Welcome to The Sudan

One, if not the best, thing about travel is how it smashes you pre-(mis)-conceptions.

Here we are in the big boogey monster of The Sudan. And it's fine. But the bureaucracy is mind boggling. I don't think The Sudanese government wants tourists. They do everything they can to make it as difficult as possible.

As if visas weren't hard enough to get, once entering, you visit four offices - immigration, customs, alien registration (where you can't register anymore) and then security control to have your fingerprints taken.

Leaving The Sudanese side border town, Gellabet, you climb an ever so gentle rise. Then, it's dead flat 550km to Khartoum. Dead flat.Initially, you enter the Sahel, the curve across the continent from the Senegal River, on the Atlantic Coast, to Sudan's shores on the Red Sea - 6,000km long and 200km wide - of pastoral land. But by Gederaf it's becoming dry, by Khartoum desert.

The other thing about travel is how quickly time can make mockery of travel guides. We were expecting a two day slog to Gedaref, on the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway, then bitumen all the way to the capital. Instead, it was bitumen all the way. Smooth enough for the bus conductor to regularly climb out the window of the 100km/hr travelling bus, onto the roof to check on the four goat kids tied to our packs!

Another thing: Sudan has changed its monetry unit from dinah to pound in the past year, and devalued at the same time. Guides are useless for pricing.

We planned to stop overnight in Gedaref, but four Ethiopians and one or two Sudanese, who all had smidgin English, advocated we should continue to Khartoum. The Khartoum-Port Sudan road is bumper with road trains, mostly containers but some car transporters and cattle trucks. Some of the containers are white, and painted up UN. The Sudan is currently not without its share of problems. We shouldn't be anywhere near that.

Between Gellabet and Gedaref, 150km of border district, we had to stop and show our passports and be entered into registers eight times. I think this pissed the locals on board, who didn't have to, just as much as us. This section of road is patroled by soldiers in Land Rover utes, with big machine guns mounted on tripods on the back. Just like the warlords in Mogadishu, Somalia that I have seen on news clips.

Later, on the Khartoum section, the checks only happened three times. Though on a couple of occassions we had an 'official' shine a torch in our eyes. On one late night stop we were taken into the usual, dirt floored tent, with a couple of beds, and the huka water pipe, where you sit on one bed - the official on another and agonisingly go through the phoenetics of telling your name, country, etc. They can't read your passport. I'd love an Arabic reader to read back to me what has been recorded as our names.

One (unusually) bolshy joker holds Deb's passport and booms: "What my name? What my country?" Interpreting, Deb replies "Deborah O'K; New Zealand." "Good! Good! Bus! GO!" waiving his hands dismissively. My turn. All this nonsense bureaucracy makes me frivilous - hard as you might find that. Deb got it right, I'll play the game. "What my name? What my country?" "Deborah O'K; New Zealand." I reply. He looks at my passport: "Good! Good! Bus! GO!" Thanks Deb. I'd hate to be stuck there because I gave the wrong response. Fancy that. We turn up and strike the one immigration/security/alien registration/travel permisions (who knows?) man in The Sudan who has the same name as Deb, and comes from New Zealand!!!

Anway, the people who told us to stay on the bus reckoned it would take four hours, making it 8:30-9:00pm. A bit late for arriving we thought. But we relented. Tiredness, and the increasing heat meant we slept a few hours on the bus. We arrived in Khartoum at 12:30am, without a hotel booking! Khartoum was surprisingly still awake.

In the morning, there was a TV behind reception of the hotel we stayed at. It showed the weather forecast, in Arabic - but a weather map is a weather map. Khartoum's prediction: 40 degrees!

Your first priority when reaching Khartoum, you have only three days from entry, is to 'alien register'. What a nightmare.

You have to have all the right forms, they have to be stamped and signed by your hotel. We're in luck. At The Sudanese embassey, in Addis Ababa, we met a lovely young Swedish girl (aren't they all?), Sara, applying also. There she is again, at our hotel (the second - we moved in the morning). She has already been to the office, returned for the forms, having found out all this.

Once into the process you find you have to go out and get photocopies of nearly all forms, plus the entry stamp in your passport.

You go from one window to another, back to the first, back again. Do you need a stamp, do you not need a stamp? How much? No English is spoken, at all. There are locals there doing the process on behalf of NGOs and people on business (mainly Chinese, lots of Chinese) who look every bit as baffled.

The process is conducted in a quadrangle, little shade, no breeze, at least 40 degrees. You fight loosing your rag. Then, of course, they stop for lunch. All we have achieved is having our forms stapled together and signed, acknowledging all the correct paperwork. Sara, and Yenneck, a German (we've teamed up to figure out the system) go seek shade, a cold drink, and some lunch. Two o'clock was the restart time, we understood. The pidgin English of Ethiopia now seems like a dream.

Back at two. "No, 2:30." Hmmmm. Three-thirty and the 'money taking' ladies return. We're frazzled, it's way too hot. All we have to do, it seems, is pay money, take the passports back to another window, have a stamp placed in them. Four-thirty, and we're out of there. A process like this at home and 10 minutes you'd become impatient, 15 minutes and you'd implode. Later, the time/temperature digital clock in the street of our hotel (handy later, for locating the hotel and knowing how hot it was!)showed 5:30pm - 39 degrees. It was bloody hot earlier.

Permits are required to visit many areas of The Sudan, archaeological permits to visit sites, photography permits to use your camera (didn't bother, I'd had enough - they can shot me.) All require forms, passport copies, photos, etc etc. And payments of course. There's bugger all tourists, so I think this is a way to make more money out of NGOs and business visitors.

The Sudan is more expensive than the wickedly cheap Ethiopia. Hotels are really grotty, and the most expensive in the Africa we've stayed. It's not tourist friendly. The people, though, would have to be the nicest we've meet. Travel guides, with their 'nicest, lovely people' drivel drive me spare. But people here smile at you. Nod. With bugger all English they genuinely try to help you. Those that can speak a bit of English, step in and try all they can to asist. They are wonderful. We've had enough to compare against now.

Constantly, as we pass people their only remark (and probably only English) is "Welcome to The Sudan." You know, I believe they mean it.

Max
aka Mad