30 – And guess what, STILL in Khartoum

Sun 27th Dec, Hotel Al Nadi, Khatoum

It’s not that I love the capital so much, it is because all the buses seem to leave in the morning. And i spent today morning going to the Eritrean embassy. So much for leaving today. To make my day worse, I did not manage to get the Eritrean visa. Wikipedia entry says that from Dec08, all foreigners are to get visas from their country of origin, or nearest embassy, which in Singapore’s case, is China (beijing isn’t so near…) The guy in my dorm (we talk in a mish-mash of broken Arabic and English) is from Kassala and he has a friend there working at the passports office. He reckons he can get insider help and a stamp on my passport into Eritrea. After some thinking, I decided not to take such a risky move. Even if i can get in, i will have trouble getting out, no help anywhere, and the situation there now isn’t too friendly (see Dec 24 news on newly imposed sanctions). So with that, there goes my hopes of doing the border crossing. No matter, I have rescheduled the itinerary and timed Leddat and Timkat in Ethiopia’s Gonder and Lalibela.

And again the Sudanese are really helpful. The guy in my dorm insists on taking me down to the Mina Bary terminal tomorrow and sending me off, waking up with me at 530am.