February 08 |
Climbing & Travelling in SudanThis stage has finished. Click on the silk road or arc of asia trips for up-to-date expedition information |
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Click here for Kassala gallery |
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From
Khartoum, we head to the Egyptian border at Wadi Halfa, a small collection
of low brick huts. Again there is a choice, get the train to Lake Nasser,
from where we will pick up the slow boat that 
takes
us gently up Lake Aswan and into Egypt, or to stick with the truck and take
part in a truly adventurous piece of desert driving, a lot of digging it out
of Saharan sand, getting delayed by sand storms and stopping at the ancient
Nubian sites and nomadic encampments on the 1,500 mile crossing. I have plenty
of photos of good-looking boulder fields and low crags to explore along the
way if there is time. You could be sure you would be the first people to ever
climb there.
The last time the Hot Rock truck went this way, Fiona the mechanic had to
deal with a broken spring hanger mid desert, how she laughed. Dave who was
the expedition’s climbing leader wrote of the crossing:
'There is just a maze of tracks over dust and sand. We knew when we had found
the road as we instantly hit corrugations. These are 20cm high bumps across
the road regularly spaced by a gap of 50cm. The result is that everything
is shaken very rapidly and every weld, nut and bolt is tested to a point very
close to their limit. 
The main road to Khartoum can be described as pure class A crap. Imagine a
road to the local quarry, add corrugations and large amounts of soft sand.
Now take away any other sign of human existence, including other traffic ...
Over the following two days we drove 320km in two blocks of 12 hour driving
to the town of Dongola.
We spent a day there to scrape the dust from our bodies, extract the sand
from every orifice, and give a bit of TLC to the truck. The next two days
we longed for the corrugations, at least then we would know that the sand
was hard. Instead we drove on soft sand. Every now and then the truck would
dig itself in. Using hands, shovels and sand ladders we would crawl forward
5m before sinking again and having to spend another 10 minutes digging. This
could be repeated as much as 5 times before we would reach harder sand. The
last 320km to Khartoum we were overjoyed to meet asphalt with the assurance
it would not stop.' 
The alternative train journey is one of the greatest train rides in the world,
cutting a straight line over 1700km of desert. The track was laid by Thomas
Cook over a hundred years ago and appears to have not had any 
maintenance
since. The train is periodically delayed by huge sand dunes on the tracks
and people falling off the roof (it's free to travel on the roof, but is rounded
and sleeping becomes a problem.)
Whatever way you travel this section, we will meet at Lake Nasser to catch
the boat to Egypt.
