Sudan: Pyramids, Permits, Porridge

The police officer grabs my arm roughly and tries to drag me behind him. Being Arab, rather than African, he's extremely short in stature and I tower over him. I resist. He shouts roughly in Arabic - I don't catch the exact meaning, but the sense is clear. He squeezes my arm tighter, so tight I can feel his nails digging in and drawing blood. For a second I consider smashing his face with my fist - perhaps wisely, I restrain myself. He pulls himself up to his full height, around 5 foot 5, and brings his face very close to mine. I mime as if to bite his nose, and he backs off, cowering in fear. "Inta mejnoon, inta mejnoon", he shouts in Arabic - "You are crazy, you are crazy", and unmistakably mimes a handcuffing maneouvre. My German travelling companions, Peter and Tariq, laugh contemptuously at him. "There's nothing he can do, we have done nothing wrong", says Peter, grinning. For all my external bravado I don't quite share his optimism, in fact I feel quite frightened. We are, after all, under arrest in Sudan.

Ah, Sudan. In his epic account of the British reconquest of the Sudan in 1898, With Kitchener to Khartoum, the Victorian journalist G.W. Steevens memorably described the country as "a God-accursed wilderness, an empty limbo of torment for ever and ever". The ancient Egyptians knew it simply as "Kush" - "the wretched"; both are descriptions with which I have more than a little sympathy. In many ways Sudan is exactly as might be expected: very big, very hot, very dusty, and very poor. The roads are awful. The hotels are awful. The food is awful. The bureaucracy is simply staggering. Barring a few broken down pyramids scattered across the desert, there isn't even much in the way of things to see. And yet...

When locals engage travellers in conversation, which they do with an incredible regularity, one of the first questions they ask is invariably, "why are you here?". This is usually followed by a verbatim regurgitation of the country's well-publicised ills: poverty, war, government-sponsored genocide, famine and the like. The question is quite a difficult one to answer - and one I have asked myself regularly in the last ten days, usually following a muttered exhortation of "fucking Sudan".

Yet Sudan is charming. It might take ten hours to travel 100 miles, it might be impossible to eat anything except felafel and laughing cow cheese, and it might need two hours a day just to negotiate the bureaucratic jungle of travel permits, photo permits, security registration, and army checkpoints, but... Sudan is like a woman who plays hard to get. Coquettish, manipulative, evasive, sometimes downright unpleasant, but every so often, just as all patience is finally being exhausted, she does something so beautiful, alluring, and beguiling that she reels you right back in again.

And so it proved with the saga of my arrest in the exquisitely-named town of "Dongola". The town itself sits on the west bank of the Nile, while its bus station is on the east; the two are linked by a small ferry. Upon arrival at the bus station the previous day, I had simply boarded the waiting ferry and crossed. After a couple of hours jumping through hoops at the town's security office, I had the requisite permits to stay in town, and was able to check in to a hotel and go about my business unmolested. Leaving, however, was a different story. A jumped-up little man with a moustache (why do third world government officials always have a moustache?) demanded a permit. Sensing a scam - aside from the previous day's successful ferry crossing without any such permit, he wore no uniform and carried no identification - I ignored him and boarded the ferry.

Enter another jumped-up little man with a moustache, a hugely umpleasant-looking growth on his cheek, and the light blue uniform of the Sudanese police. I was in no mood to cooperate with him, and his aggressive demeanour and physical man-handling did not help matters. Upon reaching the east bank of the Nile we were hauled off to a nearby police station, harangued in Arabic (which for once I made great theatre of not speaking a single word of) and intimidated by a very public production of handcuffs and a tour of the cells - all the while my assailant bristling with indignation in the margins, strange growth quivering with unrestrained outrage.

Finally an English speaker was produced. This man was not an official, merely a bystander from the nearby market who has been commandeered to act as an interpreter. In full earshot of the assembled police and army officers, who, unusually for heavily anglophone Sudan, did not understand a word, he offered reassurances.

"I am sorry you have been treated like this. You see what we must deal with from our government? You must have a permit to cross the Nile - without it you cannot board the ferry. If you do not argue, accept the permit, you will be released. If you do not, they will keep you here. This will be bad for you I think."

Despite the fact that this would indeed be "bad for you", my German companions and I were not to be placated so easily, however.

"But yesterday we crossed the Nile on this exact fucking ferry, without a permit. So what the fuck are you talking about?"

"Ah but that was crossing east to west. For this you need no permit. Crossing west to east is a different story. For this you must have permit. I am sorry. You must wait here, the man with the permits will come from the office in Dongola, and you will go with him back to the office, to get a permit."

The man duly arrived, half an hour later, permits in hand. Could he not just issue the permit there and then, to save us two more crossings of the river, one with permit, one without? Of course not. That would be unforgivable. We must accompany him back to his office forthwith. Peter, who has not been to Venezuela, took his turn to vent his feelings of disgust at Sudan's Monty Pythonesque bureaucracy:

"This is the worst country I have ever been to. This is just ridiculous. We will return to Europe and tell everyone how terrible Sudan is and no-one else will come here. Why do you victimise us like this?"

Our interpreter just smiled sadly and shrugged.

"This is the Sudanese government, not the Sudanese people"

An hour later, permits in hand, and fresh from a lecture from the chief of police about the extreme danger of crossing the Nile from west to east without a permit (presumably he was not referring to the likelihood of assault by his officers, though that appeared the only remotely dangerous aspect of the crossing to me), we approached the ferry ticket office, muttering curses on Sudan and all its ridiculousness. Our interpretor appeared from nowhere, and in a stroke reminded us of what's so great about this country.

"I am so sorry for what has happened. I have bought your ferry tickets for you. Please do not think badly about Sudan and its people."

How could I disagree?

Into Africa

Every once in a while, perhaps every couple of years or so, somewhere in the world, in a far-off country populated by brown people about whom we in the west care very little, a grossly overloaded passenger vessel sinks, with huge and tragic loss of life. Amid much local wailing and gnashing of teeth, western journalists begin the tut-tutting and condascension, while we voyeuristic viewers revel in the horror. "Surely there couldn't really have been 7,000 people on that decrepit little boat?", we sigh, aghast. "What kind of fool would ever board such a ship?"

Make no mistake, one of these days such a fate will halt the Aswan to Wadi Halfa ferry across Lake Nasser. Thankfully, however, no such tragedy befell the creaking vessel last Monday, when I was aboard for the 20 hour cruise from Egypt to Sudan.

The number of people on board, and the amount of personal cargo they bring with them, is simply staggering. Sleeping on the top deck, under the stars,I had expected to be largely alone. Crucially, I found a spot next to the lifeboats, "just in case". After all, surely everyone else would be in their first class cabins,or in the second class seating area below decks? Wrong. There is not a single square inch of floor space that is not occupied by tired limbs, Sudanese or Egyptian, or a random assortment of cargo. As well as personal effects, a bewildering array of import-export merchandise appears to be making the cross-border journey: televisions, mobile phone accessories, fruit and vegetables, bedding, women's underwear, ballpoint pens; all of it unceremoniously piled high on deck. Even my clever worst-case scenario planning lies in tatters: were the ship to start sinking, even those people currently situated within five feet of the lifeboats would render them fatally overcrowded; god knows what would happen to the cast of thousands marooned below decks.

As night falls and the sky reveals a shimmering blanket of stars, the crowds stretch out and try to find sleep. There is no time for squeamishness or qualms about personal space; everyone bunks down together in extreme proximity. All manner of bodily functions occur all around me, with a noxious array of odours and excretions filling the night air. Pleasant it is not.

Just as I dose off, I am rudely awoken by one of the few other khawajas -Sudanese Arabic for "foreigners"or "white man" - on board, as it seems the powers that be require our passports for immediate processing. As I am the only one of the ten or so khawajas to speak any Arabic whatsoever, I have been nominated to act as interpreter. I reluctantly make my way around the upper deck to each group of travellers, picking my way clumsily through the knots of slumbering bodies on the floor, tripping over some, standing on others, until I have collected all the necessary passports. I am then led back across the ship, this time taking the direct route along a pipe on the outer edge of the top deck. The pipe sways unsteadily under my weight, and as I peer down into the dark waters of Lake Nasser, it occurs to me that should I fall, no-one will hear my screams above the roar of the engines as I drown. Worse still, nine other khawajas will face an even more unpleasant fate, as devoid of passports and visas, they too are swallowed up by the murky depths of Sudanese bureaucracy.

Despite my unease with heights, I try not to look down, focus on the other side, and eventually make it across without a hitch. For the second time in two days I feel that rush of gratitude to God, Allah, Buddha, or Fate - whichever higher power - or more likely blind chance - has kept me alive. For yesterday I was involved in a terrifying bus crash at close to 100mph. Our lunatic driver, doing 160kph while sitting less than 2 metres behind the vehicle in front, actually saved our lives with his sheer idiocy and incompetence: had he seen the small car sized container come cartwheeling off the pickup truck flying past in the opposite direction and swerved, I would undoubtedly have come to a sticky end on the Aswan-Abu Simbel desert highway. As it was, he never flinched and just drove straight through the bouncing pallet, obliterating the container and most of the front end of our minibus in the process.

Sitting just behind the hapless chauffeur, I saw the whole thing unfold in slow motion; for a couple of seconds time seemed to stand still as I struggled to comprehend what was happening. As a couple of girls behind me screamed, I had time to notice the confused look on the driver's face as a huge box cannoned off the windscreen. Amazingly the glass didn't shatter, though I have no idea how, and we were able to slow to a standstill as people around me by turns sobbed, cursed, and laughed nervously. Never one to pass up the opportunity to practise my linguistic skills, I mustered a few choice insults in Arabic for the benefit of the moronic driver who had just nearly killed us all. In the circumstances I wasn't really satisfied with "donkey"; luckily a corpulent Kiwi sitting just behind me spoke for the whole bus with a tirade of agricultural anglo-Saxon, delivered in a peculiarly amusing Auckland accent.

Upon repeating this grim tale to one of my fellow passengers on the ferry, a 73 year old Hungarian-Swiss dentist from Zurich, (who incidentally bore an uncanny resemblance to an aging Robert Redford), I was treated to a similar tale from his first trip to the Dark Continent in 1962, a journey he is now retracing as a sprightly septegenarian grandfather. Studying dentistry by day, he drove a taxi ay night to raise enough money to fund his course, and also to buy a one way flight to Nairobi, from where he intended to hitch-hike all the way back to Europe. His duffel bag stuffed with cheap canned foods and old clothes, he set off across East Africa from Kenya's notorious capital. To his evident horror, still palpable 45 years later, his very first ride caught fire, incinerating all his belongings, and forcing him to hurl himself into the road from the fast-moving inferno. Bruised, battered, penniless and not a little demoralised, he picked himself up, dusted himself down, and continued regardless.

He laughs about it now, and it certainly makes for a great story, even half a century later. Perhaps in time I'll feel the same way about the Egyptian bus crash and walking the plank on the overloaded Sudanese ferry. Just not yet.

Sahara

I sit on the crest of a giant hill, watching the far-off orange disk of the sun sink below the horizon. As far as the eye can see, in every direction, is nothing but the purest white sand imaginable, formed into huge undulating dunes like the roiling surface of the ocean. Once again I experience the eerie silence of the desert. Aside from our trusty Toyota Landcruiser, not a single sign of life is visible. This is the largest expanse of sand on earth: 2.8 million square kilometres of vast, desolate emptiness. The ancient Egyptians knew it simply as deshret, or "red land". The Arabs call it Sahara. We use both names: this is the Sahara Desert.

It's perhaps fitting that the generic Arabic word for desert, "Sahara", has come to refer in English specifically to the great desert that spans the width of north Africa. As the British explorer Ralph Bagnold observed in Libyan Sands, the Sahara, and particularly the Egyptian Sahara, is the greatest expanse of desert on the planet: "There are deserts and there are deserts. But the Western Desert, a vast expanse that starts at the western banks of the Nile and continues well into Libya is the desert of deserts."

Like the visceral fear that gripped me as I flew over the endless expanse of green of the Amazon, I find the sheer scale of the Sahara queasily un-nerving. It's disconcerting enough to be unable to see anything beyond the endless repetitious dunes in all directions, but the knowledge that in some directions the landscape continues in this vein for a thousand miles is truly terrifying. I don't stray far from the Landcruiser driven by our affable Berber guide, Ibrahim; though the way he pilots the vehicle up and down seemingly sheer walls of sand does little for my nerves. He laughs at his passengers' obvious concern, and with a couple of silent prayers to Allah we're off again, careering across the sand at an improbable angle, trying to build up sufficient speed to mount the crest of the next vertical dune. I'm starting to understand why it's called the Great Sand Sea, as it's all rather reminiscent of The Perfect Storm, though with sand instead of water, and a grinning nomad in a keffiyeh in place of George Clooney.

I visited the Great Sand Sea from the small oasis town of Siwa, close to Egypt's western border with Libya. Despite its incredibly remote location, Siwa has an ancient history dating back to Pharaonic times, when it was famed as the site of the omniscient Oracle of Amun. After invading Egypt in 525BC, the Persian king Cambyses sent an army 50,000 strong to take Siwa and destroy the Oracle, which had - presciently as it turned out - predicted his imminent demise; in a mystery which endures to the present day, the entire force was simply swallowed up by the vast emptiness of the desert and never heard from again. Following his own conquest of Egypt in 332BC, the legendary Macedonian General Alexander the Great made a personal pilgrimage to Siwa, where he was acclaimed by the local priests as the son of a god. In this respect Alexander was a little more successful than a certain Jesus of Nazareth; unlike the rest of the country, Christianity never reached this remote corner of Egypt. Though it did eventually fall to Islam, Siwa's remoteness ensured its unique culture, religion and language endured.

In many respects Siwa is more akin to Libya than Egypt: the people here are Berbers rather than Arabs, and while most locals speak at least some Arabic (certainly more than me), the Berber dialect of Siwi is still very much the lingua franca. Such is Siwa's remoteness in fact, the oasis was only connected to the rest of Egypt by road in the mid-1980s. In many respects Siwa's isolation allows it to exist in a timewarp of mudbrick houses, donkey carts, and candlelight; a display about local culture in the Tourist Office features the immortal phrase: "before the coming of television in 1988".

Siwa is very much an African, rather than Egyptian town, with a grinding poverty the like of which I can scarcely recall seeing before. Although I have now returned, briefly, to Cairo and the Middle East, my sojourn in Siwa very much set the tone for the rest of my journey: I depart tonight by sleeper train to Aswan, from where I will sail across Lake Nasser, bound for Africa. The Sudan.

Moses, Mohammed & The Mother of the World

"It's always the same in Egypt isn't it? Always baksheesh? It's not like this in other Arab countries - Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine - only in Egypt. I think perhaps there must be some problem with the people here - why are they like this? Perhaps they are keffirs?"

The massed ranks of the black berets, white uniforms, and starched moustaches of the "Egyptian Tourist and Antiquities Police" stare at me in angry disbelief. They are almost as surprised by my tirade in Arabic as I am. By the looks of things I managed to communicate my meaning clearly enough, though I'm beginning to think that accusing these officers of being keffirs - unbelievers - was perhaps a bit much. It's easy to detect a devout Muslim in Egypt; the purple-black bruising on their foreheads attests to some committed and regular time kneeling on a prayer mat. Still, I'm pretty sure that these officials are trying to steal from me, and going by the Book (all three Books in fact) at least, that would make them unbelievers. "Thou shalt not steal". (Exodus 20:15)

The towering rocky outcrop of Mount Sinai, believed to be the site at which Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, has long been a destination of pilgrimage - for Jews, Muslims and Christians - from all over the world. Now, however, the vast majority of pilgrims are of a distinctly secular bent. With charter flights from all corners of Europe and ludicrously cheap all-inclusive hotel deals, the Sinai Peninsula has become a veritable Mecca for the sort of tourists that generally make me shudder. In opting to climb Sinai at sunset, instead of sunrise, I was hoping to miss out not only on grotesquely half-naked gargoyles from Eastern Europe, but also the kind of sleazy local rip-off merchants who habitually follow them. Now, however, it seemed I would be thwarted by the mustachioed dimwits of the Egyptian Tourist Police, who insisted I hire a "Bedu guide" for 50 Egyptian Pounds. Given the state of some of the large blubbery mammals staggering out of the gates after successfully completing the climb, I was highly sceptical about my need to be accompanied, particularly by a walking cliche machine who would doubtless try to foist upon me any number of stuffed camels, "traditional" jewellery, and other such tat, all at "special prices". So I protested some more.

"Look, he's clearly not a fucking Bedu, and I don't need a fucking guide. Just let us go."

While Arabic is undoubtedly a beautiful, expressive, poetic language, some things are just better said in good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon. Unfortunately this did little to calm the situation. At this point reason, in the form of a nice young Australian girl with whom I have a, shall we say, "passing acquaintance", stepped in.

"James, this really isn't helping matters, and it is only five quid after all..."

I demurred, and off we walked, our by now very frightened Bedu guide Mohammed keeping a safe distance ahead, and casting the odd furtive glance back to check he wasn't in mortal danger. Of course he was an authentic Bedu, about as authentic as it gets in fact, and a thoroughly nice bloke too. For four hours I had a free Arabic conversation partner with whom I could discuss the three topics closest to every man's heart, namely politics, sex, and football (possibly not in that order). Upon reaching the summit we found it blissfully free of Lithuanian bodybuilders, beach towel-toting Germans and alcoholic Brits, with only the slightly deranged hymn-singing of a group of French Christians to disturb the spiritual peace.

Down at sea level, it was a different story. Sinai is a veritable paradise for hotel developers, and hell on earth for anyone with a backpack. While the tourists are distasteful, many of the locals are just appalling. I can quite understand the negativity of anyone whose opinion of Egyptians, and Arabs in general, is based on experiencing the awful hassle prevalent in the Sinai Peninsula. Since my first visit to Cairo eighteen months ago, I have fought a largely unsuccessful battle to persuade friends, family and colleagues of the inherent friendliness and hospitality of the Egyptian people. After visiting Nuweiba, Dahab, and Mount Sinai - which together with the abominable Sharm el Sheikh is the extent of most people's experience of Egypt - I can understand why people are so reluctant to believe me. Indeed, I even began to doubt myself. Could Cairo live up to my rose-tinted recollections of drinking tea and smoking sheesha in scenic backstreets with charming, friendly and unfailingly hospitable locals?

The answer is equivocal. While the hassle factor around the heavily-visited Pyramids, Egyptian Museum and Khan al-Khalili Bazaar is undeniably immense, away from the tourist traps the "Mother of the World", as Cairo is known here, is still a wonderful wonderful place. The overcrowding is chronic: 20 million people living in what is, in parts, the most densely-populated area on Earth, and the pollution is appalling: at this time of year especially the city is shrouded in a dense brown carpet of smog. The traffic is simply incredible: crossing the road in Cairo is an adrenaline sport to match anything I have ever experienced: bull-running, skydiving, swimming with sharks, none can come close to the terror of stepping into the streets of Egypt's capital.

Yet for all its undoubted faults, the "Arab Manhattan" (as one Australian I know referred to it) still has some incredible sights, a magical atmosphere, and some of the friendliest people I've encountered anywhere. For all the glory of its museums, ancient mosques and Pharaonic monuments, my abiding memory of Cairo will always be the side of the city that the hotpant-wearing, camel-toe showing package tourists never witness [for pictures of Russian girl with camel toe outside Egyptian Museum, click link to "Egypt" photos above right]. Sitting in a sidestreet drinking tea and smoking sheesha, the gentle bubbling of the waterpipe and the staccato clatter of dominoes competing with the cacophanous soundtrack of car engines, never-ending horns, and the sound of twenty million people taking time out from their daily lives to practise the only English they know: "Hello. Welcome."

Leaving On a Jet Plane...

...don't know when I'll be back again. Ok, so the last part's not true - I do know (roughly) when I'll be back again. And unlike the John Denver song, my bags aren't packed, I'm not ready to go and there's no taxi outside the door just yet. But I am getting myself prepared. I now have a Syrian visa, a prescription for some hallucinogenic anti-malarials, and a couple of kilos worth of Lonely Planets and other assorted travel literature by authors ranging all the way from Theroux to, er, Thesiger.

Last week I braved the full horror of the NHS in east London to obtain some vaccinations. A rotund African nurse (who worryingly mistook "the Middle East" for "Malaysia") briefed me on travel health issues: "don't drink the water, take lots of Immodium, use mosquito spray. And if you're going to 'make friends' while you're away, take some condoms with you." There then followed some fierce invective about the woeful inadequacies of Sudanese contraceptives. I'm not quite sure how she imagined I was going to pick up any nubile Nubian ladies - Sudan's not exactly renowned for its nightlife, what with Sharia Law and all, but thinking about it, perhaps she was referring to goats rather than girls. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6619983.stm)

After the lectures about covering my prick with African ladies (ovine or otherwise) it was time for this particular African lady to uncover her prick and administer a couple of shots of her own, which she did with a flourish. I'd never heard an audible squirting sound from a syringe before, but I can assure you it's a fairly disconcerting experience. As, I'm sure you'll agree, is what happened next. Onto a different nurse, this time for a blood test to check my immunity to Hepatitis B. At first I thought there'd been some mistake - instead of a nurse, I was confronted by a grotesque caricature of a woman - huge, deformed, clearly insane, and most definitely local. That's right. It was Tubbs from the League of Gentlemen.(http://www.lunacynet.com/league/char_tubbs.html#tubbs) Worse, if it could get any worse, coupled with the Royston Vasey appearance and speech patterns, it had the accent of an extra from East Enders. "This is a local doctors for local people...innit?" I fled as quickly as possible, leaving a substantial amount of blood in a jar behind me, typhoid and tetanus now coursing worryingly through my veins instead.

But enough skirting around the issue, onto the main topic at hand. In case you didn't already know (the clue is in the title) I'll shortly be embarking on a seven month trip to the US, South America and the Middle East. The plan is roughly as follows.

After ten days RnR in the Florida Keys I'll embark on a month long intensive Spanish course in Bogota, before flying to the far south of Colombia for a few days exploring the remote rainforest reserves of the Rio Yavari on the border between Peru and Brazil. From there I'll take a boat 1600km down the River Amazon to Brazil's jungle capital Manaus, before turning north and dodging poison darts while crossing the vast and remote Yanomami Indigenous Reserve into southern Venezuela. Here I'll take in Roraima and the Gran Sabana (inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lost World"), Angel Falls, and the Orinoco Delta, eventually flying home from Caracas.

After a brief stopover back in UK for a friend's wedding, I'll fly to Istanbul, from where I have a shade under four months to make the 5000km overland trip south to Khartoum. I'll sojourn along Turkey's Aegean coast and cross Cappadocia's moonscapes into Syria, pausing for five weeks to learn Arabic at the University of Damascus. Political situation, border guards, and budget permitting, I'll move on to Lebanon, before following the Lawrence Highway through Jordan and into Egypt. After crossing Lake Nasser I'll take the scenic route, following the Nile through the scattered villages and vast deserts of northern Sudan to Khartoum, before finishing with a week of diving the pristine Red Sea reefs off Suakin and Port Sudan. I'll fly home, via the Emirate of Sharjah and Istanbul (again), sometime in mid-December.

All being well, I'll then take my passport, by now bearing the stamps of various members of Dubya's "Axis of Evil" and other states not exactly high on the White House Christmas card list, to the US for what the locals call "The Holidays". Of course, the alternative ending sees me donning an orange jumpsuit and taking a one way flight to the all-inclusive resort at Guantanamo, but I'm hopeful the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service will be understanding about Syria and Sudan as holiday destinations. Er, won't they?

Whatever, it should be an adventure. Stay tuned!