Scott's Cycling Adventures

Things are changing again. The desert is giving way to very short, dry grasses. There are more herds of goats and cows being shuffled between markets. 

Today the ride was a very easy wind assisted trek. A much welcome change from our last two days of riding. The temperatures have dropped to a much more manageable 35C. The roads are getting very rough and very busy. A lot of the other cyclists have been very uncomfortable with the volume and closeness of the traffic but having ridden in the heavy downtown traffic of Toronto my entire adult life, this type of traffic doesn’t phase me. At least the crazed super busses are gone. 

Seriously…stage 18 disappeared because of our route change, and stage 19 turned into a bus day (for reasons previously mentioned).  Tomorrow we get back on our original schedule meeting up part way through the day with Stage 20.  

I anticipate difficulties posting Stages 20-25 since we are heading back out to open desert and will be crossing into Ethiopia on Feb 13 (Stage 24). We will have to do the SIM card dance again, so that may cause more delays in posts. 

Above is a preview of things to come…note the 2.5km CLIMB into Gondar. That’s gonna be a tough day!

Oh the irony…the thing I hate most right now has become my salvation. Because of the previously mentioned political unrest, TDA has decided that cycling into Khartoum isn’t such a good idea right now. So, instead of riding today we are on a bus. Normally I’d grumble about taking the bus instead of riding, but the last two days were incredibly gruelling and we all are looking forward to the extra rest.  We’ve been bussed (about 112km) just past Khartoum to a little “Farm Camp”. 

It’s actually quite nice. Lots of shade, comfy seats, power and running water for washing. Who could ask for more? We’ll spend our planned rest day here too. There isn’t anything nearby, so TDA and the owners of the camp will be feeding us. Looking forward to a full belly and a good sleep. Time to regenerate. 

The last two days have been BRUTAL. Stage 16 started off with a wicked and unrelenting headwind that lasted almost the entire day. Add to that, scorching temperatures of 35-40C and it made for a very, very difficult 145km. Out of the 35 people that started the day, only 15 finished the ride (myself included).  To put things in perspective, I normally finish a 150km ride by 12:30-1pm. This day I finished at 5pm. Our crew doctor had her hands full dealing with dehydration and heat stroke. She even had to give IV fluids to one rider who pushed to hard.

Stage 17 wasn’t much better. The temperature was hotter (40-45C) but the head wind was much less. At least half the riders chose to just ride part of the day. Those of us who did ride all day, chose a much slower pace. I started the day very low energy, not having eaten enough the previous night. I knew I needed more calories but there is only so much food you can force down when your exhausted. 

Heat management was my biggest issue, so whenever I felt myself nearing that dangerous heat stroke threshold (shivering when your obviously boiling hot) I would find a spot of shade and cool down for about 10 minutes.  After lunch I stopped every 10km to cool down and hydrate. Between breakfast and dinner I drank over 8L of fluids and sweated almost all of it out.  

Today was our first real challenging ride. 143km of hot temperatures, headwinds, rough roads and crazed bus drivers! The mercury rose to between 35-40C and the wind was mildly in our faces all day. Add to that a very rough paved road, (that rattled your brain and made your hands scream for mercy) and the net sum was “challenging”. 

Then there are the crazed bus drivers. Driving their massive “super busses” (you know the kind that are as tall as a double decker but only have one level for tourists/passengers) that blast past us at what feels like 150km/hr. We are riding on the main road between Wadi Halfa, Dongola and Khartoum so there is a pile of bus traffic. These guys drive like they are in an Indy car race. They don’t share the road and they don’t slow down for oncoming traffic. They just lean on the horn and everyone else gets out of the way. Did I mention this road doesn’t have a shoulder?!

Two wonderful days of much needed rest. My muscles and health are at 100%. I’m not feeling ill or fatigued at all. But my tendons and pinky have enjoyed the two day break. Righty is feeling pretty good. Just a bit of stiffness. Lefty is still a tiny bit sore. Both need stretching in the morning when I get up. Pinky has not improved much at all. I’ve wrapped socks around my handle bar on the right side, in an attempt to ease the pressure on my Ulnar nerve. Hopefully that will help. 

Our camp site in Dongola is an amusement…literally. It’s an amusement park that’s shut down for the “winter”. It has running water (cold only), electricity, and clean squatter toilets. But that’s it. No food nearby. For food we have to walk/cycle/tuk tuk into town.

There is nothing to do nearby (some of the group took a 4 hour round trip to the Sudanese pyramids) so I’ve just been catching up on posting my backlog of blogs. You may have noticed the frenzy of posts yesterday and today. I managed to find the local Zain (Sudan ISP and cell service) office and get my data issues fixed. The internet here sucks, but at least it works periodically. On that note, we are heading out into the desert again tomorrow, so I may fall behind on my posts again. As always, I’ll post when I can. 

The bugs between about 2pm and sunset have been horrendous. Most don’t bite but they get in every hole they can find. I’m sure I have the corpses of a thousand dead bugs in my hair just from constantly running my hand over my head.

Someone said that the average monthly rainfall for Sudan in January was 0mm and for February it was 1mm. Well, we got 30 seconds of rain February 2nd! And I’ve got the pictures to prove it. Who would have thought I’d see a rainbow over the Nile in Sudan?!?

It was an easy days ride into our rest day location. 115km over a very flat and wind assisted ride. I’ve started wrapping my right hand in my buff to try and ease the pressure on my Ulnar nerve (UTS or Ulnar Tunnel Syndrome for medical nerds). Seems to help a bit. 

At last nights rider meeting we received the final word (final, meaning, “until it changes again”) on our upcoming visit to Khartoum. Because of minor political unrest there, we will be bypassing Khartoum entirely. Our scheduled ride has be changed to a previous years route. It’s shorter, so that gives us an extra rest day in Dongola. Yay for more tendon down time! We will cycle the “old” route to just outside Khartoum and then bus past the “problem area”. All in the name of rider safety. Can’t argue with that. Of course, a bus isn’t necessarily any safer. Ask those Vietnamese tourists in Cairo, a month ago. Either way, I’m not worried in the slightest. I lived through SARS!

The winds God’s are fickle. 80km to lunch flew by. Then someone angered the wind gods. Perhaps passing gas inappropriately, perhaps an inadequate offering at lunch, but once we started the final 65km to camp they were angry! A strong swirling headwind had descended upon us. For the next 35km we struggled up long slow grades and leaned into the strong crosswinds trying not to get sucked into passing semi-trucks. And then the road turned and the wind God’s relented. The swirling winds held steady and the road chose a beneficial path. Fickle are they who sit amongst the clouds. 

We encountered our first two wash-outs today. Two massive voids in the road about one km apart. At some point a year or two ago there must have been a massive deluge that overwhelmed the considerable drainage tunnels under the highway. Judging by the vegetation regrowth in one of the voids it happened a while ago. Going unfixed for years, and having no other alternative, all the traffic (including huge overloaded tractor trailers) have to lumber their way around the voids via a makeshift sandy road. 

Landscapes keep changing. Yesterday’s transition from Egypt to Sudan brought a very sandy landscape, but it didn’t last. We’ve changed to a very rocky, hilly terrain. The roads are very quiet with only the rare car passing every twenty minutes. 

Tonight, we’re at a desert camp just outside a tiny village called Farkha. It’s a very friendly community and half the kids in town came out to watch us put up tents and mill about.  I’m sure they’ve seen it before (since TDA comes through here every year) but it must be pretty amusing, none the less. A bunch of crazy people on bicycles setting up camp for the night. Our camp is only about 200 meters from the Nile, so I went down for a little look. Here it was flowing fast enough that it wasn’t stagnant and filled with trash (like near Aswan).  I actually stuck my feet in and waded around. It was quite refreshing for my tender tendons. 

Body update: My Achilles tendons are feeling much better. They are still not 100%, and won’t be for probably a week or so, but they are healing slowly. Gone is the pain of each pedal stroke. Now it’s just a stiffness that eases as the day progresses. Over the last three days I’ve been seeing considerable improvements in the speed I’m averaging. Each day I’ve gone up a few km/hr without feeling the strain. I am very conscious of taking it easy though. I don’t want to re-strain them and have to start this entire healing process over again. The rest of my body is feeling pretty good now too. The seat adjustment I made helped immensely on reducing the numbness in some of my “bits” and my back/arms have figured out I’m going to be spending the next three and a half months on a bike and have stopped complaining. The only part of me that isn’t getting better is the pinky finger on my right hand. It’s going numb. It’s a common cycling ailment that is quite annoying. I’m still trying to figure this one out. 

Today was a short ride day, but a very exciting one. It was a day of crossings and firsts. We started the day by crossing Lake Nasser on a small vehicle ferry. 

Then we hopped off and it was a short 35km ride to the Egypt/Sudan border. The landscape on the far side of the lake was considerably different than that of the Abu Simbel side. It was much sandier, and there was virtually nothing around (the ferry landing was just a dirt strip)

We ate lunch on Egyptian side of the border while the TDA staff jumped through hoops, juggled and pulled their hair out, trying to get our exit visas stamped and all our exit paperwork done. Then after about an hour it’s was time for the next crossing…crossing into Sudan! It’s was a very painless process (for us). We’d all got our visas ahead of time and pre-filled out the necessary paperwork. It was just a matter of jumping through the Sudanese hoops. After another hour we were all permitted into the country and we started our first ride in Sudan. 

I’ve now cycled across my first entire country, only 9 more to go! The short 35km ride to Wadi Halfa was stunning in its desolation. The only sign of human existence was the road.

We arrived at our camp considerably later than we normally do (because of all the border delays) so there was only I little time to get tents set up before it got dark. After rushing to get the tent up it was time to exchange some money and buy a new SIM card that would work (hopefully) in Sudan. TDA arranged for a money exchange guy and a SIM guy to come to the camp to make things easier. I had to laugh at the stack of bills I received for exchanging $100 USD. The money changer was working out of his car and had to make two trips to the “bank” to accommodate all the people on the trip. He literally had bags and bags of money. 

Then it was over to the SIM guy. There we all paid a whopping $5 USD equivalent for a new local Sudan number and 2.5 Gb of internet data (My loathing for the ridiculous Canadian cell pricing only increased… &@%#! you Rogers and Bell!!). My data didn’t end up working (hence the delay in this and other posts) but I got that straightened out once we reached Dongola (see future posts). We ate a simple pre-made dinner that had been arranged ahead of time by the TDA staff. Then it was time for our first night in Sudan. Short ride, long day.