Lucky to get a ticket to the always full ferry to Sudan in the late afternoon, I board it together with a wide range of nationals by sunset: Sudanese and Egyptians (of course), one Nigerian, two Italians, one French, one British, three Germans, one Dutch, one American and one Philippine. It’s a decent though boring 15-hour ride across Lake Nasser – the only event being the sight of Abu Simbel a couple of hours after sunrise the next morning. An on-board kitchen serves the usual ful (beans) with bread, jam and cheese, and sleep is best on upper (3rd) deck. Up where the breeze is good and far from the roaring engines.

Customs and immigrations where easy and quick the following day. Camp one night in courtyard of one of the dozen or so bulk hotels (as simple as it gets) that scatter small-town Wadi Halfa.

South from Cairo, the road followed along the Nile – a gigantic river creating a green, living vein in an else dead desert. Sleep in various places: from monasteries and churches to the police roadblocks, with road workers beside the road and with herdsmen at a deserted petrol station. Wonderful, slightly chilly evenings and pleasant days – barely sweaty.

Unique for this leg turned out to be the constantly caring police. Escort by a pick-up truck with four or five armed policemen followed during maybe 300 of the 1000 kilometers to the southern part of the country. Closely following me from behind, or ahead – not the least in cities where they occasionally turned on the sirens to make way for me. Almost royal! It became even better when they one night decided to let the government pay me a nights stay in a hotel – camping by the roadblock outside of town wasn’t safe enough! Seriously speaking though, they know how much one dead tourist would affect the country’s tourism industry.

I’m now in Aswan, southern Egypt, from where I hope to be able to catch the ferry to Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan (southernmost Egypt is off limits for tourists on bicycle; military zone). In Sudan, the road will continue along the Nile for a few hundred more kilometers before taking a shortcut through the desert to Khartoum.

Finally reach Aswan – again after having been escorted by police most of the day. From here, I hope to be let aboard the ferry come Monday, so that I can reach Wadi Halfa in Sudan on Tuesday. Insha’Allah. Stay at Noorhan Hotel.

Border details
Boat from Aswan (Egypt) to Wadi Halfa (Sudan): 320/286/262 Egyptian Pounds (Second class). 450/454 Egyptian Pounds (First class).
On board prices: dinner 10 EP, soda 2 EP.

Sleep some five kilometers before Silwa Bahari, together with four road workers. On a thin piece of dirt (maybe two meters wide) between the main tar-road and the busy railroad tracks, we sleep on pieces of cardboard, plywood and blankets. In the night, the workers make a delicious veggie stew on a camp fire; eat with bread. Late night talks. Thundering trains passing by every half hour or so. The blue of the Nile just barely visible behind the green palm trees on the fields on the other side of the railroad tracks. Beautiful!

The last 80 or so kilometers to Luxor is strangely different. Instead of the beautiful, agricultural landscape and rural activities of the past seven days, the government has decided to plant pink, red and orange flowers in abundance along the road. All because of the tourists – giving those traveling only around the largest tourist centers an awkwardly false – and rather dull – impression of a beautiful country. The green of the Nile Valley has been one of the most beautiful and interesting regions on this trip so far. And the very fact that the area has been cultivated like today for ages – even though irrigation techniques have developed – gives it all a historic touch. One that package tourists might not see.

Escort almost the entire day.

I first camp at a checkpoint, but the police later decides that it’s unsafe for me and say I have to stay in a hotel. When I refuse so, because I have a tent, the police decides to pay my hotel stay with some government money. Thank you Egypt! Again they put at least two or three policemen by the hotel entrance to guard.

Another stay at a Coptic church. There are three priests this time – black dresses, with white/greyish, long beard and black hats. I’m invited to share a wonderful dinner with them – home-baked bread broken in parts between us and a delicious green soup with a taste of roasted onion and a bit of lamb meet. I sleep on a wooden bench in the entrance hall.

The church is guarded by two or sometimes three policemen and thus acceptable as my place to hatch, even from the police’s point of view. If not, the police would find out about my stay there in the evening and come and take me to a safer place. During the day, I can hear them communicate on radios between the checkpoints and escort teams, and they know exactly what I do, where I am etc. I’ve even heard them specify what type of macaroni I was cooking for lunch at one time – ”spaghetti.” That must surely be essential information for them to be able to keep me safe! :)

Anyway, I’ve gotten armed police escort for some of the distances so far, but it seems to get more the further south I come.

A few kilometers before Asyut, I camp at a police checkpoint. I was first invited to a hospital nearby, but the police figured it not safe enough, came later in the evening and escorted me to the checkpoint. South from Cairo, I’ve occasionally been escorted by the police during the day, too. A police pick-up truck with four or so policemen, armed with Kalashnikovs, following me closely behind or sometimes – especially through cities – leading ahead, occasionally with the sirens on to get traffic out of the way. They’ve been extremely friendly and helpful most of the time, despite my slow pace.

Stay the night with Mohamed and his younger brother in the open air of a yet to be finished petrol station. Looks like the funds finished before the construction did. Mohamed herds and guards his family’s sheep and cows on a thin stretch of grass nearby – squeezed in-between the main road and another, smaller tarred road. Small fire in the night for the cold – it’s really chilly these winter days.

Sleep 2 kilometers before town Samalut.

10 kilometers before Beni Suef, I once again stay with the Coptic – this time at St Paul’s Monastery. I’m invited for great food – local bean stew ‘ful’ and other vegetable dishes (same as the three monks had themselves eaten just moments before I arrived). Late evening talks with younger community members, then sleep in a comfy bed. I tried to offer a small donation the following morning, as thanks for their hospitality, but they didn’t accept.

Thanks to father Bshoy, father Istafanous and bishop Gawargiuos.

Leave Sebastian after the most restful ten or so days I’ve yet had on this journey. The road south surprisingly quickly leaves urban Cairo behind – I’m relieved to not having to spend a whole day pedaling through traffic jams and exhaust fumes.

Early stay at Coptic Church (”der”).

The day I left Damascus was awkward not only because of the change from the comfy life with Pascal at the Swedish embassy to the adventures of the road, but also because the fact that the ‘government police’ shadowed me on motorbikes for the final forty kilometers before the border. It all ended with a stay in a dodgy hotel in the outskirts of border-town Dar’a, and shortly before that a swift yet frightening knife-threat by a nervous man who thankfully left as by-passers came close.

Jordan was beautiful and at times just as magical as the name itself. Past historical Jerash and then River Jordan which these days irrigates plantations of tomatoes, bananas, etc. – plantations that cover the valley in dirt-brown plastic. A compulsory dip in the salty Dead Sea, followed by a shower in a burning hot hot-spring nearby. The continuos road south was desolate and boring, but thanks to a good wind in the back, I soon found myself in Aqaba – the country’s only Red Sea town. There, a nights sleep on the beach side by side with Saudis and Jordanians on transit to/through either country – the border just twenty kilometers further south. Myself unable to get a visa to Saudi Arabia and unable to pass Israel as its visa in my passport would block me from entering both Sudan and Iran – I instead take the boat across to Egypt the following day. A two-hour journey on an old Estonian ferry – surprisingly well-kept.

The journey across the Sinai – the easternmost part of Egypt that splits the Red Sea in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez – is a desolate, windy such. Although the few people I meet – mostly Bedouins – offer as much human warmth as the landscape offers its contrary. The highway from Suez to Cairo passes through similarly arid landscapes – (semi-)desert all the way.

I now enjoy a few days’ rest with German friend and touring cyclist Sebastian (www.vom-wind-getragen.de), and look forward to a far journey along the Nile River, all the way to central Sudan. If the Egypt police/military allows, that is.

In Cairo, I’m greatly hosted by German cycling friend Sebastian (whom I first met on the road in Angola together with Japanese Mitch, when I was biking with Lina). I’ll stay here a few days to arrange visas for several countries ahead, then continue along the Nile River.

Seeing the pyramids was the one must-do in Cairo, I guess. It takes an hour to get there by bus – they’re located just where suburb Giza ends, with the vast desert landscape to the southwest.

Have a look at Sebastian’s website for his photos and writing from the cycling tour to South Africa (including a boat-trip along the Congo River!): www.vom-wind-getragen.de.

Information on Visa to Eritrea
6 El-Fallah, Mohandiseen
Referred me to their embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, although after finding out that the border Eritrea/Djibouti is closed, I’ve given this country up for good)

Information on Visa to Ethiopia
6 Abdel Rahman Hussein, Dokki
1 photo, 30 US dollar (no other currency accepted), 1 filled-in form. Got it the next day; valid for three months.

Information on Visa to Djibouti
15 Doctor Mohamed Abdou El-Said/near Doctor Mishi Bakhum/Nadi al-Sid intersection, Dokki
3 photos, 3 filled-in forms, one passport copy, 148 Egyptian pound. Got it after three working-days after much waiting at the embassy; valid for three months.

Information on Visa to Sudan
3 El-Ibrahimi, Garden City
2 photos, x filled-in forms, 100 US dollar.

By the highway, I’m invited by the four people staff of a roadside ambulance station to spend the night inside.