What ho!
I have discovered that our Nubian guide is not a luxury. It is very difficult to get through the frequent roadblocks without a government- accredited guide who can speak Arabic and organise all the necessary permits just to move around. We were planning to wild camp again on our way to Khartoum, but the police forbade it. Being dumb foreigners we would simply have ignored this arbitrary display of power, but Nazzar's job would have been in jeopardy, so we made the long slog direct to Khartoum.
The roads are marvellously entertaining. They have been built with Chinese money, and one sees a lot of Chinese writing outside industrial installations and on numerous shuttle buses - going heaven knows where.
There are two other types of very visible vehicles:
- articulated lorries comprising (get this): a 10 wheel tractor unit; a 12 wheel semi-trailer, and behind that: a 20 wheel trailer. That makes 42 wheels. I counted them to make sure. That's some rig, and it must take considerable skill to drive and manoeuvre them. Evidently that skill is sometimes lacking and we have seen at least three of these juggernauts overturned (of which more below).
- the workhorse of Africa: the Toyota Hi-Lux pickup. You see them everywhere, they rarely go wrong and when they do they are easy to fix. Even at a great age and after years of abuse and lack of maintenance they seem to start first time and keep going. They are often carrying unfeasible numbers of passengers hanging on any way they can: to the pickup or to each other. Often the passengers are sitting on top of a teetering load. When springs break, as they must with the potholed roads and these enormous loads, they simply continue jolting and banging until they reach somebody who can weld them - the work of a few minutes. They are virtually indestructible, and if I buy one now it will probably outlive me.
Toodly-pip
Chris
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