Sudan: the world we all dream

Previous Image
Next Image

info heading

info content

At first it was a strange desert, it was a curvy road. On the sides were some tall rocks. Then, the road got straight and we stayed in that immensity with the wonderful feeling that it would take us nowhere. There was not a single sign of life for many miles and the first, after some crazy bike riders we met on the boat who were pedaling across Africa, they were plastic tarps and wood in which abandoned men seemed to sleep.

Everything seemed beautiful and bleak to us. Those who like deserts, as in our case, that seemed perfect to us. We decided then to advance and advance between those sands. We began to leave some populations of Nubian villages in which we met with frank glances of men who dragged the desert winds on their donkeys and camels.. And there was the Nile too, blue in its waters and green in its shores full of palm trees.

Frank glances of men who dragged the desert winds on their donkeys and camels

Then the sun began to set as if its colors were melting. The sand and the sun mixed and we made a cloud of dust that I decided to photograph getting out of the vehicle. In the desert one learns to be happy with nothing, maybe that's your secret. Nowhere do you feel so much, so little the others. And so we got to Karima, a Sudanese town where we ran into the first military checkpoint at its entrance.

The town was a succession of wide and straight streets full of tuk tuk and dozens of trucks exactly the same as those that exist as transport throughout the continent. The bars were full and chickens were cooked in ovens and grills that smoked the night. We arrived at a pension, Al Nasser, in which we stayed in a room with three beds, a hole as a bathroom and an air conditioner. The receptionist was an older man, charming, who had a wooden leg that he handled with ease. He told us that we should go to the Security Office to register so that they would let us sleep and there we went to have our registration taken.

We had a delicious roast chicken for dinner in a restaurant. There were no cutlery, no napkins and the walls of the place were black like the baked thighs of our dinner. However that chicken was salty and tender between our fingers and we ordered up to a second round. Then we got lost in the streets of Karima where the men occupied dozens of tables in the central square around some vats with tea. The tents wore their colored lights and life seemed to light up under the cover of the moon. The heat was something more bearable, although a young man told us “how do you think of coming at this time? You travel to Sudan in December and January that the temperatures are supported ".

We parked the car next to some pyramids that nobody was watching

Finally we went to sleep and woke up in the middle of a powerful light that warmed the air. We bought some fresh breads and went to the pyramids and temples of Yebel Barkal, sacred place of the ancient Napata kingdom. We parked the car next to some pyramids that nobody was watching and I went up to some rocks to check if, as I thought, there was only horizon there. And yes, there was only horizon.

Then we left to see the pyramids of Meroe that our friend Daniel Landa had highly recommended to us the night before leaving Madrid.. On the way the strong wind blew sand on the road until it was almost hidden. We saw wild camels, dunes, palm trees and some clueless bird that flew among some weeds that grew in the dust.

Suddenly we saw a detour that indicated Meroe. Two kilometers later we were in one of those places that you never arrive and when you arrive you never forget. Those ruins of the Meroitic kingdom, continuator of the kingdom of Napata, they seem to have their roots in the desert sands that climb their rocks. Its 2300 years of life turned them into stone, in eagle, tree, lie or maybe in torch. It does. Meroe is an eternal journey of battles with Roman and Egyptian legions that tried to conquer the impossible until force imposed itself on the soul. And there has been so much past of attacks and counterattacks and of lands that were born to have no borders. Meroe is the world we all dream of.

Meroe is an eternal journey of battles with Roman and Egyptian legions trying to conquer an impossible

And then we went to Khartoum and discovered one of the neater and cleanest capitals I have ever seen in Africa.. We slept at the Acropolis hotel, journalists house, and we stole some photo to the point where the white Nile and the blue Nile meet on the way to the Mediterranean. I say we steal because in Khartoum you have to ask for a permit to take photos and we didn't have time for both.. Either we went with the photos or we left with a piece of paper that said we could have taken photos.

And after the capital came the south. And some green arrived and towns with many people and with them the garbage, that where man appears nature shrinks. And we checked again in each gesture and each stop the cordiality of this town. And we got to Gallabat at seven in the afternoon, the border with Ethiopia already closed. A man, a look, paid some papers that we had to do. He did it generously and did not accept that we return anything in exchange. "Welcome", he told us, "Did you like my country?”.

He did it generously and did not accept that we return anything in exchange

So we decided to sleep on the very edge, In one of those places where you never think you could spend a night. It was a village of flimsy shacks and frontier bars and restaurants where some television sets with generators lit up the darkness.. Around him sat dozens of people who looked at us like the very strange that we were there.

We dined in one of those booths a boiled egg and some fried vegetable pasta and something unrecognizable and we went to sleep between the tent and the car in almost intolerable heat. So it dawned, with some sweat on the back and dozens of people crossing under a log that had already been raised to allow movement. There were dozens of men and women crossing from Ethiopia to Sudan. We look at that flood and after its path, in the other sense, we saw our next destination: Abisinia.

  • Share

Comments (3)

  • Daniel Landa

    |

    Great story, Brandoli!! Sudan may be everything one needs from a place where there is nothing.

    Answer

  • Mayte

    |

    How exciting everything! what envy, I love, I want more…

    Answer

  • Arts I

    |

    I am glad that you are already enjoying. Envy, as Mayte says.
    Good luck!

    Answer

Write a comment