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 …
Patience is needed, virtue which I am not particularly endowed with, you have to forget the kilometers which yesterday were rushing on the speedometer as fast as light, you have to be patient and remember that even if you go 17 km/h, in eight hours you will cover more than a hundred and thirty kilometers, in perfect average to reach Wadi Halfa for the 7th August …
Despite the heat and the fatigue at times I feel already the atmosphere of the end of a journey, like the month of May when you go to school, but I know that it is still early and I will have to pedal for about another month …
I have to tell my father that he was right, we used to tease him when he combined the use of the fan to the one of the air con … here who can afford it uses both and almost always at maximum speed …
Around one the heat becomes unbearable, and when there is the wind too to disturb you, going ahead becomes always more difficult, the showers from the water containers increase, the stops in the kafeterie would also increase were there more, many do not have water, only soft drinks, which to confirm a common say, they are not as thirst drenching in the desert as water, in a place where I stopped three quarters of an hour, there were some frozen yoghurt, which I drank mixed to another hardly drinkable green apple fizzy drink … it is like a fizzy shampoo …
In this side of Sudan many towns have nothing on the road, but a couple of kilometers East, next to the Nile, also for this getting supplies is not easy, … you would have to leave the main road, get a gravel road, and start looking for a small shop in these towns founded centuries ago, which seem less lived than the desert surrounding them … made exception for a few houses and mosque acid green, or pink, all the other houses have the color of the sand … street directions in English are very rare … and to understand where you really are is not always easy if you are not lucky to find somebody mumbling a bit of English …
When the kilometers are 110, I decide that I have enough for today and look for a place for the night, tomorrow it will be a semi stage with stop in Dongola of about 70 km, the first tries do not go well, when I have dome another ten kilometers and I am told I am in Al Khandaq, the old Dongola, I decide to enter the town with the conviction to get out tomorrow … there is not one soul … the first and only man I meet tells me to go to the police … the police? … yes they have some places where to sleep … I find a guy who gives me the same advise … I am going slightly down on a gravel road in the middle of what must have been a really nice town many centuries ago, when I take the last turn … there the Nile … majestic, placid, finally of a color similar to blue … to my left a road, the one which must have been the main road once upon a time, with secular trees … and policemen sleeping relaxed in the shade … next to the unfailing water containers … ‘good afternoon, can I sleep here?’ … ‘No problem!’ …
Among the policemen present nobody speaks English, English, so they make me speak to two of their colleagues, to understand where I come from, what I do, … if I am not a spy … a terrorist … but everything is very funny … one of these who speaks a English from other time ‘How do you do?’ … invites me for dinner at sunset at the end of Ramadan … obviously on a empty stomach I do not think about it twice … with the three Officers we go outside a mosque where there are three carpets placed in the shape of a U … full of delicacies … only men as usual … but the women are there with those wonderful dishes which they prepared during the day … they seem more refined dishes than other times … there are also some cucumbers in some kind of yoghurt … and a final cake … this time the final prayer is longer than usual … the time is more dilated and at the end there is time for tea and coffee with different types of fresh dates … menacing clouds cover the moon but my interpreter say it will not rain …
The interpreter asks me ‘do you know anything about Al Khandaq’s past?’ … ‘Yes that it was a populated place already centuries ago …’ I had read it on the map … and I ask ‘How is the history?’ and he says ‘yes we know it existed already two or three hundred years after Mohammed, but nothing more’ … … (to tell the truth it was supposed to be the capital of a Christian reign and there is a church transformed into a mosque which I think I have seen … but this I read only later).
Back at the most pleasant police station in the world with view over the Nile and shade in abundance, it starts dripping slowly slowly, in Ethiopia it would not even be considered rain these drops coming down seconds apart, but here it is a too precious gift to let it escape, the policemen put the plastic chairs outside and … we sit enjoying the drops and the cool wind …
Maybe it will rain so I lower my sleeping mat on a mat under the , and I fall asleep easily, but I am woken up twice, the first time a policeman makes me speak to the wife on the phone … Italian from Zambia … the second two policemen who are strutting their shift call me and start talking about Barcelona, Mancini, Allegri, Ac Milan, and Ballotelli …
A police station relaxed and peaceful, where the elders do not do much and the youngsters keep clean, they pray, discuss about sport, smoke narghilè and rest a lot especially now that it is hot and is Ramadan. Amat one of the Officers who has taken me under his care invites me to stay another day, like often happened in Sudan, Wadi Halfa is closer but still far …
Multaga 17° 95.521’ E 31° 22.589’ – Al Khandaq N 18° 36’ E 30° 34’
121 km