Snakes, Pyramids, and Tear Gas: Our Week in Sudan.

Feb 10

Feb 10 Snakes, Pyramids, and Tear Gas: Our Week in Sudan.

Our timing on this trip is shit.

Well, it’s not really our timing, it’s just…the timing. Like how we managed to visit Ethiopia during the largest religious holiday of the year. The city was absolutely jam packed with sweaty worshipers, pickpockets, and nervous-looking tourists. Most shops were closed; the ones that were open had limited hours. And going anywhere took forever due to road closures.

Then there’s Sudan, our last stop on the trip. You can visit any number of travel-related websites before a trip to get information, but I’ve found one of the best things to do is simply Google: “your destination – news.” Doing so a few days in advance revealed that the largest political protests in decades were taking place, and that protesters were being murdered in the streets. Perfect time for a holiday.

We touched base with the tour operator, and they said everything was still cool. We would be outside of the city most of the time, avoiding the crowds and protests in Khartoum, the capital. We trusted their advice, hopped on the plane, and arrived in Sudan during the most tumultuous period since the current president deposed the previous one in a coup.

Timing.

After getting shaken down for cash from a shady airport official (who followed us OUT of the airport to the street trying to get money from us), we met our guide and headed to our hotel, smoke from a protest fire rising in the distance.

Early the next morning - with our group of four down to three since Tara flew home after Djibouti - we headed into the desert during a sandstorm. We headed over 400 kilometers north through occasional white-out conditions, stopping for lunch at a rest area that looked to have been in use since the first pyramids were built.

Sudan is desperately poor. We saw it our first day, leaving the sprawling city and heading north on a (surprising well-paved) highway towards our first campsite outside of Old Dongola. Many of the people we met on this tour were struggling to meet the very bottom of the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: food, water, shelter. The city may be sprawling, but once you get out into the desert, you are confronted with people whose lives have been essentially unchanged from their ancestors dating back a thousand years. Take, for example, the various camel camps that pop up occasionally alongside the main highways. Nomadic groups have been breeding, trading, herding, and even racing camels for generations. We stopped and visited one along the way - and I have to say – those camels didn’t seem happy. Children have been banned from riding the camels in competitions, so they use a hand drill rigged with a whip to “encourage” the camels to race faster. They also keep them muzzled so they can control what they eat, and leashed so they don’t roam. If given the opportunity to see a camel race, I think I would pass.

Lunch! Not made in the rest stop kitchen, thankfully.

If you don’t know anything about Sudan, you should know this: it’s a fucking archaeological gold mine (pun intended – I think?). It has more pyramids than Egypt (though not as big, but size doesn’t matter, right? RIGHT?). Archaeological dig areas are active all over the country, with Polish, American, Italian, and German missions having been active in the country over a hundred years. Old Dongola itself is a bit of a sprawling site, sitting along the Nile river. It’s rich with Christian relics, Sufi tombs, and clay pottery shards dating back to antiquity. The pottery covers the ground so thickly that you can’t help but walk on them as you tour the site. We spent half the day there, then hit the road to our next stop where we would camp overnight.

Pottery shards at the dig site, Old Dongola

Here’s a little tip for camping in the desert: wet wipes. They get the sand off, the stink off, and when you have to sneak out of your tent in the dead of night to unleash the Brown Kraken (because your driver/cook likes to serve spicy eggplant for every goddamn meal) in the desert bathroom (A.K.A the Great Sandy Toilet, A.K.A The Scratchy Bidet, A.K. A. the African Litter Box), they leave you feeling so fresh and so clean.

The sand storm cleared on our second day, making spotting any giant Sand Worms easier, and we toured El Kuru on the way to Jebel El Barkl. Here in Sudan, the pyramids are different than in Egypt. Instead of having tombs built inside the pyramids, they were built underneath them. They almost always have two burial rooms: one for the body, and one for treasures of the deceased. A hundred years ago an Archaeologist named George Reisner visited this site and excavated various sites across Sudan, Lara Croft-style. He brought back various items – you can see some of them at the MFA in Boston – but left many as well, resealing many of the tombs. A dam built on the Nile though caused a rising water table that damaged some of the underground relics that were left. Everyone seems to know and kind of revere this guy, so if you have an abundance of free time you should Google him.

Let’s talk real quick about the security situation in Sudan. The main tourist areas are safe, provided you stay away from any large crowds or slums. Our guides navigated the checkpoints on the highway like the seasoned pros they were: waving and saying hello at every security stop and checkpoint, honking the horn, smiling as they blasted though most of them – sometimes crossing into ongoing traffic lanes. The current (for now) president issued a decree about six months ago that in official terms basically said to leave the fucking tourists alone. We assumed this is because we bring in hard cash and have zero interest in overthrowing him, so it kind of worked out for us. The biggest example of preferential treatment came when it was time to fill up the gas tank. Scarcities of various essential items (like bread, which started the original protest movement and political unrest) are common. Long fuel lines though seemed to be the real problem, with some stretching for several days. Our guide took us to the police check, showing the security forces an SUV full of tourists, and that was enough to get us a special pass to the front of the line.

We camped again on our last night in the sand, just around the corner from the pyramids of Meroe. Sunset was pleasant, but sunrise the next day was almost surreal for two reasons. The first was the gorgeous sunrise that turned the pyramids a rusty orange patina. The second part was because just the three of us was enough of a draw for over a dozen camel and trinket vendors. They surrounded our little camp as we had breakfast, keeping a mostly respectful distance while setting up their wares or showing off their camels. We didn’t take a camel ride, but we did buy a few “ancient” bits of jewelry.

Over the course of the week, between the desert and zipping around the city, Real Sudan Tours took great care of us. No, this isn’t a sponsored post; these guys just really knocked it out of the park. Jamal drove kind of like a madman, that’s true, but he got us where we needed to get despite sandstorms while dodging other groups or random tourists. Our guide, Abdul, was always attentive and charming, and he gave us the straight dope on how many cows Martha would be worth if she were a bride here in Sudan. I think he said 80 cows, until he saw her long hair, then he upped it to 100 cows. Abdul had an almost obsessive drive to make sure we were well fed, gesturing “take, take,” with a plate of of more food. No matter how much you had eaten, he was always there to offer more bananas, spicy eggplant, or eggs. We all felt a little like French ducks, being fattened up, but Mike - who is a fast eater, so his plate always seemed empty - got the most encouraging. They didn’t even get too upset when I put our fake snake, Marvin, in our truck to scare them. Yes, I brought a rubber snake on the trip. He proved to be a hit with bellhops and our guides, but didn’t scare as many people as I had hoped.

We wrapped up the tour with a day in Khartoum, seeing various museums and sites around the city (the Presidential Museum is a must!). No protesters on our route, though the day before crowds had been tear-gassed in the city streets. The situation here seems untenable. ATM machines are out of money, fuel is hard to come by, and there are shortages of bread and other basics. The president is wanted by the international community for crimes against humanity, and we got to see first hand how sanctions intended to punish a country’s government mostly just hurt the people at the bottom. Our guide, Abdul, hadn’t been able to get his salary – he works for the state antiquities department as well – for almost two months. Like many, he gets by doing other jobs when he can.

Sudan turned out to be a surprise on so many levels. The people were kind, the country felt safe, and it’s rich with history and culture. Anyone with even a passing interest in history can find something interesting. It can be rough though - you’re at eye level with desperate poverty, so don’t expect the usual niceties. But if you’re willing to rough it a bit, you won’t be disappointed.

We start the long journey back tomorrow. Next trip is in a few weeks and will be quite a bit different from this one.

Where we stayed: Acropole Hotel. Great little hotel in a safe area, with shops and a mall close by to walk to. Owners are great and on site, and you can change money and arrange tours if you need to. Rooms are cheap, clean with good wifi. Skip the expensive, overpriced luxury hotel and come here.

Tour Operator: Real Sudan Tours Highly organized, well run group. They took great care of us, and I highly recommend them.