Author: Peter Meggyesy

What a difference a day may makes! Up at dawn for another bland breakfast and we are off over salt fields again to Dallol. At 160 metres below sea level we are at the lowest point on earth. In the summer it regularly gets to 50 degrees celsius for us its a balmy mid 30s.

What ensues is one of the most alien landscapes I have ever seen a combination of the heat, salt and volcanic activity. The 4WD stops at the base of a massive salt hill and we walk up over successive zones of white, red, orange and bright yellow salt according to the mineral contamination. The red is from manganese and the yellow is sulphur. It is strange walhing over the dried salt crust crunching underfoot. Three Ethiopian army soldiers are scouting up front carrying submachine guns are we are only 20km from the formerly disputed border with Eritrea.

As we reach the yellow sand sulphur smells irritate the nose and eyes belching out of a myriad little fumeroles. Tiny geysers spit boiling water over fantastically sculptured yellow salt forming iridescent blue little lacunes. There are salt caves and pools and a large pool has multiple vents bubbling yellow water up to the surface.

The coup de grace sees us back out onto the massive salt plain tos see the Afar tribespeople in the heat cutting enormous pavement stone pieces of salt to trade. All around are camels resting on the salt. Soon they will be loaded with the salt blocks, tied head to tail of the camel in front for the 7 day walk across the salt and dirt to the next big town of Mekele to sell the salt. Then it is back to repeat the process.

Tonight it is sleeping in a local house in a well off village. We get word that our luggage has been found and we will be reunited with our packs tomorrow morning. In the late afternoon we sit in a shaded courtyard up in the cooler hills ringing Danakil under a grape vine strewn pergola. Cold beer and an Ethiopian curry ceremony hosted by the pretty teenage girl of the household completes the picture as we get to know our our fellow travellers.

The luggage carousel stops. Looking back through the aperture the shutter out to the baggage handlers rolls down and comes down on our travel plans. We have been to Ethiopia twice and each time they have lost our luggage.

The week in Sudan went without a hitch.We stayed up all night for our 4:30am flight and endured the feral performance of the locals at the airport. Landing at Addis it turns out our 90 minute turn around time was a bit tight as we had to race to get through immigration and across to the domestic terminal. We eventually made it but our luggage didn’t.

An hour later our tour rep arrives to take us 4 days into the wilderness of Danakil, basically 4WD and camping and we basically have the clothes we are wearing and our cameras. I leave Anthony at the airport to hassle, harry and generally kick the arse of the lazy guy tasked to find our luggage. I figure he is good at that. I go with the guide and buy some basic toiletries so we can start on the trip.

I don’t know if it is the zero sleep, the feral flight or the loss of luggage but the rest of this first day is particularly tough. We are driven over the roughest roads imaginable all day to arrive at a desolate and seemingly hostile village in 40 degree heat for our first night. The scenery is so exciting that I have taken a sum total of 3 photos for the day! The omens are bad, this is going to be an arduous journey.

A ray of hope at the end of the day when we aretaken out to a massive salt lake,Lake Assal at sunset. Our 4WD cruises over massive salt flats where the dirty grey salt is split into massive dinner plate sized chunks resembling Antarctic sea ice. We reach waters edge and enjoy the surreal landscape of pristine white salt and crystal clear water. My shutter finger is reinvigorated and gets a work out. We sleep like babies al fresco under the milky way.

Back in Khartoum every Friday near dusk sees a uniquely Sudanese event which harks back to the beginning of my story. The Mahdi who defeated General Gordon led a scion of Islam known as Sufism. These musical, mystic Moslems were referred to as the whirling dervishes after their music and vertigo inducing spinning dances. In the shadows of the Mahdi’s tomb a weekly reenactment occurs. In a country that sees few tourists this is not a tacky tourist culture show we see perhaps a dozen tourists in all. The pulsating chanting and dancing draws a hundred locals and we are privileged to be allowed to witness it.

This is a fascinating country with no shortage of top notch tourist attractions but one that has been blighted by war over decades and therefore a perception that it is unsafe for tourism. I certainly do not feel that there is any danger here for the culturally aware tourist. There is a negativity towards being photographed and twice we have been pulled up by locals asking us not to take photos, not of them but of the village or environment. By contrast at the dervishes today some of the guys were actually waving us to the front and prompting where to take the best photos. At the museum one of the locals randomly paid our admission price in a typically Muslim gesture of hospitality.

This is not a country for the novice traveller to cut his teeth on but any experienced traveller would find this country and its people well worth visiting.

Next stop Ethiopia and the ominously named Danakil Depression!

Our final afternoons sees much angst and swearing as we try to erect our tents for the overnight camp in the Saharan desert. The sun is blazing, it is near 40 degrees and a gusty wind whips up the sand and catches our tent fly as if it were a kite. Combined with our inexperience and ineptitude the result is haphazard but does survive the night.

We summit a massive sand dune to watch the sunset and in the distance is the Nile to complete this magical tableau.

We are up bright and early having spent the night at the ferryman’s house. We pile into an ancient beaten up Corolla with no side windows no dashboard equipment but nicely adorned with glued on red felt and tassles hanging off the ceiling. The ample natural ventilation somewhat offset the petrol fumes in the cabin. Mercifully it was only a short drive to the banks of the Nile where we boarded our felucca for the crossing.

Our destination was the northernmost monument of the Egyptian Empire in Sudan, Soleb temple. Built by pharoah Amenhotep 111 in 14 BC it is the most Egyptian in appearance of the many monuments in Sudan. It is also just 100km south of Wadi Halfa on the Sudan-Egypt border. Our journey here entailed much negotiation over a number of days first with the hotel owner who booked the trip who said it was too far in the time we had and secondly with our driver. Everything is very typically “African vague” here and in the end it was an ordeal but here we were and it was certainly worth it. Smaller in size than the Luxor Temple in Egypt also built by Amenhotep 111 it is nonetheless a little Egyptian gem with soaring sandstone columns richly engraved with Egyptian art.

My first overseas adventure to an off beat destination was to Egypt in 1982. Egypt now (except for the recent civil unrest) has become a bit passe, but then it was new and unusual especially for an Australian. There were only a few tourists there in those days, overwhelmingly European, no Australians. The monuments were not crowded with tourists. It was the year after the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assasinated and fellow called Hosni Mubarak took over as president. I engaged my trusty travel agent, Cliff (who finally retired last year) and organised a trip that would encompass every significant temple, tomb or monument in Egypt to satisfy my nascent curiosity for all things ancient and particularly Egyptology.

Today I find myself reminiscing about that first adventure. Even then I knew I would be back here, that this country represented “unfinished business”. So I touch the ancient sandstone, think back to the men who created this, obviously with no modern tools or implements, that 3500 years later I am looking at. I linger, sit absorb the atmosphere. As we leave I look back one more time and a melancholy grips me. This is it! I have seen all the substantial Egyptian monuments I have travelled the length of Nile from both sources to the sea. The wheel has turned full circle. It should be cause for exhilaration and there is certainly that but, as with all of life, most of the pleasure is in the anticipation and not the completion of the act.

Our car pulls up at the end of our middle day of touring with us happy with our daily diet of temples and pyramids. Even the ferocious heat does little to dampen our enthusiasm. Last night we stayed overnight at a tented camp at Meroe. The tents were spacious, had real beds and electricity and we had our own bathroom with toilet and shower. The meal was superb (sans alcohol in this strictly Muslim country). Today we are treated to a resort in the desert on the edge of town with massive elegant rooms arranged in beatiful gardens around a massive manicured green lawn. I had to blink twice just in case it was a mirage.

Up before sunrise the next morning we walk across to the sacred mountain, Jebel Barkal. We eventually locate the path and make the steep ascent in time for sunrise. We are not at any great height but the view is breathtaking. The sinuous Nile arcs lazily through the landscape with its obligatory cuff of green date palms and crops that comes to an abrupt end at the desert. The little market town of Karima is awakening on the south bank of the Nile and around to the west of this massive rock in the desert is yes, you guessed it,another cluster of picture perfect pyramids.This country never ceases to amaze me!

The sun is setting behind us on another scorching day and we are running up and slithering down massive golden sand dunes lifted straight out of a set of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Ours are the only footprints to be seen on any of the dunes patterned with the sinuous furrows created by the breeze. We are scrambling in the sand like two light kids at the beach to get into the best possible position to capture the light and photograph the 2000 year old Meroe pyramids.

But wait, which pyramid is best? Which combination? There are at least a dozen pyramids atop this massive sand dune and another half a dozen in the sand down the hill. An orgy of photography ensues and we are finally sated at the completion of a spectacular day of touring.

For anyone with even the most casual interest in Egyptology this place is Nirvana! There are more pyramids here than in Egypt. There are temples, ancient cities, petroglyphs, statues and amazing art and iconography carved into temple walls. There are painted funerary tombs. The most remarkable thing is that we have the place to ourselves. We have only met a handful of tourists and have never had to share an archeological site.

Khartoum is an intrinsically ugly town. Home to 5 million Sudanese it is squat and low rise. Most of the buildings are a monotonous sandy colour and there no supermarkets nor lively shopping areas.

Heightened security from decades of war restricts photography. The best view of the only natural attraction, the confluence of the White and Blue Nile is from a road bridge which is guarded by police and no photos are allowed.

History is what dusty little Khartoum specialises in and in this area it has attractions galore! Most notable is the magnificent National Museum with its treasure trove of relics from the time of the ancient Egyptians. Smaller than the Cairo museum it makes up for the lack of size with quality and intimacy. Anthony and I were the only two westerners there.

The other historical attractions are 2000 years younger dating from the end of the 19th century and the British occupation of Sudan already alluded to. Perhaps the most poignant is Lord Kitchener’s Nile gunboat El Malik used in the battle of Omdurman where the British set out to avenge General Gordon’s murder and to reacquire Sudan. Sadly lies unloved and ramshackle partially buried in Nile silt well away from the water’s edge and used as a storage dump by the Blue Nile sailing club.

The Mahdi’s mausoleum, north of the city centre in Omdurman is a more recent but no less impressive edifice. Marking a memorial to the man who led the Islamic uprising that took Khartoum and killed the charismatic Gordon.

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and covers an area the size of western Europe. It has also been chronically in the world news for all the wrong reasons ranging from civil war with the now breakaway South Sudan through to the genocide in its southwestern corner Darfur. The US has a longstanding trade embargo on the country which further complicates attempts to enter and travel through here. In particular there is no banking facility for foreigners nor ATMs. As a consequence we are forced to carry a large reserve of cash on our persons. Also visas are a haphazard affair and very difficult to come by. Still wounded by my abortive attempts at visas for the Stans I leaped on the internet advice to contact George.

George is a Greek who’s family have lived in and operated the Acropole hotel in Khartoum for sixty years. It was a popular watering hole for expats and travelers alike until the restaurant was destroyed by Hezbollah terrorists in 1988 with 7 killed in the attack. Not to be deterred they rebuilt the hotel. George and his family not only run this tourist friendly establishment he is also a general factotum for tourist related matters including the procurement of visas and travel and photo permits in advance. All ready on arrival.

Our flight to Dubai on the “flying skip” was one of the better flights that I have taken. Troubles arose when boarding the connecting flight to Khartoum without a visa in our passport. We are initially refused entry. George has secured and emailed a written visa for us to bring but somewhat unnerving is that Anthony’s visa only mentions his first and middle name and not his surname. Fortunately George’s brother Makis has already confirmed us through the Emirates office in Khartoum earlier in the week and when they check we  are allowed through.

A thick sandstorm and forboding grey storm clouds greet us at Khartoum airport. As we taxi and land we see prominent army anti aircraft guns and tanks straddling the runway. There are only 3 other passenger aircraft  on the apron, the rest being mostly military. Chaos greets us at the arrival hall with hundreds of people queued up at immigration and the process proceeds at the proverbial snail’s pace. We spot the only desk marked visa and head for it to be met by a young man brandishing paper with our name written on it. George’s influence has his man meeting us in the “forbidden zone” between aircraft and immigration. Ten minutes later he has our visas in our passports and we literally jump the queue leaving behind the African sea of humanity. The baggage wait was long and anxiety provoking, will our gear get here especially through the 7 hour layover in Dubai. It was back slapping all round when our packs finally did emerge.

Our driver speeds through the dark dimly lit streets dodging the chaotic traffic on the way to the Acropole Hotel. I have the windows down and the hot night air brushes my face. I smell the smells of Africa and suddenly, despite my fatigue from flying, I am alive again! Energised I grin stupidly as my mind relives a hundred similar places that I have been to in far flung places. It is like a home coming and I am excited to be back on the road again.