The Last of Sudan (fromSimon)

The last day in Khartoum was blessed with clouds and wind; the hot weather was over. No longer was I hiding in ATM booths just to use the air-con, or hiding in the Mall with the Chinese (weirdly, the Chinese neither look at or acknowledge any non-Chinese). Doing stuff no longer had to be restricted to carefully restricted hours in the early morning or late afternoon.

People have been asking, "What do you actually DO in Sudan?", and whilst I hope I've made clear that there are a number of amazing sights and attractions in Sudan I feel I've not made it fully clear the character that such visitations take. Say you decide to visit the National Museum of Sudan, which is excellent and contains a few fully relocated temples which otherwise would be at the bottom of Lake Nasser, as well as a number of incredible Nubian Christian frescos from the middle ages. You make your plan, and pick a route - hopefully one with plenty of shade.

Every 100 metres down this route, you will be beckoned over to have a chat (this is discounting the numerous "Salam!"s and "Tamaam?"s you'll get in passing). If you're good, you can get this down to just a:

"Kayf? Tamaam?"

"Tamaam! Tamaam?"

"Tamaam."

"Koola tamaam."

But it can go on to include names, which country you're from, what do you think of Sudan/Ocampo, the offer of drinks, banannas, or if you're really unlucky, a visit to their home. Once this has been successfully navigated, you can move on another hundred metres to the next encounter. By the time you get to where you're going it's either closed or it's too hot, so you have to work out another route to take to get there the next day - if you went the same way then you'd have lots of friends, so the time taken would be doubled!

In case you think the Tamaaming is a traveller shortcut, the locals can engage in a bout for a good few minutes, slapping each others chests heartily whilst doing so. I sometimes wonder if the reason they're so happy is that they must spend a good part of every day telling each other how wonderfully everythnig is going. I should say that not everyone is wonderful here - I realise I may have painted it as some kind of pre-fall utopia - there are at least 4 people I've not particularly liked in the country. But the wonderful look on someones face when they realise they've met a real life Khawaja and can finally welcome him to their country is really quite beautiful.

In the Mall I also had the misfortune to purchase the Khartoum Monitor, the English newspaper out here. I used to have problems with Al Ahram in Egypt, for its "It's the Jews what done it!" attitude and casual racism (they weren't surprised to learn that Barack Obama was a good dancer, given he's black, and this Elvis like review of softcore pop-rapper Akon almost makes him sound quite interesting: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/937/entertain.htm), but the Khartoum Monitor is something else. At least Al Ahram was a proper paper - this was a badly tied together mess of actually quite stridently independent views (ICC, maybe not a bad thing), weird, incoherent Jesus rants like the type coming from a tramp sitting on his once proud billboard nursing the bottle that has lead him astray, and celebrity gossip sourced from the Daily Mail. Really. Apparently Madonna is turning into Kate Winslet in an effort to keep up with her young lover, and Keira Knightly DOES look good without make-up. Way to go Keira.

It was time to move on from Khartoum. I headed up to Shendi, the old capital when Sudan was still built on slavery. There's nothing left from those times, when apparently the richer you were the poorer you looked in order to avoid jealousy or theft. In that case, whoever built the Lokanda I leave my bags at must have been a millionare - it is literaly the scummiest, dirtiest hovel I've ever seen. The owners aren't there, but I'm eager to move on to check out the Pyramids and I'm told to leave my stuff and check in later.

The Pyramids just up the road are astonishing. You walk across the desert to a field of them, though these are pretty small, towards the horizon where a hill looks like the jawbone of some deceased titan, the broken pyramids lined along it like so many crushed teeth. They glow in the setting sun, though haze makes the light weird and there's a sandstorm brewing. As I stagger towards them through the wind, I meet the only touts in Sudan. The pick of them is a tiny, black Jim Henson puppet on camel back, who utters in a Yoda-like squeak "Hmmm, youwannacamelriiiiide?" before following it up with a Barry White-esque rumble "Mmmmm - ohkaay."

Luckily none of the touts (and there were only 7 in total) are allowed into the actual site, so I could explore it by myself. Most of the Pyramids here have had their tops lopped off by a 19th century treasure hunter, but they're still majestic as the desert slowly reclaims them. I climbed one for my 'Flaubert' moment, but it's a lot smaller than the great one so wasn't similarly overcome.

I hitched back to Shendi with a long distance lorry driver, which feels like another tick on those life-experiences chart. Unfortunately, upon reaching Shendi, the Lokanda owners told me that it was full. But where were all the people? They would no doubt show up later. Given it was now after 9 o'clock, I asked if there was any other Lokanda in Shendi - "No, but there is a hotel across town..." After a trek I found that this hotel was charging $60 a night, which made it one of the most expensive in Sudan for not very much improvement. After informing them I wouldn't be staying there, the receptionist said with a smug grin "But there's nowhere else you can stay in Shendi...", which smells like a bit of a stitch up to me. Luckily I'd seen a street of bed shops on my travels through town, and availing myself of some of their outdoor stock in an out of sight situation, settled down for the night. Lifts with lorry drivers and sleeping rough - hobo values coming to the fore.

Naturally the next day I was up early and on my way to Atbara. Upon first arriving I thought it was dump, but after a quick nap & shower I had a wander around and got into the spirit of things. The suq was vibrant (though when I pulled out my camera someone stuck their head out of a car and said "No photos here!"). You can wander around the railway works and workers will wave at you as they drive their engines past - photos are allowed here, surprisingly. Across the tracks, you're suddenly in suburban England (though a lot sunnier), or perhaps an Indian cantonnement, with lots of bungalows on shady terraces, and an odd Umbrian church which seemed a little out of place. There were also lots of little branch lines petering about; it seems that some of the railway workers take their work home with them.

I only spent a day there, before heading over to Port Sudan. The journey over is incredible, as half way through you start reaching the Red Sea Hills. The reason I haven't been talking about the scenery much is that it's almost always flat, a vast nothingness where every half an hour or so you pass a geological feature, or perhaps just a few big rocks. Sometimes there's some scrubby Acacia trees, almost enough to call a wood, sometimes there's just a big lot of empty. But along the length of the Red Sea coast there are scores of hills, some even rising to quite a prodigious height, and all of them providing a dramatic backdrop compared to the rest of Sudan.

Thes black crags with dusty valleys lined with occasional green shrubs are the perfect breeding grounds for herds of camel and even more prolific dust-devils. I once saw 17 at a time, which seems unusual, though some were forming or dissapating. Amongst this demon wracked landscape live the Beja tribesmen, proud but scarred by modernity. In the desert their tents rise as tan whale-backs, but the closer you get to towns the more they begin to break-apart, covered in plastic scabs, till finally you're left with a shabby little shanty outside Port Sudan. Still, they make an impressive sight strolling through the colonial streets in their waistcoats and afros, carrying their swords.

Port Sudan itself is full of wide, sleepy streets lined with arches. It's also totally surrounded by docks, which may be why even the whiff of getting a camera out will cause people to pull over, screeching on their horns and tell you to not take photos. Still, it was a lovely place to hang out, and when the weekend ended the streets suddenly filled with people. I had awoken to a strange noise; I realised it was the bustle of the crowd. It turns out that during the week it's as lively as anything.

The main reason to visit is to see Suakin, the old slave trading and Hajj port just down the coast. It's on a small island, reached by a causeway, and all its buildings are in a state of rue collapse despite only being abandonned 100 years ago. It now seems to mainly be the residence of various ravens and hawks, but you can still climb the minaret for great views and stumble over the decaying coral architecture. It seemed vaguely poetic to me that a town built on the bodies of so many slaves and literally from the remains of so much coral is itself now dying.

It also had the best fish restaurant ever just outside it. For weeks I've had to choose between eating the excellent ful/bean mush and something expensive and rubbish otherwise. But here I was served the days catch fried up with a spicy sauce and a wonderful satay salad. It was like suddenly been taken to South East Asia and my taste buds wept with joy. Plus the owner will feed goats from his mouth for your amusement, letting them clamber up onto his shoulders. Re. Sult.

But I've now come to Kassala, to practically the end of my Sudanese soujourn, passing some Beja in the midst of a jumping competition on the way. Here the flat plain is penetrated by some dramatic fingers of granite thrusting up to awesome heights. For some reason it's lush on this side of them, despite being miles from the Nile and having a local river which has completely dried up. It's a great town with bussling suqs full of fruit, and colourful inhabitants, mostly Beja or Rashaida (whose women are some of the few to wear the veil in Sudan, but are extravegantly attired and very pale skinned - well, hispanic coloured).

I've spent a few days here wandering around, climbing quite far up the mountains (though they tend to get quite sheer near the top) and just enjoying looking at them poking up in the distance. It's nice to sit on the roof at sunset and watch the colours change on their freckled sides. I've been happy in Sudan, many, many times. I hope that Ethiopia can live up to this. I know it will be a lot harder work.

A lot of the Sudanese I've met have asked me to let you know that they're not bad people, that they just want to develop their country and not be villified. I should say that apart from occasional power cuts and lack of postal service they don't seem dramatically poorer than other nations. Every house I've been to has seemed fairly nice, though this may be because only people who live in good conditions invite me, but most people seem to have enough to eat - I did see someone in Shendi grab someone's leftovers of a plate though. There are beggars here, but no more than in any other 3rd world country.

It seems the main problem is that the Sudan has learnt too well from us, and is engaged in maintaining the colonial empire it was left. North Sudan is a great place with lovely people, but really, no viable industry or resources. South Sudan has plenty of oil, and the North needs it to keep development on track. Unfortunately this means violence continues to erupt. But to the Northerners, this seems ambiguous and not necessarily Bashirs fault, and Bashir doesn't seem to be corrupt, or not visibly so, which is a big thing in Africa. Even Egypt is riddled with corruption. It certainly seems like the ICC case has cemented his popularity, and I'd be surprised if he doesn't win the presedential elections this year.

I've heard that the internet is fairly awful in Ethiopia, so you may not hear that much from me in the next couple of months. Thankyou for wading through these massive braindumps. Keep in touch. Always good to hear from you,

Simon