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?

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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 …

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Migreh is not a village …

It is a market, a place where trucks stop when the drivers are tired, there is a mosque and many small shops, no hotel but only those camp beds I avoided in Doka … it is right like this what would be a journey through Sudan without at least one sleep on these camp beds under the open sky, colored, asymmetric, and I must say that they are quite comfortable … it is from here that I am writing I just hope that it will not rain … I do not know whether or not to take the sleeping bag out and if it rains it will get dry in Egypt …

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Goodbye Ethiopia, welcome Ramadan!

The last 35 kilometers passed quite fast, with the bicycle making strange noises like it usually happens when the day before we catch a lot of water.

Arrived at the border to enter Sudan you pass through a barrier made by a rope, I pass under, a typical Ethiopian Sheppard tells me that he wants to check my luggage … I pay no attention … and I go to the office where they stamp passports … the sheppard runs after me … and repeats the same story … I ask him to show me his card … he has it! We go back again he checks, he asks me if I have a laptop, and who can prove that it is mine … he checks roughly in the panniers and lets me go …

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‘Rain rain go away!’ …

‘Where are you going?’ asks me an old man in smart clothes in front of the pharmacy of Gondar where I am vainly trying to park the bicycle on a muddy road … ‘to the pharmacy, but I do not have the bicycle stand …’ ‘do not worry I will keep it’ … the pharmacist told me that I have eaten ‘poisoned food’ and has given me cyproxin to take every 12 hours … ‘are you travelling alone?’ asks me the old man ‘yes’ … ‘I will pray for you’ …

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“Il fuoco di un camino
non è caldo come il sole del mattino…”

(“The fire of a chimney / isn’t as warm as the morning sun”)

After yesterday rain finally the sun, the departure is hot on a easy road … I do not remember a hot day since Addis …

The buses in Ethiopia have a speaker on the roof, it is nice to hear them come, they are joyful and I think the music also keeps the children away from the road and maybe donkeys and cows too … today my theory that the closer you get to touristic centers the more begging and stupidity increase has today found many practical demonstrations … the stones which were not reaching me for some time have reappeared … one thrown at me by a nice young shepard from a hill was the size of a apple … Continue reading →

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‘I think I am the first ferenje who stays over for the night here’ I say to the couple escorting me to the hotel with no signpost.

‘Noooo … there was another one in September two years ago …’ they answer … we laughed for five minutes. They kept saying ‘not the first, the second!’ …

There was a drawing on my school book in primary school which pictured slaves building the pyramids, I remember the never ending rows of slaves carrying one stone each. Continue reading →

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‘Quando ghe nè più, ghe nè a mo!’, is a say from where I come from, which would translate something like when there is nothing left, there is still a lot.

If last night at five, while I was going forth and back from the toilet, somebody would have told me … you will do 94 km I would have laughed … I thought the stomach was a strong point of my poor body … instead some spicy food betrayed me … I had the lucidity to drink salts and to eat some dextrose sweets to have a bit of energy to start again … when the alarm went off at 6,56 I switch it off … I am finally sleeping well … for breakfast I manage to drink some tea in which I put as much sugar as possible and I eat three doughy Enervit cereal bars which Serena gave me in Nairobi and are getting finished …

On the way back from the last trip to the toilet, at 5,11 I receive a message from Giorgia, who says she has woken up with a craving for crackers Doria, myself too I would eat a packet crunchy and with the salt on top I think, neither me nor her will satisfy this craving … the food visions come often on this journey today in a mountain village there is a smell of goat … which made me crave goat cheese … the little one is moving a lot hopefully he will turn …

At the beginning you go down to 1800 meters of Finote Selam, where I stop to take a tea, the waiter, embodied by my guardian angel, brings me without me asking some focaccia bread, which I managed to eat very slowly. Then the uphill starts again slowly slowly until the 2536 of Kosober, a uphill of 13 kilometers is a living death. Immediately after Finote Selam I bought for 2 birr, a plastic bag with a dozen yellow lemons, small, bitter and juicy … at the end I will have only three left … they have a very thin skin I peel then with my teeth and hands and then I chew them in a mouth full … it seems to me that my body appreciates and needs it … as I write I am feeling a bit hungry … let’s hope for the best …

Today with energies next to zero I did not take many pictures, I never looked at the altitude, I stopped many times, to buy something to drink, to put oil on the chain, to eat lemons, to speak to people. In a typical mountain village there was a gathering of male farmers waiting for the distribution of fertilizer, I was thirsty and I wanted some water, a young guy went from hut shop to hut shop , at the end he managed to find only a Fanta pineapple, excellent for digestion, I left hime the change as a tip for all the effort he put … 22 kilometers from Kosober I stopped to lubrify the chain, as usual a circle was formed, with elders and younths asking me where I was coming from, where I am going, which nationality I am … tire, chain and paper (map) are also Aramaic words … These stops helped to start again with a smile …

Dembecha N 10° 55’ E 37° 48.333’ – Kosober N 10° 95’ E 36° 93.333

94 km