The Van Plan

Well it was billed as the worst road in the world ( and one of the most dangerous) all we can add is it really is a nightmare two full days 10hrs + at 25kph …. bone jarring driving with the occasional HUGE rock or HUMP or HOLE the whole thing linked by corrugations we hit one bump at about 40k’s were airborne for a while and landed with a hell of a bump….no damage we thought but another smaller bump the next day did for our front driver’s side shock luckily the huge clearance on the tyres meant we could continue without too much trouble. Lets hope we can find a replacement or a repair in Nanyuki….. it might look inviting stretching into the horizon but the reality is a nightmare!



We started in lush countryside dropped into the Chalbi desert and then hit the big red earth of the plains north of Nanyuki and the lush countryside around Mount Kenya

We saw masses of game en route and people wearing the most wonderful tribal dress

Although Addis is a huge city (the 4th largest in Africa) we didn’t find much to do except walk miles through the congested streets have a day of luxury at the Sheraton and visit Lucy….. the 3.2 million year old one in the National Museum!

Whilst we were in Addis we bumped into Brian Thompson who despite being paralyzed from the waist down is driving the length of Africa in his landrover supporting Help for Heroes…. that puts things in perspective….

Brian Thompson
If you would like to support H4H please visit Brian Thompson
The animals on the other hand were everywhere and completely fearless…with inevitable consequences ..thank goodness for a large van and bull bars.

We decided to go via Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile and Bahir Dar. Magnificent mountain scenery green fields and pine trees another world from the arid North African Landscape that we have been traveling through for the last 3 months. We bought honey and drank local beer but unfortunately we couldn’t enjoy the scenery because we were mobbed every time we stopped.


I did an experiment to see how long it took people to appear when we stopped in an apparently deserted spot and it was about 30 seconds on average! A south African couple we met who were traveling on motorbikes gave up on their modesty after a couple of abortive “pee stops”
Bahrir Dar was as the guide books describe it Ethiopias riviera …wide tree lined boulevards

the lake was beautiful and to give an idea of size it takes a day and a half by boat from Bahir Dar to Gorgora on the North coast!
We hired a boat and visited a lakeside monastery

and went to the point in the lake where the Blue Nile starts its course to the sea and saw a family of 4 hippo “Mum, Dad, Aunty Glad and a Baby” beautiful.


We saw amazing birds and a huge flock of pelicans.


The road on south to Addis was more of the same, beautiful, but huge potholes scattered liberally around to keep the concentration level high. The well recommended Wims Holland House.
Wims is a sanctuary in the middle of this busy city but we are really glad to have our own beds… their rooms are very basic but the beer is cold and the company (Ven and Anita going north and Larry and Sharon going south) a treat.

Ven and Anita

Hundreds of miles of desert littered with dead cattle, and cattle and goats on the move as the rains approach…huge herds being driven to pasture.

Very very hot and heavy military presence…police some in uniform… some without…. AK 47’s and heavy caliber machine guns on the roadside and on vehicles.

Complete change of pace having hit the mountains of Ethiopia and the rain.
We had a good look round the bizarre castles of Gondar ( which we had seen before on our last trip) there has been some very good repair work done by world heritage, or whoever they entrust the work to.

By luck we stumbled across the most amazing dance and culture festival whilst driving around Omdurman…. about a hundred tribal groups were celebrating their culture and diversity with a riot of dance and pageantry. The emphasis seemed to be all about retaining their tribal identity and not allowing their roots to be swept away in an overwhelming drive by pro Arab Government initiatives. Interestingly its the same feeling we came across time and time again in Egypt with the Christian minority.



Again we were the only tourists and despite invitations apparently being sent to all the major Embassies and the UN mission we seemed to be the only foreigners and found ourselves ushered into very plush VIP seating!
It was beautiful and a real touch of the Africa we had come to see.

The Lonely Planet Guide describes Khartoum as a “boisterous, modern, flashy city with an ever increasing number of glass tower blocks” well the last bit is true.

The Sudan Club which I remember from my childhood is long gone and is now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs…(there are literally hundreds including the Ministry for Ministers and a ministry for the Chamber of Ministers.) The swimming pool and half the gardens are now the sight of a bridge across the Nile. The Blue Nile Sailing club home to Kitcheners gunboat the Melik

is still running and I suspect completely unchanged over the last 40 years ( The loos certainly haven’t been updated…. or cleaned )
I asked at the 5 star Burj al Fateh hotel what we should see if we had a spare day in town and the receptionist said, with a lovely smile, there is nothing to see. Not quite true but the sentiment was right. The Mahdis tomb

the Khalifa’s house the confluence of the Blue and white Niles and the Omdurman souq were all done in a day.
Our tourism was completed when we found the Bugger Specialised Hospital.

We had breakfast at the Acropol hotel who found George to mend our fridge, which couldn’t stand the desert heat and now has twin cooling fans from a computer!
After a couple of days at the sailing club we were luck enough to be invited round to friends for dinner, the use of their washing machine and an air conditioned bedroom. Thank you Chris. The small world syndrome kicked in on our return to the sailing club when a very tall ( too fat to be a Dinka) English man called Adam walked over to our van and said “yes I do know Colin, he’s stuck in a meeting but will be down later” sure enough Colin appeared, I was in the army with him and he is here on a 6 month UN tour and had heard through the grapevine that we were in town!

Did you know there were 228 Pyramids in Sudan ( three times as many as the Pharaohs put up in Egypt) We set of with Erkan ( aka Mustapha) from Turkey on his motorbike

and Tarmo from Estonia in his van into the desert south of Wadi Haifa.
Desolate, barren, completely empty and HOT,( did I say HOT!!) between 45 and 50 degrees depending on time of day…Our fridge couldn’t stand the heat and George from Falcon Engineering had to sort us out with an extra fan…


we followed the Nile south aiming to get about 100k’s from Wadi Haifa towards the temple of Soleb on the West bank ( the road is on the East bank) and stopped in a lovely looking palm grove by the river ….only to be overwhelmed by millions of flies

and have to beat a hasty retreat back onto the road and look for a camp site away from the river.
The desert was dotted with mining camps and men with metal detectors hunting for gold, we spoke to one man with a bulldozer who had found 4 ounces that morning..

The twin tombs at El Kuru with their beautiful wall paintings and the pyramids at Karima and Meroe were amazing.
We found the petrified forest, I remember it so well from my childhood in Sudan a special weekend camping with my father, when he was military attache.

We splashed out and stayed at the Meroe tented camp
an oasis of sophistication in the desert with fantastic views towards the pyramids and wonderful international food but sadly no wine!

It should have been simple, we drive to Aswan put the van onto a barge on Monday and drift slowly down Lake Nasser past Abu Simbel





unload the van on Tuesday morning and drive off into Northern Sudan…….we had not counted on the mass repatriation of thousands of Sudanese construction workers who had been working in Libya.
The boat which usually has 50 or a 100 people on board and on which we had booked a first class cabin…. had 580 ( on the manifest) and was piled high with freight and everyone’s worldly goods that they had managed to salvage from Libya, every nook and cranny including the life boats were full


and our first class cabin…. was a broom cupboard …filthy dirty, baking hot no window and it stank of stale sweat!
We did get a state welcome from the Governor of Northern Sudan with the media in attendance. There was no sign of the barge and the vehicles ( Erkans motor bike, Tarmos van and Lance and Maurice’s landrover as well as our van)
Lance managed to get hold of “a fixer” in Wadi Haifa on his phone who booked one of the few remaining hotel rooms not taken by the construction workers whilst we waited for the vehicles. Magdi Boshara turned out to be a bit of a shark the hotels weren’t full, the place he put us in was a flea pit and our room like a prison cell and we never managed to get a breakdown for the various taxes and duties we were required to pay…feel a bit ripped of ….but hey its Africa! The van and other vehicles eventually turned up on Thursday, last time we pack the bare essentials when we leave the van. We both stank!

Mind boggling is the only expression that my limited vocabulary could come up with …until you have seen the scale and complexity of these sites with your own eyes you just can’t comprehend what the ancient Egyptians did around 1400BC that’s to be absolutely clear 3411 years ago…. ( Stonehenge according to Wikipedia dates from 2400BC)
We visited the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of Kings, sadly photography is forbidden so only a couple of furtive photos.



Ramses the IV and Ramses the VI get the votes and Tutankhamun although disappointing (its very small) has a certain something just because of the history!

We also saw the Temple of Luxor

and of course the Amun Temple at Karnak.
Down from Luxor to Aswan a fantastic drive along the green banks of the Nile past the temple of Horus


to Aswan the van is booked on the ferry, a first class cabin confirmed and tomorrow to the High Dam and to the Nubian beach

We decided to have the van serviced by Mercedes Benz in Hurgharda to ensure all the parts were genuine after 10,000 fairly hard miles….big mistake….. HUGE…..

If you have a blue Mercedes overall you must be a mechanic!

They overfilled the engine, broke the fuel line and then fitted a fuel water/separator so badly it took two days to sort out and its still a bodge….. because they didn’t have the right spare parts. We now have a permanent engine malfunction light on the dashboard but apparently “its nothing serious” just telling us that the fuel line is non standard….
Anyway enough of that…. the diving was superb and the reefs deserted the team at Emperor divers say they regularly had 20 boats anchored on the best sites but we saw no one else.

After Hurgharda we went south along the coast stopping at a couple of dive sites camping alfresco

view from the bedroom window!

and spending more time in the water and sun.


Amazing drive across the Red Sea mountains

and desert from Al Queser ( one thing about the current lack of police in Egypt is the closed desert roads don’t seem to be high priority at the moment so we just turned right) and blasted across to Luxor.

The markers must mean someone is going to build here….