dessert, which is fairly rare around here. The Wadis, the dried river beds in the dessert, were bursting with water. Amazing view.

During a photo stop two Land Cruisers pulled over and a bunch of people came pouring out all wanting to take a photo with us, including some ladies. I mention this because we read a lot about the situation in Sudan where you won’t find women in public life and if you see some they are completely covered. We don’t know what you would have to do to see no women around here. but we see women everywhere on the street, bus or wherever and many just wear a loose scarf around the back of the head (some also without scarf), many man by the way cover their heads as well, which is a smart idea with the burning sun.

In Karima we visited some more pyramids, this time for free. We could even drive the bikes directly up to the pyramids, which included some more type II fun in the sand. We found a cheap hotel to stay and shared one room with air conditioning, which was highly appreciated. The owner proudly told us that the water in the shower is directly coming from the Nil. The very brown and muddy liquid though is to our opinion not the best selling point for a hotel room.

The next morning Grant parted very early. He had to do a long run up to Wadi Halfa in order to catch the ferry to take him to Egypt. We had a brilliant time with that guy! We rode back to Khartoum. On the way in the middle of the dessert we got into a speed control! Apparently we were speeding with 108 km/h (which was definitely not the case) on a road where only 80 km/h was allowed, not that there was any sign… They had top modern equipment, color photos from front and back of the bikes wireless transmitted to their laptop. Just like home… It would have been a 100 pounds penalty each but they let us of the hook and we cruised down to Khartoum (now at 80 km/h.). We were running pretty low on sudanse pounds and needed the cash we had to gas up. So they let us go. Interesting experience, I guess they were just very friendly people!

We reached Khartoum in the midday heat and had to cross the big central marked. That was definitely type III fun. The outside air was around 55°C, the bikes got so steaming hot we could burn our legs on the tank. It was crazy. We both where pretty close to a heat stroke. At some point Daniels bike ran out of gas and I went to the next gas station to get some fuel, all easy since we are in the city.

We reached the youth hostel and had to lay down a few minutes next to the bikes before we could do anything. This heat cannot be described by words. Sudan is great but we are now at the point where we long for a colder place and thus look very much forward to the Ethiopian highlands (they also have beer!)

 

We are now in Khartoum/Sudan. A lot happened and had to be done to get here. But let me start from the beginning. Again, this will be a longer entry. Read it our just enjoy the pictures 🙂

The last days in Istanbul were filled with the preparation of the airfreight and organizing the arrival in Khartoum. On Saturday, the 30^th of August we went back to the motorium guys (we are actually now linked on their homepage 🙂 ) and met Daniels relative Yakup who lives in Istanbul. Funny story, they didn’t knew each other but when Daniel mentioned his last name to Tolga, the shop owner, he said he knew another guy by this name. Small world.

After that we went to Kadir, the carpenter preparing our transport boxes and had a look at them. They looked great and we tried them on with my bike J . Getting such boxes in Istanbul was a big problem so it was quite a relive to see that they are of good quality and will be ready in time for the loading on Monday.

We met with Kadir on Monday morning at the Atatürk Cargo Terminal to load the bikes into the boxes. We got the OK for the Cargo company to do the preparations of the bikes at the Cargo Terminal, which meant to empty the fuel tank, drain the engine oil, remove the battery and remove windshield and mirrors. The latter two are for size reasons to fit the bikes into the boxes. In airfreight you pay by volumen, unless you exceed 167 kg per m³, which you won’t do with a motorbike, unless you use a metal press…

Communication with the cargo company was a mess. We never got clear answers via mail or telephone, very tedious. And thus we weren’t able to meet the cargo guys at the terminal. They kept on saying they will sent someone to pick us up. Nothing happened. After 2 h Daniel found a guy of the company who took us to the loading bay were we could do our work. The guy, Hamit, was super nice and helpful, he even invited us for lunch. He had the things under control and with his supervision and “can do” attitude the loading worked smoothly.

Luckily we were allowed to pack our luggage with the bikes into the transport crates, which made our flight the next day a lot easier.

After loading things got a bit messy. Remember when we wrote “Yay, they didn’t need our carnet for the Turkey entry”? Yeah, those dopes at the border should have written into our passport that we entered with the bikes. Which, even though we had to show the passports three different officers, no one did. This fired back now. Without an import you can’t export. Solution? Blame the Greek! We entered from Greece to Turkey so the cargo guys prepared a letter saying the Greek should have written something in our passports, what they didn’t. Well Greece is in the EU, why should they write anything into the passports? Well neverminde, it worked out that way.

While packing the bikes no one wanted to check them. Which puzzled us, but hey, why not? Well they should have controlled the chassis number. Now the crates were closed. The Turkish Cargo officer gave us the option that for a 100 € each he would not check the number and we are good to go. No way! With Kadir we opened the boxes again and let them check the number for free. Now the bikes were ready and after almost 9 h at the Cargo Terminal Kadir was so nice to take us along with his moving van. We arrived very tiered at the house and went for a very nice farewell dinner with Daniels aunts.

The next morning we had to catch a taxi at 4 am to get to the airport and fly via Cairo to Khartoum. In Cairo we touched African ground for the first time in our travel 🙂 and had 8 h of transit, super boring. But, with the slowest wifi in the world we passed the time. We did see the egyptian football national team though! Unfortunately no photo.

The flight to Khartoum was eventless, except that we never had to show our passports and visa this many times ever when taking a flight.

We arrived in Khartoum after sunset, after immigration and screening of my luggage by the police we entered the country. Funny story with the screening. When my bag came on the luggage belt it was marked with several blue chalk crosses. I had the chalk all over my pants and the police officer kept on apologizing for the mess :D. That’s something about Sudan. You will have to look very hard to find as polite and friendly people as the Sudanese are. They have a very high level of dignity in their public life, something many other countries including Germany can learn a lot from.

At the airport we directly met with our fixer Mithad and Mohamed who would drive us to the guesthouse. What is a fixer? A fixer is someone who helps you with customs and the official paperwork, which means finding the right people and negotiating the “fee”. Since no one imports motorbikes via Khartoum airport it would be close to impossible to get the bikes without the service of a fixer. So we discussed the strategy with Midhat and agreed to meet the next day at the airport.

By the way, Sudan is hot. Not the “oh it’s a hot day, let’s have a day at the lake” kind of hot, but the “OMG I am burning alive” kind of hot. At night it’s still 35°C, thank god for the air-condition in our room (as long as there is power, which works quite ok)! The direct sun during day really feels like sitting in a fire. Great place for wearing all the motorcycle gear J. By the way, shorts in public are frowned upon, so you have to wear long trousers.

The next two days were spent sitting in front of the “Cargo Terminal” in Khartoum in the heat and waiting for the forms to be filled. We sat next to a lady making tea and coffee and as the only white people around we were a bit of an attraction. We talked with countless people. All very nice. Everybody loves Germany since the world cup J. We got invited to tee and coffee all day long, and by this I mean of course a cup of sugar with traces of liquid. When they offered us orange juice they wanted to know if we want sugar in the juice. I am sure they put extra sugar in their Coca Cola as well.

Well in the end we got the bikes yesterday evening! It was not easy and it’s probably too much to go into detail but of course a lot more people needed to be paid. Which is ok, the rates are quite low here. You get a dinner for two with four drinks (obviously no alcohol) for under 3 € all together.

Typically Africa, we got the bikes some 15 min after closing of the customs and everything was “hurry hurry” after sitting for 8 h around doing nothing. We weren’t allowed to unpack the bikes in the customs area. It had to happen outside on the street in the scorching sun with plenty of people being very interested in our work.

Everybody was happy when the bikes were ready again. After 11 h and an crazy ride with Midhat on the back of my bike to fetch engine oil for Daniel we were off on African roads on our bikes! The fun lasted for about 1 km until we ran into a police check point, but everything was fine. We guess the officer wanted to show off with his (bad) English skills.

We read a lot about the terrible Khartoum traffic. But honestly, after two weeks in Istanbul Khartoum traffic feels like a walk in the park, except maybe for the massive potholes in the street.

Today we met an Canadian traveler, Grant, on his Africa Twin totally by accident during the registration with the police. He started in Cape Town and drives north. We will ride out of Khartoum together, since he is heading for Egypt and we want to do a tour along the Nile to see some of the pyramids here. After this we will finally meet David (www.motorrad-tour.info) who is right now waiting for his ferry in Aswan.