Wake up at 4,59 in the morning …

I do not want to get trapped in the grip of the heat and wind even today, I snooze the alarm clock just once, everybody around me is sleeping, some on beds like mine, others on carpets and one in front of me on a heap of grey sand which seems very comfortable judging from how he sleeps …

While I fold the sleeping bag, which I used up to knees, and I do the panniers I force myself to eat about ten digestive biscuits and some dry figs which I bought in Dongola, I take on credit some pockets of very sweet milk from the freezer of the cafeteria and take some pictures. Continue reading →

‘Now you cannot go ahead! You are welcome to the house of the teachers …’ told me my guardian angel, an old teacher at the school in Akashah.

I do not fight it.

As soon as I laid down on the bed with a Nile view, in the shade of a big thatched shelter, I fell asleep, on the bed net to mine the Head Teacher was sleeping deeply covered by a blancket good enough for an Italian winter … it was three in the afternoon … I slept about one hour and I woke up only because I had a crazy thirst … I could have stayed there but I had done only sixty kilometers … and I would like to be in Wadi Halfa tomorrow evening … Continue reading →

I do not think hell really exists …

… but if I am wrong it probably will be similar to today’s stage …

On the map a semi stage to get closer to Wadi Halfa, I thought I was going to be there before one, instead I arrived at six … 13 km/h on average … hotter than yesterday and a adverse wind and very strong … it seemed to have a air-drier pointed straight all over the body but where it is the most annoying is on the face … I feel the need to breath like when you are swimming … I have a constant thought to the Picornell my favorite swimming pool … I see myself diving in … doing a couple of laps and drinking a ice cold beer with the Monjuic around … instead on my stops I have to make do with some drinks, a yoghurt, and a lot of water a bit sandy of the water containers which I drink only when my mouth risks the spontaneous combustion … beers are forbidden in Sudan … that may be why you can find a series of fizzy drinks in the taste of apple, cherry, mango, … which I can manage to drink only in extreme cases … bottled water cannot be found often … it makes me laugh that at times these fizzy drinks have the bottle and the label similar to those of a Belgian beer … Continue reading →

‘Today it is not very hot there are 57 degrees’ … told me a policeman …

My today’s objective was reaching Delgo about 130 kilometers from Dongola, I arrived there relatively early and I found out it is not a town, but a big and convulse market frequented by thousands of gold diggers who every day fathom the surrounding mountains. They do not have the sieve of Uncle Scrooge and Rockerduck, but they are equipped with some kind of sounder, Made in China I assume, which they keep over the shoulder at the market and use as a hoover on the ground, seeing them busy sounding the ground they seem CIS on the crime scene, or NASA analyzing the surroundings where it is thought a alien ship landed … Continue reading →

Semi stage, flown away in a bit less than two hours …

The favorable wind today that I had to do so few kilometers … it seems almost a waste…

I have just arrived back from the Nile where I had a fast swim, ten arm strokes all together, because the manager of the Nubian Guest House told me that from August to September it is very dangerous and every year more or less twenty people die, the current is very strong, certainly on a canoe I will arrive quicker to Wadi Halfa, … the color today is always the same brown, yesterday in Al Khandaq it seemed more light blue and the play if lights of the evening must have mislead me, even if looking back at the pictures of this morning it did not seem as brown as here … Continue reading →

I did not sleep well in this cafeteria, too much music until late, then the proximity to the check point with the buses stopping, and finally … the laziness of not getting the sleeping mat out … contributed to a night with too much waking up … 

I saw from the map that it was about 60 kilometers towards North-West, so I was expecting the wind which punctual gave me no truce until the afternoon, today the heat is bastard since the beginning luckily there are many water containers, some with water, nobody knows how, very fresh, others boiling like the surrounding air, the reduced traffic does not help in my battle against the wind … Continue reading →

214 km by bicycle I do not think I have ever done them … 

I slept well on my bed under the stars, I blew up the sleeping mat too, and I slipped myself in the sleeping bag and put the panniers by my head to protect myself from the strong wind. Continue reading →

Post sent from the laptop of a policeman from the middle of the desert

No I did not consider the blinds …

Last night I was so tired that I did not realize the there were the window blinds, so this morning after dismissing the alarm clock set at 6 for the great stage, I slept until ten! Not too bad because during the night there was a huge storm, the officers from the Immigration Office arrived late, and my documents came ready around midday and myself … a couple of hours later … Continue reading →

Let’s try to do this great stage!

I bring the alarm ahead of half an hour, when I go down to the hall I find the manager asleep on a armchair, while listening to prayers from a radio station, from the television … last night too they were listening to the radio from the television they were all sitting down listening, watching the blue screen indicating the radio frequencies. He is sleeping, surely they have not prepared anything I think, shit, instead on my table everything is ready and protected by domopack, I manage to keep for the journey, a cheese sandwich and a apple. I pay without receipt because otherwise I have to add the taxes … the world is the same wherever you go … but my passport and visa are registered accurately on two registers … don’t cross checks exist here?

Continue reading →

Click to enlarge

The Nile for the second time …

This time the meeting was less traumatic than in Ethiopia, no downhill and uphill of 22 km, but simply a bridge guarded by two bored policemen.

Sudan is definitely flat, if it were a woman few would turn around to look at her on the road, but since yesterday, a bit after Al Qadarif, the wind appeared, strong blowing from South to North, today too after the first 25 km of truce it accompanied me for long stretches sideways, at times from the front, and for about ten kilometers he bothered to push me … in Sudan you drive on the right side like in Ethiopia … the wind managed to push me down from the tar three or four times … tomorrow to go to Khartoum you turn right towards the North … hopefully I understood correctly where it is coming from … because I would like to do a great stage … before to dive myself in the North Sudan where the Nile, the desert, villages with camp beds, will challenge me greatly …

Continue reading →