Official website: www.londoncapetownrally.com

It's now after 5 in the afternoon and we are in the road to Gedaref, capital of one of the states in Sudan. Customs and immigration again took 4 hours. The countryside in Sudan is bleak and desolate. We seem to pass mud hut villages at regular intervals.

Sun goes down at 18:12 so we will have about 500km to do after dark. Most traffic on the road is big trucks.

There is a lot of sand blowing over the road.

At one stage it looked like it might rain but that hasn't happened. Camels and goats are common. It's a tar road, one lane each way and is good except for the volume of trucks.

Thirty minutes later, I take that back, It is now very poor quality tar. You need to weave all over the road to avoid big holes and if a truck comes the other way, you have no option but to hit the holes. We launched ourselves once with all 4 wheels off the ground.

After that effort, low beam stopped working. We had highbeam or nothing, and this didn't go down well with the trucks. Eventually, we stopped and hot wired one of the low beams so we could dip the lights for oncoming traffic.

 

 

1:15 am now in Gedaref and we have to leave at 7:30am to head for Ethiopia.


left: Our hotel in Gederaf.


(next morning):  Only 4 and a half hours sleep last night. A not-so-flash motel at Gedaref (Al Qadarif) but it did have internet. It didn't have hot water.

Coming up: Ethiopia