Dongola

We pulled into camp in an abandoned amusement park in this Sudanese city yesterday. The campsite is luxurious compared to our first three desert sites where one simply pulls up on the side of the road and clusters around the TDA vehicles: a truck with our gear in lockers, a lunch truck with food and water, a Toyota Hilux pickup for monitoring and the SAG wagon which collects riders who are distressed or fatigued. 

One word to describe the first four days of cycling: tough. 500 kms. into a headwind is not the usual opening gambit for this tour. Alas, starting in Cairo was impossible and the organizers wanted to add distance. Some of those kilometers were northbound from Khartoum. Some Sudanese questioned the wisdom thereof as the prevailing winds are from the north and yet the die was cast. The lot of us plodded on and arrived with sore buttocks, aching legs and a sense of relief that we are not going north from here.

Time to eat now so I will join some fellow cyclists for falafel and a cold beverage. More to come on the initial days.Salaam.