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This is our first full day after Ramadan. I enjoy drinking Turkish coffee on the steps of a café at 9 am. Stuart did not enjoy changing all the oils by the side of the road, but I kept him supplied with copious quantities of coffee and tuned into the world service. We rolled about in hysterics at an interview with Henry Kissinger and some other non-entity. The crass comments about Osama Bin Laden flew through the airwaves. The talk was of military action in Iraq Somalia and Sudan. Here we were in Sudan, the friendliest nation in Africa, a land of coffee drinking people and deserts. No-one here gave a damn what Khartoum thought or did. We were still chuckling when we re-fuelled from cans in the souk. I stopped chuckling when the price of petrol rose to 1.5 pounds a gallon. A 50% increase on the last place.
We now had to attack another mini desert. This was ridden with Soft sand. We howled through the as fast as possible porridge in 3rd gear. Momentum was critical . We became bogged and had to dig ourselves out using shovels and sand ladders. The observer was now vital.
"Raf where's the hard stuff" Stuart would shout above the engine scream.
"No where"
"What?"
"I cannot see any hard sand or rock"
And so it went on. We changed drivers and I ploughed through the sand. Then we bogged again.
"What happened" asked Stuart as I unstrapped the shovels.
"Ran out of puff"
"Hmmm you didn't make the gear change fast enough" pronounced Stuart.
"Fuck off, look behind you"
Stuart turned and glanced at the sand. Ever deepening ruts opened up behind our rear wheels.
"Oh, that is a bit deep" and with that he jumped off the roof and helped with the digging.
Digging your only vehicle out of soft sand is an experience. You know you must do the job properly or you will have to walk or die. These short 200 mile crossings between Nile bends were not too dangerous, but we dug carefully and slowly. I had become addicted to deserts. They are like the sea. If you have no respect for them, they will happily kill you. But if you know what you are doing they can be remarkably rewarding. I made a decision to come back, but with two vehicles and cross some more stretches of the Sudanese sands.
We ploughed on, and then hit a defunct oasis. Here markers guided us to the last 60 km to a green wadi. We had once again, arrived at the banks of the Nile. Too late to find a town with a hotel or a deserted camping spot, we asked a farmer if we could camp next to his farm. He dragged me into his house, sent Cisca off to talk to his women and sent tea and cakes to Stuart who was fixing something on the truck. He fed us, allowed us to wash, and then called all 19 of his extended family to meet us. We wanted to give him something as a gift for his kindness. I suggested we leave Cisca, but she declined. Finally I handed over my new prayer rug that I had bought in Khartoum. This seemed to go down well.
It was in this village that my Arabic improved considerably. I noticed that my vocabulary had not suddenly increased 50 fold, but that the local dialect was riddled with Turkish. With my smattering of Arabic grammar, and intense concentration I could actually understand long sentences. Where a word failed me, Cisca would often say "That means xxx in Swahili" and the sentence would be complete. The Ottoman invasion had reached lake Tana in Ethiopia, but here on the Nile, the Turks had obviously made a heavy impression. Whenever I mentioned my Turkishness, people would mention various Sultans and become even more friendly than usual.
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