Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bedouin wells that meant they arrived at Khartoum two days late to save poor Gordon.
Nevertheless, the British used the same tactic thirteen years later, when Kitchener was sent
to reconquer Khartoum, with the two columns rendezvousing outside Omdurman for the
final confrontation. The rest of that is, as we know, history.
The village of Kadabas was to be our last stop before entering the desert. Forced away
from the riverbank by irrigation ditches and pipelines, we returned to the desert road,
marching north with the pylons through miles of acacia scrub. By fall of night, we had
reached Kadabas, one of a succession of adobe villages along the road. Stark and lonely, it
must have been too trivial to be tapped into the electricity flowing down the wires, because
not a single light shone among the shacks, except an eerie green glow from the minaret
that rose from the mosque.
In the village, an old man emerged from his hut to greet us. 'You must be Pakistani
Dhawas?' he asked.
Stumped, I looked at Moez. 'Teachers,' he began. 'They're quite common in these parts.
Some preach jihad but they're mostly harmless.' Then he turned to the stranger. 'Not
teachers. Explorers. These men are walking the Nile.'
'Of course,' the old man said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. 'But first,
you must stay in our village.'
I began to tell Will and Ash how hospitable the villagers had been in every part of
Sudan, all the way from the border, to Khartoum and beyond - but the man continued to
chatter, and Moez continued to translate.
'No, not only tonight,' the man went on. 'For always. We will feed you. A house will be
provided at no cost to yourselves. Please, come this way . . .'
As the man returned to the huts, beckoning us to follow, Ash muttered, 'Do you think
this is a good idea?' I only shrugged and tramped after the old man. 'We need to stay some-
where, Ash. One last night before you sleep under the stars for a week.' I hesitated. 'Or
you could always stay out here with the camels . . .'
Eventually, resisting the overtures of the old man to forever make this our home, we
made camp behind one of the adobe huts. As the old man from the village brought us food,
insisting we share what he had, Will produced a stack of old Russian maps he had some-
how procured. What we were looking at were out-dated charts of the interior of the Nile's
great bend. At a scale of one to five-hundred-thousand, they showed all the trails marked
between the contours, and small blue dots scattered across the sand.
'The Bedouin wells?' Ash asked, tracing the blue dots with his finger.
We could only assume that was the case; none of us had the faintest grasp of the Russian
language.
'What if they're not?' Ash went on. 'What then?'
