Mmm.
(View in high res)

Since my last post there was another long day - 155 kilometres, a fairly uneventful day. I rode with Sam again for most of the day, leaving quite early (for quite a large distance we were at the front of the entire tour group) and it took about 70km for the fastest peloton to overtake us.

Today was our last riding day for this section, officially the longest section in terms of distance (whether or not it's the hardest, we'll find out). We started off with a 20km time trial and then rode the remaining 46km to lunch in our own time. After lunch, it was a 40km convoy into central Khartoum to the National Camping Residence, our campground for the next two nights.

One of the other riders commented yesterday that a time trial is known amongst serious cyclists as the 'truth test' since it's a true test of a cyclist's ability and fitness - discounting all the tactics that usually come into road riding (e.g. group riding or drafting). This morning Dave and I went for a short 10 minute warm up before we tapped out and began the time trial in turn. In retrospect, 10 minutes wasn't enough and it was a pretty slow 20km, 35 minutes with a tailwind and I was just outside of the top 10.

I really started warming up 35km into the day - after trying to ride with the semi-fast peloton for a bit and giving up because of saddle pain. Rage Against The Machine was on shuffle on my MP3 player and just after I'd dropped out of the peloton, Killing In The Name came on and with it, a sudden forward momentum. Within seconds I was up and rolling at 50kmph and decided it was easier to keep the pace for the remaining 30km than to take it easy. I zoomed past a good number of riders and reached lunch at 9:20am.

The convoy into Khartoum was easier than the last few convoys since I am now able to sit on my saddle. It was pretty warm and the traffic was heavy but the tourist police did an excellent job of ferrying us through the city. A lot of riders have decided to stay in hotels away from the campground. Those of us who are left are sharing with a huge number of Sudanese youths who are in Khartoum for an under 17s football tournament, taking place all of tomorrow. The youngest rider of the group, Steve, an 18 year old South African, has organised a match of our riders against one of the competing teams. I won't be joining them but might go and cheer the cyclists on.

This afternoon we visited the Afra Shopping Complex, a prominent mall in Sudan. After my experiences of Gurgaon's many malls in India, I wasn't quite sure what to imagine a Sudanese mall as. It was airconditioned as we had been promised but aside from a fast food court (much food was eaten), a large supermarket and a plethora of money exchanges, there wasn't really much to do and we soon left with large boxes of custard creams under our arms. Those small packets in which I bought 64 biscuits in Dongola also come packaged in boxes each filled with 50 packets of 4 biscuits each. Hopefully these 200 biscuits will last me until Ethiopia, to be accompanied by hot chocolate courtesy of a large box of cocoa powder.

There isn't much noise around, only the occasional coughing of another rider, or the sound of a truck passing by. It's 8:30pm Sudanese time, past the bedtime of most riders. Just a few moments ago I was lying down on my sleeping bag staring up through the mesh wall of my tent at possibly the most stunning night sky I have ever seen. We're still in the middle of the desert on our way towards Khartoum (the capital city of Sudan), with two more days of cycling to go. There is nothing but desert and road sight, the only permanent structure is a bamboo shelter cum water point besides which we are camped.

Having lived in a light polluted commuter town near London for most of my life, before university I had never really appreciated the beauty of a starry night. As winter drew in and I walked through the grounds of Fitzwilliam college to my room, I would glance up and notice the sky. Since then, I've had the opportunity to check out the night sky around the world (Alaska: great, Nepal: average, Mombasa: great) but this takes the win. The sheer quantity of visible stars and their relative brightness is unbelievable. If I don't sleep tonight, I think I will be easily amused.

We rode another hard 140km today. This was the second day that the intended race timing system was underway, where each rider clocks in and out using a small radio enabled tag and touching a start/finish sensor mounted to the dinner truck. People have realised the benefit of starting early and I was far behind the curve when I woke up at my usual time and packed up my tent, having to queue for a good fifteen minutes to load my locker up. When I left camp, I was one of the last few riders out, so I put my music on and prepared for a long solo day.

Not more than 10km in though, I was caught up by the leading peloton, the group of riders who have consistently reached camp first. I thought I'd tag along for a while and it was going great - they go scarily fast but in a group it is much easier to keep up. For the distance I rode with them, they'd be powering on at a decent 37kmph average. Adrian, the current race leader, keeps his rear light on for safety reasons. It also doubles up as a marker of some point, as I discovered when, whilst I rode on his tail, he reached the front and started pulling. All was fine until we reached a downhill section and he took it up to 50kmph. That's not impossible speed but I was spinning as hard as possible in my hardest gear whilst watching my heart rate reach 95% of my maximum and still could not keep up. As I dropped out of the group, I saw Adrian's red light disappear into the distance to be seen again only at camp.

I then rode with the second fastest group until lunch and struggled after lunch to return to that sort of pace (too many sandwiches?). Sam, the closest rider in age to me at 21, also found the pace of his group a bit too fast and we rode in some kind of sporadic formation until camp. My saddle sores are supposedly on the mend but still hurt *a lot*, on occasion tinging with a sharp intense pain (imaginably similar to being stabbed), so I'd try and stand often to relieve the pressure.

Camp has been pretty relaxed this afternoon, sitting in the shade and eating custard creams. I am down now to 12. I was alos disappointed that my orange band from the New Year's Eve party we attended finally broke off, not lasting until next December 31st as I had hoped. An entire month isn't too bad though.

Tonight we're at a 'Canal Camp' although some of the TDA staff have
given this camp an alter-name of the 'dead Camel Camp' because of the
three carcasses of camels surrounding the campsite. We're still fairly
near the Nile but tomorrow will steer away from it and further into the
deep of the desert.

The heat here is like nothing I've ever experienced before. The day
usually starts off fairly cool (in fact, trying to leave my sleeping bag
every morning has become harder and harder. At about 9am, it starts to
heat up (we normally leave camp at 8am) and gets steadily warmer. I'd
hazard a guess of around 10 degrees Celsius in the morning, reaching at
about 40-45 degrees at the warmest, about 2pm in the afternoon. The last
few days I was getting in quite late in the afternoon because of various
'challneges' (not sitting down / punctures) but tried today to reach
sooner to avoid the heat.

Water consumption is a big issue here - we need to drink many litres
worth in order to stay hydrated. Today whilst riding I drank about 6
litres of various beverages (occasional 'Coke stops' are one of the
luxuries en route to camp daily) and was still heavily dehydrated when I
arrived at camp. There are clay pots by the side of the road which
contain water for anybody to drink - I didn't try any of this today but
will to tomorrow. Something about the pots' construction causes the
water to stay surprisingly cool.

The other beautiful aspect of being a touring cyclist is that your
calorie burn is sky high - effectively meaning that you can eat as much
as you like and not gain weight. The sweets in Dongola were amazing, a
pastry similar to blaclava but available in a variety of different
forms. I bought snacks for the week of riding since eating only savoury
food quickly gets weary - 64 custard creams and 20 'Caramelo' chocolate
bars. The custard creams are holding up perfectly except that the fat
person inside me finds it hard to resist them (I've been through about
20 biscuits today already...).The chocolate bars lost their solidity and
are now delicious liquid chocolate.

It's strange that having been a vegetarian all my life (intially beause
my parents were vegetarian and then later because I didn't see the point
in switching), I've been seriously contemplating eating meat. Some of
the dishes that I see my fellow riders consuming look incredibly
appetising, made worse by my insatiable cyclists' hunger. I've resisted
so far and probably will do until the end of the trip but I do wonder if
I'm missing out on something good now. In addition, it's physically hard
to consume enough calories to balance the deficit and despite eating a
huge amount at dinner, I always wake up with a rumbling stomach.