WAY back in Morocco, it became something of an unwritten rule that at no point in the months ahead would we moan about being hot.
As we were buffeted by record rainfall which left us cold, wet and if not miserable, at least a little fed up right into the Western Sahara, sun seemed like a distant dream and think the only words Ale muttered to me in the opening few weeks were “I’m cold”**.
The mention of the word Chefchaouen conjures up not images of the town’s lovely mountain setting, labyrinthine old streets, lovely tajines we found in a tiny backstreet restaurant and blue-painted houses, but of the downpour which accompanied pretty much all of our one full day there.
Quite who decided it would be a good idea to ignore the taxis touting for business and walk up the long hill to the campsite amid the torrent is up for debate (it wasn’t me), but not sure my long black trousers have recovered.
Not that the state of long trousers matters much now, tucked (stuffed) away as they are at the bottom of my rucksack with no chance of seeing the light of day as the thermometer has been cranked up for the final leg of the trip.
All a far cry from those opening few weeks and enough for us to forget any pacts not to moan about the heat.
It is – and has been for the past week since we left Ethiopia – very hot. Very, very hot.
Our hotel room for our first night in Egypt (which seemed so far away on those soggy opening days and marks the start of the final two week run-in to Cairo) is pretty basic and has three blokes sharing, but it has air conditioning and a working (very full) fridge.
And at the moment, you cannot ask for much more.
There is some debate as to whether the past few days in Sudan have been the hottest of the trip or whether the airless oppressive heat as we sat and waited to cross the Nigeria-Cameroon border edges that title.
Without access to regular temperature checks, we will never know, but for a sheer sustained blast of heat with little or no recourse to any form of shade, the past week wins hands down.
We were advised early in the trip – just as we left the opening deluges behind and headed into warmer climes – that drinking four litres of water per day was essential for our physical and mental well-being (not downing enough, evidently, leading to attacks of grumpiness, making “Drink more water” the standard response to anyone showing signs of being miserable).
My water intake yesterday came in at somewhere around eight litres. Some of it plain water, some of it flavoured with orange powder and some of it with one Berocca tablet too many. Not enough of it cold as unless you down it all in one go, it is hard to finish even a small bottle direct from an eskie packed with ice before it starts to warm up.
Throw in more than the occasional Coke and 7Up from amid crowded eskies (and the Sudanese helped keep them packed with drinks and ice, no matter how far we wandered off the beaten track, although the colour of some of the water looked like it had come straight off the beaten track) and you would think that would be enough.
Apparently not, given the distinct lack of need to go to the loo as it sweats and evaporates away, although my feeling rough as we crossed the Nubian Desert may have had as much to do with the sugar highs and crashes from all those soft drinks as any signs of dehydration.
It has certainly not been easy. At times it has been a struggle, especially with thoughts turning increasingly to home with the 31st and final African border crossing behind us.
But Sudan, like so much of this continent before it, has done enough to charm and beguile us. Amid all the sand and heat that is.
All a far cry from our parting shots in Ethiopia, the prospect of a week without alcohol sending most of the guys scurrying to one of our hotel rooms for a movie night designed to work our way through as much of the remaining booze on the truck as possible.
We made a fair indent, but have to admit the prospect of finishing off my bottle of Jack Daniels after our meal the next night – a lovely buffet accompanied by a side order of traditional dancing – was not an appetising one. And besides, talk to the right local and even in Sudan, you can get a drink. Although date vodka is not something to be tried too often.
Our final exit from Ethiopia took us away from Gondar and through some spectacular mountain scenery, before dropping down towards the border and stepping into the furnace from almost the moment we stepped across onto Sudanese soil.
The first night (spent at a desert bush camp populated largely by endless armies of grasshoppers) was not too bad, courtesy of a refreshing breeze, but by the time we rolled into the Blue Nile Sailing Club in the capital Khartoum the next day, the first concerns were not the customary (“Is there wi-fi?”) but the practical – “Where’s the shade? (limited) and “Where’s the cold drinks?” (cheap, copious and just over the car park).
While there was not that much sign of sailing at the club and the adjoining river is more a muddy brown than blue, it was a pleasant enough base to explore the capital. At least it was once we had discovered the pool next door (women only allowed in the morning) and we convinced them to open up the new shower block and toilets (albeit with irregular water supply) rather than rely on the fairly agricultural old ones – described as the worst in Africa, although we could draw up a substantial list of competitors.
The searing heat was not enough to deter us from heading out to explore Khartoum the next morning, our little raiding party walking the 90 minutes or so (complete with diversion around the Presidential Palace, where walking across the view of the Nile is banned) to the confluence of the Blue and White Niles.
Or the brown and slightly different brown Niles if you prefer.
No pictures of that – and there’s a man with a big, if ageing machine gun by the bridge, just in case you forget – but plenty of our port of call for the next night, the ancient Royal Cemeteries of Meroe.
Not the final pyramids of the trip and certainly not the biggest, but very cool they were too amid the sand dunes where we camped by the cemetery gates and prepared dinner watched by the local camel herders, keen for us to ride their lugubrious steeds. So keen they returned for breakfast to transport some willing volunteers.
That was hot, but merely a warm-up for what lay ahead over the next two days as we crossed the Nubian Desert.
With the temperatures cranked up and any breeze that blew through the back of the truck (complete with sand) merely turning up the heat even further, little wonder the main activity was reaching for a cold drink from the eskie.
For the second day, we did not even have the luxury of a road. That runs out at Abu Hamed, to be replaced by desert tracks along the old railway line or, in an attempt to miss the worst of the sand dunes, a rather more direct – and bumpy – route through the wilderness.
Thankfully we made it in almost one piece (one tyre shredding under the strain, although it did get us to our destination at Wadi Halfa – another of those places which sticks in my mind from Michael Palin’s TV travels) and got some relief today in the most unusual of surroundings.
Border crossings are not normally things you want to drag on, but not too many of us were in a rush to move on from the air conditioned waiting rooms on the Sudanese side. Even less so from the cafe serving cold drinks as we waited for the truck to clear Egyptian protocol.
But finally, after a little more than five hours, we rolled through the gates of our final border and broke new ground for Oasis, entering Egypt by a land border via a new road, rather than taking the ferry from Wadi Halfa to Aswan (not always accompanied by the truck).
And with the air conditioning on full in our Abu Simbel hotel room – reached via a much shorter ferry ride across Lake Nasser – we are more than happy to be ground breakers.
* That will teach me. Taking not much of a flier on it being hot in Sudan, the title for this blog post was worked out before even entering the country, once the Violent Femmes’ indie classic popped up on my iPod (and for anyone wondering, most of the more obscure post titles are song titles or lyrics). The sun bit was a given. Could have done without the blisters which came with it on the lengthy walk to the confluence of the two Niles.
** She has said plenty more since.
