Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Everywhere,' said Moez, calmer at last. 'It's a prime piece of national infrastructure, so
it's guarded to the hilt. If we try and go near it, they'll think we're spies or foreign agents.
Saboteurs. They'll shoot us on sight.'
'So what's the plan?' asked Will, skewering another piece of liver with his fork.
I produced a crumpled map and spread it out before us. 'We're going to leave the
river, and cut across the Bayuda Desert instead. We'll follow one of the old camel-caravan
routes, and bypass the dam altogether. There won't be soldiers out in the desert. Anyway,
I figure, dressed as we are, we'll pass for roving Bedouin. Speaking of which . . .' It was
time for me to produce my own welcome gift for Will and Ash: two new
jellabiyas
in per-
fect white. 'We have turbans, too,' I said grinning.
Will and Ash took theirs and spent an age trying to wrap them around their heads.
'And your camel handlers out there,' Ash began, 'they know where we're going?'
Bala had said they knew the Bayuda like the backs of their hands, that they had made the
crossing many times before, droving camels along the old caravan routes. 'I trust them,' I
said - because I did. Awad and Ahmad seemed a step out of time with modern Sudan, but
above all else, they knew the ways of the desert. 'Boys,' I said, 'you can't back out on me
now . . .'
North of Atbarah, the Nile was flanked by farms of verdant green. Along its banks, a pro-
cession of pylons marched down from the Meroe Dam, taking electricity to the masses of
Khartoum. For a day, we walked through plantations of cotton and sorghum, orchards of
date palm - but, on the edges of the farmland, the bleak, lunar plain stretched out for as far
as the eye could see.
The Bayuda is a vast volcanic desert, over one hundred thousand square kilometres of
open plain, jagged mountains, sand dunes and black volcanoes. This eastern extension of
the Sahara was formed several million years ago by the Earth's crust pushing up, spew-
ing out lava and diverting the Nile on a three-hundred-mile detour. For the last few thou-
sand years, the Bayuda has formed an inconvenient barrier to those travelling along the
Nile, whether it be adventurous Romans in search of its source, or entrepreneurial Nubi-
ans extending the trade of their city states. For all those travellers, as for me, the choice
was stark: stick to the river and add hundreds of miles to your journey, or risk a perilous
desert crossing. Many preferred to take the shortcut - and, over time, a caravan route was
established. Much later, the Bedouin Arabs dug a series of wells along the way, features
that still exist and that have saved hundreds of lives across the generations. When General
Gordon was besieged in Khartoum and the British sent troops to relieve him, they hedged
their bets by sending one column of troops by boat up the Nile, and establishing the elite
'Camel Corps' to charge across the Bayuda and reach Khartoum fastest. It was the fact
that this new camel cavalry had to spend ten days re-watering their beasts at one of the
