Day 37: Gedaref - Khartoum

After being sung to sleep by the crickets, the team was up and eager very early the next morning, all very keen to get into Khartoum, where a cool shower and clean sheets awaited. The drive to Khartoum was fairly long and very hot, and to make matters worse we ended up driving in a sandstorm. With the wind blowing across the highway the team worked their way along, with the bikes driving at a 15 degree list. The road blocks passed by, each one the same story of passports out, fill out forms, explain why we are crazy enough to be doing this and so on and so on. Eventually we arrived in Khartoum, where remarkably the local traffic was very accommodating, making sure that the team was never separated, then came finding the hotel! Seeing that the Burj Al-Fateh Hotel is rather new, it had unfortunately not found its way onto our GPS’s, so there we were in a hot, windy, dusty city with the only way of finding the hotel was looking for what can only be described as a large blue pineapple. Eventually we located the towering fruit and with a few detours and U-turns, we arrived safely at what we expected was an International Hotel. Turns out that even here we could not get a good beer and to make matters worse, due to the numerous trade embargoes on Sudan, Visa and MasterCard were not accepted. The team is very glad to have arrived at this air-conditioned paradise; however we have a lot to do before we leave Khartoum, for one we need to work out how to pay the hotel!!!!