HEAT, SANDSTORM AND MORE

Heat, Sand storm and washing at the Mosque

Today was very much a repeat of the last two days, a long stretch of road under punishing desert heat... The good news though was that we were offered a perfect tail wind that made feel more like sailing than riding a bike. Many of us did the first 100 km in less than 3 hours and that included a lunch stop...
The scenery started changing as well with some acacia trees popping up here and there and some kind of sub Saharan vegetation. A relief after so many days of desert. We saw free roaming camels for the first time as well as plenty of goats eating from the acacia trees.

I reached camp so early that the heat was only starting to become unbearable then, I had managed to miss most of the worst by riding so fast.. The camp unfortunately offered no relief from the sun or the heat. Everything here burned, and as it was not enough, I noticed a fat cloud of smoke in the horizon. “Sand storm” shouted Abdul. .He is the Sudanese representative of the ministry of tourism, helping us with the necessary arrangements that need to be made every day.

Within a few minutes, tents started flying away around camp and sand was everywhere. I decided to wait for pitching my tent and found refuge at a little shed nearby where they sold semi cold drinks and tea. Many other riders joined me and we sat in this covered room that offered shelter from the sun and the sand sharing it with a few locals. The nice thing about it is that it was a good 10 degrees colder in there and that it has some basic beds in which we could lie down. A treat!

The heat had simply decimated all of us. We all look like coming back from the front line after heavy artillery exchanges... There was not much talking, we all sat, kept on ordering more semi cold drinks and just tried to rehydrate. After some time, even the locals started to talk to us probably feeling sorry for the way we all looked. Today was definitely my worst day ever with the heat. I had now reached a point where I simply could not cool down, it just felt as I was boiling, and even the drinks were not helping. I fell asleep on one of the dirty half broken string beds inside the shed. I have no idea how long I slept, but when I woke up, I felt a lot better. By then the storm was dying down and it was time to get back to camp and pitch my tent.

The 500 meter walk back to camp just brought me back to reality, it was still so hot that before reaching half way, I turned back and bought 5 drinks from the little shed before making my second attempt to get back at camp. Buying “cold” drinks in this part of the world takes some experience. Everybody pretends to be selling cold drinks, but very few actually have cold drinks. What you must look for is electricity, if you see a shed along the road with some kind of electrical line hanging in some corner, it is promising... They usually have one big freezer that kind of works but in this heat you can imagine that all it can achieve is bring a pepsi temperature from 40 degrees to 20, but even 20 feels cold in a 40 degree sand storm... What you must not do is look at the content of the fridge... It might put you off the envy of drinking... As I wanted to make sure that the drinks were cold enough, I open the top led and bend into it... A filthy smell of rotten meat jumped at my face, but I was so thirsty, I didn't care.... The thing is that they use the same freezer for everything, including keeping their meat, using a wet dirty cloth as divider. Some European Union sanity control inspector would probably have a heart attack if he had to see that... But we were TDA cyclists, we had pedal 2000 km across the desert, slept on dumping sites, eaten dodgy local food and learned to dig a hole for going to toilets, so by now, most of us really don't care about such details. A colder drink than the air is a luxury... Full stop!

One interesting fact is that they actually have a much more efficient way to cool water down than freezers. The sheds along the road all have a full size goat skin filled with water hanging from the roof. The evaporation process through the skin is so efficient that the water inside the goat is extremely cold. They leave a metal cup next to it and anybody just helps himself into this cold water. Amazing! I did not dare drinking it, but I through a cup of that water on top of my head and it was the best moment of the day.

Later on, at camp a few of us got together and decided that it was not acceptable to remain in this state of filth, salty sweaty condition. So we looked at our options for showering. Quite limited when you looked around. But one of us reminded the rest that every mosque has some water facility since you have to wash your feet before getting in, and a mosque there was on the horizon... So we mounted a “mosque washing” expedition. 5 of us left with soap and towels toward the mosque. As we made our way there we noticed a small building behind the mosque... and there it was a small room with a water pipe and a few taps hanging. The pressure was non existent, but who cared about pressure... There was not much dignity left in that group as we quickly undressed and washed ourselves literally on top of each other with whatever water came out of that pipe... The 5 of us probably managed to wash ourselves with less water than you guys use at home each day for cleaning you teeth.... But it felt so good.... Getting rid of that salty sweat that covers our face is such a basic pleasure.... One should think about having this added to the human right constitution... Unfortunately, the pleasure did not last too long as an angry Sudanese man appeared out of nowhere and clearly was not impressed by this group of non believers making use of the mosque facility. But he was not here to chase us away, he probably realized it was a good opportunity to cash in on rich foreigners, so he asked for money. 5 Sudanese pound per person... a absolute fortune (about 2,5 dollars). After some negotiation, the price had come down to 5 pounds for the whole group, still a hell of a lot of money per liter of water... But we were so delighted about our shower at the mosque that we paid and everybody was happy.

Tomorrow we will arrive in Khartoum, this will mean the end of the first stage of the tour and also a rest day. At camp tonight the only thing in everyone's mind was restaurants, real cold drinks and may be a swimming pool. The sand storm is now over as I am writing this from my boiling tent, but sand is simply everywhere and I am seriously worried about all my electronic equipments. I am going to find a nice hotel in Khartoum and use the opportunity to clean everything. By now, I would be ready to pay anything for a cold beer, but alcohol is strictly prohibited in Sudan. So we are going to have to work hard on that one, but some of us are already making plans... There are rumors about some Chinese connections... but more about that later...

HEAT, HOT, BOILING, COOKING AND BURNING

Last night at camp, a few of us got together and worked out a strategy against the heat. We would ride together the first 2 hours as fast as we could and clock as many kilometers as possible before the infernal blaze would reduce our bodies into boiling eggs.


That worked out really well, Tony and I got in the front of the pack and despite my previous day cold and fever, I was feeling so good that we actually rode 25 km in front without passing relay... Needless to say that our fellow riders were happy about that... When we dropped to the back of the group, I realised that quite a few other guys had hopped on the opportunity and our peloton was actually quite big. The problem with that is that many riders especially at the back are quite experienced in peloton riding and riding in big groups can be hazardous. We already had 5 guys falling on top of each other a few days ago and they walk around camp limping with fat bruises on their bodies. Anyway I knew that as soon as Jim, the American would take his turn in front, that peloton would explode, and that's exactly what happened. We were already maintaining a decent pace of 35 km per hour and since Jim always make a point of rising the speed of 5 km per hour when it is his turn in front, our pace went to 40 km per hour which split that group in two.Our group kept that strong pace all the way to the lunch truck at km 77 which we reached in about two hours making our average speed over 35 km per hour. By then the heat was now starting to hurt and everybody knew that the remaining 65 km were not gonna be fun. Last night during the rider meeting they told us there was a "coffee shop" at km 122, so this was the next target...

Again we decided to stick together and rode all the way to this "coffee shop" The heat is impossible to describe. You simply cannot get away from it. There is no shade nowhere, it is just sand reflecting that heat straight at your face, even your bike starts to burn and the water in the water bottle gets so warm that it is totally unpleasant to drink it, but you have no choice. We are drinking so much water, it is mad. You fill all your water bottles, (I have 3) and then you grab any opportunity to buy cold drinks along the road. Today there are two such opportunities... Then you refill all at the lunch truck.

The "coffee shop" offered a brake from the heat; Designed for the local people, it was very basic, very dirty, if you had to come in there straight from the asseptisised world we are used to live in, you would call it filthy, but by now, we are pretty much comfortable with that, so we will just call it "dirty". but, who cares about dirty anyway... What mattered is that it offered shade and ultra luxury a bed and some seats... Jos, our South African rider who is more built for playing Rugby than riding a bike through the Sudanese desert took over that bed and had a sleep for a good hour while the rest of us where taking photos of the place and downing cold drink after cold drink. Unfortunately within 30 minutes we had managed to drink every possible cold drink available at the "coffee shop"... This meant that the new riders who were just coming in were gonna have to intake that horrible hot pepsi... This is one of the advantage the faster riders enjoy. The TDA staff actually stops at these places in advance and tell them to fill their fridges for us, but you can imagine that these fridges are often old and efficient and take many hours to cool down anything...

A colorful bus full of women pulled in at the coffee shop stop and the place became very busy. I was hungry for something salty, but here in remote Sudan they seem to like only super sweet stuff. The coffee shop sold all kind of disgusting ultra sweet biscuits, but not one salted thing, and we need to replenish with salt given the amount of sweating we do. So I was left with only one solution, try the local meat stew that was boiling in a aluminium pot. The woman who came out of the bus had some and it did look disgusting, but I was hungry and I eventually was the only rider who was brave enough to give it a try. The people here carry their own plate and I did not have one, so the guy who was running the place gave me his. By the time I saw how filthy his plate was, it was too late to decline the offer. He politely cleaned some of the grace and thick layer of, I don't know what he does with his right hand and threw a full portion of stew in it... So I decided it was time to start teaching my body about the local germs and bugs, a good preparation for Ethiopia... Anyway, the taste was good, lightly spiced. The problem  is that chopped meat in Africa is a very different thing from chopped meat in Europe... Chopped means chopped.. So this means that the meat is full of very sharp pieces of bones so you gotta be careful when eating it. This also means that you hit the lottery when you find a piece that is soft and eatable the way we are used to. Eating that meat reminded me the scene of Charlie Chaplin eating his shoe sole in "the gold rush". There were strange pieces of strange body parts, but never mind, I was hungry and to me it tasted good. I suppose that in any other context I would have given it a different comment, but for the middle of the Sudanese desert, it got a good rating from my French palate...

Riding to camp was easy, a nice tail wind had picked up and we were propulsed at a whooping 38 km per hour over the last few kilometers without much work...

Tomorrow is another hard day, we have 155 km to go and in days we will be in Khartoum.

                      Here is the stew, definitely a must when you have been a desert for too long

                                       TDA riders recovering after a long ride in the intense heat

                            We came across this school, they were having a break and the kids
                            were busy drinking form the wheel

                                Tonigt at camp a Sudanese entreprenerial sales man came with his
                                car full of hot "cold drinks" and made a fortune...

                                     This young girl was on tha women's bus and took great
                                      interest about our cameras

HEAT, SORE THROAT AND DEAD CAMELS...

There is a throat and lung virus going around at camp and half the riders were feeling sick yesterday. Last night, I joined that 50% group and I had very bad night waking up every hour with a dry throat very painful and some fever. This morning as we were getting up, I realised that it was gonna be a hot day as the heat could already be felt and the sun had not even risen yet...

Hot, it was... A previous year rider wrote that nothing can prepare you for the heat in Sudan... Well, today, we all understood what that meant. We had well over 40 degrees with some hot burning wind throwing even more heat at our sweaty, salty faces. At one point the sweat coming down along my face was so salty that it felt like swallowing sea water... I am writing theses words from my tent which I have to unfortunately keep closed since as if it was not enough that we are in a permanent sauna, there are thousands of mosquitoes invading our tents. The Nile is just around the corner. It must still be at least be 30 degrees and it is full night already.

I really wasn't feeling well, my lungs were completely locked and my throat felt like I had eaten a liter of extra hot Nando's peri peri sauce... So I decided I would not race today and would enjoy the company of the slower riders. These guys often reach camp many hours after the first guys and are heroes in their own way as they actually spend a lot more time in the saddle than we do. Furthermore, riding slowly means that you ride the afternoon heat and today, it was a killer. It was nice to spend time with riders I have not had a chance to ride with and I enjoyed their company tremendously.

As soon as we got out of Dongola, we met 2 big camel groups lead by a few men. Apparently they bring them up from southern Sudan all the way to Egypt ,where they can be sold for meat or other purposes. I decided to leave the tarred road and go around these camels to get a good shot with some TDA riders on the background. After taking these shots, I realise that I was missing the off road ride and that it was really fun to ride the old gravel road, so I decided to stay on it. Now, I know that it might sound strange to do that especially since I was really sick, but anyway, I thought it was fun, so I rode my bike on the sand dunes, just like the previous TDA riders used to do. The tarred road we are enjoying was built last year and we are the first guys to enjoy this luxury. After an hour, another rider, Andre from Cape Town also joined me and we started riding the dunes together. Andre is a strong off road rider and since it is also one of my strength, we paired well and managed to ride at the same speed off road than the slower riders were doing on the tarred road. It was absolutely fun, but the kilometers did not clock very fast and we had 144 km to ride, so at km 55 we got back on the road and got the speed up. Unfortunately for us, by then the temperature had soared to well over 40 degrees and a light headwind was picking up. Now imagine a hair dryer blowing hot air at your face, that is how it felt.

I run out of water 10 km before the lunch truck and it was a relief to see it appearing in the horizon. Running out of water is the worst thing that can happen to a cyclist in such heat. It took me half an hour at the water point to recover. It was then a hard 65 km to the finish. The heat got so bad that at one point I picked up my water bottle and it was like drinking tea (my bottles are white and transparent, imagine any other colour...)

Andre and I sticked together all the way to the finish line taking turns in 2 km relays. We did very well actually and managed to catch up plenty of the middle field which was also struggling big time with the heat. At camp, our fellow riders shook their head with disbelief when they heard that we had braved the dunes as well.

The camp is as bold as a the head of a monk. There was so much heat and so little shade that some riders even took refuge underneath the trucks... There is an irrigation canal next to camp. The water looked a bit filthy, but it was running water, so I could not resist getting in there and washing myself. The camp also has an extra guest, a dead camel as dry as a biltong stick half buried in the burning sand. Andre and I passed many dead camel bodies today during our 55 km off road ride. So, it seems, that not every camel makes it to Egypt....

Tomorrow another big stage of 145 km and the next day even worst, over 160... so we need to recover and ride faster in the morning, to escape the afternoon heat.

                                 During our off road ride, Andre and I came across these people.
                                At first they were very shy and did not want to be photographed,
                                but once we had been there a few minutes, they accepted.

                             Finally a group of woman. In Sudan it is harder to get pictures of women,
                             they are really shy, looking away from the camera whilst the men tend to
                            come forward with a sense of pride. It took quite some convincing, but
                            eventually this group of women accepted to pose for me.

                                                                Another dead camel

                                    One of the camel shepard came to me and posed proudly

                                                                       The camel trains

                                  Eric, exhausted and dehydrated, recovering in the little shade
                               we get from the trucks. The TDA staff surprised us and managed
                                             to get hold of some cold drinks, it was Christmas!

                                                             The extra guest at the camp

                                                           Working on the equipments

                                                        A book matching the surroundings

                                                       Nobody can doubt anymore about
                                                            what we do for a hobby...

                                                             Hiding from the heat..

                              We came across these people and they invited us to share their meal.
                        Was good and confirms again the sense of hospitality of the Sudanese people

                                    Our senior rider who is 71 y.o. found a spot of shade away
                                            from the road, but could not resist the temptation....

FULL MOON AND COLD PEPSI

Today, we are riding to Dongola. Everybody is excited because of the rest day coming up and the fact that it is a "short" ride ("only" 110 km); I am personally looking forward for cleaning up all my equipments. Sand is becoming a problem, it is everywhere. So much for my super tight sand and water proof bags... sand makes its way everywhere, it is a fine layer of dust that invades everything. I am worried about all the electronic equipments I carry. They are definitely going to give me problems with time.
Dongola also means COLD Pepsi and that is something to look forward to! We have ridden 410 km of desert in 3 days and this rest day coming up will do us all good.

My day started so well. Firstly, I had decided to wake up early so I would not have to rush getting my tent and my equipments packed into the truck. The first thing I did was to look for a number 2 toilet spot. It was still night and the rest of the camp was still asleep. The full moon was so bright that I did not need to use my spot light. I grabbed my portable toilet seat (he he, yes... This is Africa... but I am French...) and I walked toward the Nile. I found a perfect spot on a sand dune overseeing the Nile. The reflect of the moon on the shallow waters complimented by the sound of water gurglling turned this morning duty into something memorable... As I was sitting there, getting a few pounds lighter, the sound of the first prayers started echoing in the far distance. Wao! Now it was really amazing... Since we are in a very remote area, they don't have electricity and the prayers are still done by human voice and not loudspeakers which makes them a lot more pleasant to listen to. The funny thing though was that the only living thing that seemed to respond to the prayers were the donkeys who started braying....

The riding was great. I stuck to the leading group for the first 50 km. These guys who are racing for positions are really strong. At one stage I managed to look at my speedometer, we were doing 52 km per hour! I decided I would have my 2 minutes of glory and attacked.... I lead the Tour D'Afrique race for 2 minutes... It felt good... Now I was exhausted and could go back at the end of the peloton... The guys in front looked at me a bit surprised and I clearly had broken some of the peloton unspoken rules, so I did not get much words of congratulations, but I was happy...

The pace was so high that I made it to the lunch truck in less than one and a half hour. The great thing about that is that I now had plenty of time to shoot pictures on the remaining 45 km. So the pics you are getting here are partly to thank to my legs who are definitely getting stronger. On Day 3 I had tried to hang with the top guys and was dropped after 10 km, now I hanged with them for 50..
We were told that we would be camping at the Dongola zoo... Zoo here means there are a few animals made of stone. Outside, they have this huge amusement park advertisment board with Mickey mouse on it... The reality is it is a camping site with a few benches and some artwork.. Anyway, the ground is really nice, it has grass, first one we see in two weeks and it is a pleasure to put up our tents on it and start getting rid of the sand we have everywhere.The vibe is good here and they even sell cold drinks on site, so some of us who had planned to go to a hotel dropped the plan as the camping site is a lot more pleasant than the hotel rooms available in town. At least we are sure there are no bed mites in our tents.

Dongola is nice, it is quite dirty like most cities in Africa but everybody is pleasant, respectful and the many little restaurants along the dusty streets are vibrant. Shop owners are calm and do not try to force any sale on us. As we pass, most people greed us in the few english words they know. Many wish us "welcome in Sudan". Quite a different pictuire we have about this country back home, sadly because of Darfur. But Darfur is so far away from here, it is technically another country. The people here are Nubians, they are peaceful and education is relatively good here. There also seems to be a great deal of tolerance here. I had no problems taking photos of people, even during the prayers and in front of Mosques.

Rest days are actually wrongly called, because there is certainly very little rest on a rest day? This is the day when you are actually super busy, getting your laundry done, updating your blog, looking for food to buy,charging all your equipment and even more important, clean and maintain your bicycle.

We are now 500 km from Khartoum, so it means that we have 5 more riding days before entering the capital and ending stage 1. Ther is nothing between here and Khartoum, so it means another 4 desert camps ahead...

MORE PHOTOS OF SUDAN

Today, we came accross brick makers. The rich clay soil lying along the Nile makes it the perfect spot. It is still done in the most ancien way which is by mixing clay with cow or donkey dung. Then the brick are layed to dry into the sun. Some bricks are even manufactured on the building sites, saving transport and storage....

                     These guys are carrying the molds and lay the bricks on the soil to dry in the sun

            Mohamed and Amin were very friendly and exited about my interest for their brick work

                                                                     Laying the bricks

                   This guy has the hardest task. He mixes the clay and the donkey dung with water
                                   before filling by hand the mold. There are 3 bricks in one mold.

      Replenishing of calories at the lunch truck. Today the lunch truck was at km 68. It is normally
      a bit past the half way point. Most cyclist take a 10 to 15 minute break and refill with water,
      energy bars and bananas before tackling the remaining kilometers.

                               Brick making 3 guys can produce thousands of bricks on one day.
                               This seems to be a wide spread industry here as I saw many
                               people manufacturing bricks today.

                                The doors are always decorated and painted in bright colours.
                                They put a lot of effort as you can see and seem to express
                                wealth through this.

                                 Muslim cemeteries are very simple. The graves have just a few
                                stones on them and they have this one dome build with mud bricks.

                                        I love the wheel cap.... A new use for a Seven up bottle....

                                                In Africa, the donkey is always the plan B

                                            They love decorating their bikes here. And they also
                                            love "Toyota" here as you can see....

                              Talking about decorating their bikes, this guy did not lack of  imagination...