With the locals
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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.

Vimto and Champion
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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.

We've in Dongola at the moment, on our second official (or proper) rest day. Another rider has his birthday today, NYC bike messenger Dave Arman, a pretty cool guy - so a shoutout to him! In the middle of the desert, it's amazing what will grow when given a proper supply of water. Dongola and the sides of the Nile are seriously green and crawling with flies.

We're camping at the Dongola Zoo, a bit of a misnomer given the lack of animals present. Dongola is a bit of a dusty town and I'm fairly sure it's affecting my asthma. In addition, I've got a headcold, probably caught from several other riders who have been coughing and spluttering for a few days now. Hopefully by the time the rest day is over it'll be on its way out but the combination of pushing yourself quite so hard whilst being ill doesn't lend itself well to speedy recovery.

So far I'm still EFI - it's strange that this the second time in my life that I've ever actually tried so hard for something (the first time being my end of university exams). Most of the time I tend to roll into things casually and don't mind failure since I don't really try. This time however, I've tried so hard for EFI that it'd be a true shame to fail. I've never heard the question 'how's your ass?' so many times. (Perhaps it would have been wise to white lie about the true nature of my problems, pretending to have a knee problem like I know at least one other rider is doing.)

We've only had three riding days since the ferry to Sudan, this route normally takes four days but has been paved over since last year - Tour D'Afrique decided to shorten it. As I wrote previously, I spent the first day (150km) entirely standing. The second day was another 150km and I was just exhausted by the end of the day. I rode with Dave and he decided to help motivate me by standing up when I was - we altogether managed about 60-70km standing up. In the evening, we had a camp fire running but I headed off to bed early, almost unable to walk. The morning of the final day was an ordeal in itself - it took a lot of effort just to get my tent and bags packed up.

As I rode my bike out to the main road where the day's ride would start, my legs felt very heavy. The racers soon started and as I started pedalling, I realised instantly that my rear wheel was flat. Thinking it was a slow puncture, I pumped it up slowly (with my tiny hand pump). Pretty much being the start of the day, the sweep rider (who rides behind everybody) caught up with my instantly, and Shanny, one of the ex TDA tour directors who is here to help the new directors out, lent me his slightly more beefy pump.

We pumped it up as hard as the pump would permit and hit the road again. Sure enough, 5km later, the tyre was flat again and it was time to replace the tube. Again, the sweep rider caught up with me and we changed the tube, pumping it up to 50psi to bide me by until I got to lunch. Caroline, the sweep rider, went on ahead, thinking I'd catch her easily - in actual fact, my legs wouldn't permit it. No matter how hard I spun, I couldn't top 25 km/h and catch her.

In the end, I never caught her, and after 40km of churning my legs trying to advance, I realised that my tyre was flat again. As I pumped it up by the side of the road in the middle of a desert, I was shocked to see a young Sudanese man walk up across the other side of the road and introduce himself to me, shaking my hand and asking if I needed any help. Once I had pumped my tyre up (and realised that the brake had been rubbing on the tyre for the last 40km...slowing me down massively), I rode with Musab (the Sudanese guy) for a while - he was apparently hunting in the desert, for rabbit and goat. On his clunker of a Chinese bike, he managed to keep up at a good 25-30km/h. His English was surprisingly good and this snippet of our conversation amused me:
Musab- 'Who is your girlfriend?'
Me- 'I don't have one'
Musab - 'Why not?'
Me- 'Because I'm in Africa'
I point to my bike- 'This is my girlfriend.'
Musab laughs.

I rolled into lunch just as they were packing up and about to send a search party to look for me, since the sweep rider had arrived and they had no sign of me. A brief lunch later and I caught up with another group of riders who had all been involved in a huge crash in the morning - supposedly a peloton they were riding in had collapsed and about eight people had hit the road. The nurse's supply of bandages has been compromised slightly but luckily no one was seriously injured.

The rest day has been surprisingly busy with mundane chores that just need to be done, washing, eating and fixing my tubes. This morning I tried handwashing my clothes for the first time ever (our negotiations with the Minister of Tourism to find someone to help us do laundry failed). The clear soapy water I used quickly turned a horrific shade of grey and brown. As I piled clothes onto my hopelessly inadequate washing line, it collapsed and a good quantity of my clothes fell into the dirty, rendering my efforts of the last hour pointless. As Ruben, a German rider said, it makes you appreciate your mother's effort washing clothes - I partially agree but they have washing machines to help them!

I them spent a good thirty minutes using my tiny pump to fill up my now fixed rear tyre. Just as I reached 100psi, I went to unscrew the attachment for my pump carefully. Within seconds I heard the depressingly familiar sound of air rushing out and thought perhaps I was depressing the valve head whilst unscrewing (as anyone who has ever used a Presta valve will know about). I unscrewed it faster and the tyre flattened even quicker - undoing all my work in less than 30 seconds. The valve attachment had unscrewed the inner part of the valve. Oops. I tried again a couple of times but no luck, so I'll try with another pump sometime later.

Well, I'm still EFI, for the moment. Determined not to give it up, I put aside medical advice not to cycle and cycled the whole 150 kilometres today standing up. Most of the weight is transferred to your legs when you stand up, roughly doubling the load on your knees and quads, so I took care to stretch my legs every 10 kilometres or so. At the moment they don't feel too bad but I worry that this is one of those cases where the day after always feels much worse. Tomorrow is another 150 kilometres and the Egyptian doctor I saw said 3 or 4 days of avoiding sitting in the saddle. It's now been 3 days, so I'm comtemplating my options for tomorrow.

Sudan is a beautiful country - unlike anything I've ever seen before. The landscapes are stunning panoramas of sand and rock, reminding me of the Planet Tatooine from Star Wars. (Mental note: put Star Wars soundtrack on MP3 player) It's crazy warm here, and is only going to get warmer as we head further into the desert. My water consumption is beginning to go up rapidly too. The sunset from the camp was beautiful tonight, an array of colour that seems impossible to replicate photographically.

Our camp tonight is by the river Nile. I found it strange but obvious that the Nile should flow through Sudan - years of education have left the notion fixed in my head that the Nile only passes through Egypt. There are swathes of flies around, about two dozen or so are camping on the roof of my tent. There are also some scary looking insects around; when I went towards the trees earlier to discard some of the water I'd been drinking all day, my eyes slowly came to focus in on some floating object right near my face. It took a few split seconds to realise that this was a spider at which point my reflex reaction was to bend backwards as fast as physically possible. No sign of the spider since, and luckily the encounter wasn't messy as it could nearly have been.

Connectivity is good but strangely difficult in Sudan. My Kenyan sim card is now working, and I bought a local number too. The only problem is that neither lets me send text messages to the UK, which renders my Twitter updating almost pointless (I'm now phoning in coordinates to home!). However, the local sim lets me use GPRS at a not-too-unreasonable rate, which I will try once I pick up some more credit in Dongola in a few days time.

I'm on the ferry at the moment. We're currently anchored about a mile off the port of Wadi Halfa, our entry port into Sudan. The overnight ride has been an unforgettable experience.

We rode to the ferry port at Aswan in convoy, which I successfully managed entirely standing up. My legs weren't too tired by the end of it, so I figure the 150 kilometres tomorrow might just be plausible. Boarding the ferry was a complex logistical problem which the Tour D'Afrique staff handled calmly and in the end everything went smoothly. While there were no chickens carried on board (which they had repeatedly referenced last year), there is no shortage of blenders and televisions made in China being transported to Sudan.

There aren't normally enough cabins for the entire group, so it's usually the case that the younger riders are made to sleep out on the deck - indeed I was quite looking forward to it. However, the cabins aren't the cleanliest of places and many of the older riders switched camp. While initially I was looking forward to a night on the deck, as more and more passengers and boxes were loaded, a cabin looked like a more sensible option. Luckily we managed to grab one of the spare cabins left vacant. The deck soon became a curious shanty town of boxes, rugs, sleeping bags and tinny pop music blaring out of mobile phone speakers. Some of the passengers who had evidently done this trip several times, built a fort of their goods around themselves. We joked between ourselves that it would be fun to step inside their fort and observe the end outcome but the menacing looks of the portly Arabic gentleman were enough to stop that idea in its tracks.

The ship is rusty, grimy and to quote one of the German riders - 'Everywhere you look, the ship is moving'. Our included meal on the ferry, yesterday at lunch, was punctuated by the occasional sound of slapping as riders defended themselves from the many insects interrupting the sanctity of their mealtime. The room was no better, seeming initially to be relatively clean. Eric, one of the French riders soon showed us the secret of finding the roaches (lift up the mattress quickly and look in the corner of the bed) and we hatched various plans to try and avoid bodily contact with them. These ranged from finding an alternative place to sleep (as it was though, deck was hugely congested) to sleeping on the floor (it is pretty filthy) to lining the bed with a groundsheet (we had no groundsheet here).

The final solution which I used all night, and which Adrian, my roommate, attempted for a while before giving up, was to sleep inside our tents. I used the inner part of my tent minus the poles, wearing it like a sleeping bag. This worked well enough until abruptly in the middle of the night we were woken up by a tannoy call, 'Tour D'Afrique riders, please come to the dining room immediately'. Struggling to break free of the tent, I eventually found the zip and made my way down the hallway, thanking myself that the boat wasn't sinking in this case. Having gone to bed at 7pm, and having been woken up from the deepest possible sleep, it seemed natural that it would be some obscene hour of the night. However, glancing at someone's watch, it had only just passed 8:30pm! Much less antisocial.

The reason we were woken was that Sudanese immigration now takes place upon the ferry (and not when we arrive - which should hopefully speed the process up a bit when we eventually dock). This consisted of filling out yet more forms inaccurately (when the questions are vague, what hope do you have? E.g. 'Carrier') and duplicating more information. I'm half contemplating writing as illegibly as possible for the next few countries and seeing whether anyone notices. They also took our temperature with an ear canal thermometer. Presumably this was to prevent illness entering the country but if anything, not washing the thermometer inbetween uses probably spread any sickness that was there. After this we queueued for an hour or so to get our passports stamped, after which the official realised that he didn't really need to see us to stamp our passport and just collected them all instead.

Bedtime rolled around again but it was much harder to sleep now. The hunger pangs from our bodies' now-all-eating metabolisms were beginning to strike and it took a good hour to fall asleep. This morning we awoke to see Abu Simbel from afar, a huge temple by the side of Lake Nasser. Now we wait for customs to board our boat whom the ferry captain is repeatedly calling with three long bursts of the ship's horn, deafening those on deck each time.

Accompanied by a beating drum
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