Wadi Halfa | The Furious Panda

December 19, 2009September 3, 2018 by Red

19 – Introducing: Sudan

15th Dec, xxxhrs, Lord Hotel, Dongola

It was 6am when local Egyptian sleep buddy nudged me awake and started feeding me with bread and cheese. “Sabad Al-khayr” and a full stomache later, i wandered around the ship somemore. Nothing much till we reached around 1pm, other than getting a view of Abu Simbel from the boat.

On reaching Wadi Halfa, we the foreign tourists were herded into the dining room to fill up more papers. These were needed to get around Sudan. We keep a copy, got our passport stamped “Registration needed within 3 days” and onto Sudanese soil we stepped. Actually it was a lot more haphazard then how I described it, but yeah, let’s talk about Wadi Halfa.

Ah. Wadi Halfa. It just felt like stepping into Africa proper. A small frontier town with a laid back feel. The Sudanese were darker skinned than their northern neighbours, and that contrasted with their white full robes. It didn’t take long to walk around the place. The guys from the boat with cars took up a room in the Nile Hotel (dorms 7 SDP) since they had to wait a day. I went along with Kang from China and Ben the Belgian to Dongola. But before that we had fried freshwater fish (5 SDP) and lamb (5 SDP). The bus to Dongola left at 6 pm or so (40 SDP). Since the last LP was published in 2007, the roads are much better, taking maybe half the time needed previously, and hence more bokasi, or minivan were available to travel from town to town. From Wadi Halfa to Khartoum it is 75 SDP, 12 hours. And from Wadi Halfa to the next nearest town Abri, is around 20 SDP.

One unusual thing is that no more than 5 people should be in the minivan. The one before us had 7 and they had to turn back at the police checkpoint and drop two! We traveled in the dark, the mini-van was doing maybe 60km/hr. We stopped, u-turned, stopped and uturned again at one point, trying to find someone or something on the road. No idea what it was. There was also a rest stop at 1130 where we had more Nile fish (8 SDP shared between the 3 of us).

Reached Dongola at 2am. The minivan dropped us outside Haifa Hotel, which declared themselves full…It was dark, very cold and we were trying to get our bearings. Walked down to Lord Hotel next door and the owner says “You need to register with the security and pass me your papers.” Which is fine except it was 2am. So we handed over our passports for the night and planned to do it first thing next morning.

December 19, 2009September 3, 2018 by Red

18 – Sailing across the Lake Nasser

14th Dec, xxxhrs, Boat to Wadi Halfa

I took the “yellow train” at the train station (1.5 EGP), a half hour ride to As-Saad Al-Aly, which is the High Dam. I had to be there by 10am. In the train, met Kang from China. When we asked what time the boat leaves, its around “4pm if you are lucky, maybe 6, maybe 7. But be there by 10am”. Nice. We got on the boat at 10am, together with the rest of the foreign travellers. There were 8 vehicles aboard 2 pontoons, that would arrive a day after the main boat reaches Wadi Halfa, the border town in Sudan. The 2nd class travellers like me staked a place on the deck of the boat, since it was stuffy below. I had a good sleeping bag, so got myself a prime corner on the deck.

The trickle of local Egyptians started filling up the deck grew larger and larger till it looked like a mini refugee camp, with luggage occupying every single open spot. I waited for 6 hours for them to load goods up the pontoon: everything from metal sheets, refrigerators, crates of apples, stacks of god-knows-what. The way they area throwing everything in, I have no idea how, or even how long, they will get everything back out.

The boat fee came with 1 meal. Which was pretty good, except for the small cockroach in the 2nd class dining area that flew into my potato curry.

Now then, when you get stuck on the same boat with maybe 300 people for 16 hours plus another 8 hours of waiting for the boat to set sail, you start to get acquainted with a few people. There were the Irish and Australian duo Andy and Z, Ben from Belgium, a Japanese guy, Kang the China dude, plus a whole host of Egyptians with similar names like Mohamed, Amr etc. I think most of the Sudanese were below deck. In fact, the deck got so crowded and I had to share my groundsheet demarcated area with an Egyptian guy. Who was a jolly fellow and took care of me. Before long the surrounding area around were all locals. They shared their food, I had bread and cheese for dinner, and for next day’s breakfast. For supper, another guy had plastic bags full of loaves and offered me two and an egg. I was pretty stuffed on the boat. Had many conversations here and there, half of them one-way conversations with me shaking my head “laa’ afham”. There was nothing much to do after it got dark, so off to bed I went.

Was woken up by the local beside me and sent down below to get my passport stamped. They took my temperature, i filled up some papers. Little was I to know it was only the beginning of all the paperwork.

It was a bit cold at night, even inside my sleeping bag. I feel asleep counting shooting stars under the star-lit sky.