What a lovely nights sleep, for the first time in Sudan we actually spent the night feeling cool. The sleep would have been even better if the hotel staff hadn't got mixed up and brought us breakfast at 5:30am instead of 6:30am when we asked for it! Still we had to get out of bed sometime and it gave us the opportunity to get on the road earlier than planned.
Leaving Atbara we first had to pass through the fruit and vegetable market that was full of people despite the early hour. Getting caught in a traffic jam involving donkey and carts, tuk tuks and wheel barrows wasn't how we envisaged our leaving.
Once again the lack of sign posting caused some difficulty, but we were soon heading along the main Khartoum road. A road that we hasten to add, was not built wide enough for the vehicles that use it. It is only wide enough for two lorries to pass each other with no hard shoulder, unless you count the rutted, shredded tyre littered, shingle edged strip either side. Every time two lorries came from opposite directions we were forced off the road into this strip. Buses are even worse they come past at 100km/h plus and overtake with no concern whether anything is coming or not. As far as they seem to be concerned everyone else just has to get out of the way. Having a bus overtake an oncoming vehicle straight into your path with its lights flashing and horn blaring is a scary proposition, especially when diving onto the hard shoulder means a possible fall. I went over once when my front wheel caught shingle, Debs unfortunately missed my impressive leap before I hit the ground only to land on my feet beside the bike. The slight saving grace of the road is that traffic is comparatively light or we would have struggled to make any progress. We would say that out of all the countries we have cycled through, this is the first time we have genuinely felt unsafe on the road.
Having cycled nearly 100km, the Meroe pyramids came into view.
We left the road and followed a sandy track down to the entrance. The pyramids are one of Sudan's top tourist attractions. Surprisingly when we got there we weren't the only westerners, although they were just leaving, so we soon had the place to ourselves.
Unlike the Egyptian pyramids the Sudanese ones are steeper sided and smaller, with offering chambers built onto the side. Several on the site have been reconstructed with three of the Northern ones having been re-rendered to show what they would have originally looked like. Set amongst rocky hills and sand dunes, the site is beautiful and it was great to walk amongst them, if somewhat hot!
Having had a good look round and with the arrival of a coach load of people complete with a police escort, we returned to our bikes with the intention of finding somewhere to camp. The caretaker told us that we could push our bikes into the site and pointed out where we could camp. You can't get a much better spot than a camp-site near the pyramids. Unless it had no sand of course, at the current rate we will be removing half the desert when we leave!
The afternoon didn't turn out to be all good, as I discovered that I have lost our Leatherman tool somewhere. It may not be essential to the trip but it is pretty annoying and one more thing to add to Matt's lost list!
Seeing as we were camping near the pyramids it seemed a shame to not go and see them at sunset. So with the sun low in the sky, we climbed to the top of one of the dunes to watch the sunset. It wasn't all that spectacular in truth, but it was cooler and a nice way to end the day.
I will let Debs have the final say with the beautiful words 'what a lovely sunset.....now, bugger off heat!'
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