Day 37: Khartoum – Doka

A bit of a slow start to the morning, we’re all ready to go, but it appears the 4x4 team aren’t. Well, half are, they’ve gone, but Brian and Anna are a little sleepy, so we set of an hour or so later. But without them, we’ll catch up at the camp site near Doka...

Yesterday I saw the biggest blackest cloud of smoke ever, and today we find out what was it’s cause. A petrol station, burnt to the ground, and eerily, three burnt out shells of cars on the forecourt.

Up the road, and all is going reasonably well, until we come to a check point. It doesn’t look right, so Rob and I swerve around it, but they manage to stop Rob Roy (pulling a gun on someone does that...). This leaves us in limbo, what’ll we do? Well, after ten minutes, we head back. And the stop point looks much more official (even if only one person is only half in uniform). So, the big boss is pissed with us, and dicks us around for about an hour. But we learn our lesson and shoot off, heading towards Ethiopia...

The further we head south, the more ‘African’ things are becoming. We’re passing out of the desert, and onto big African plains, and I even see my first straw huts of the trip, getting excited!

Camp is a great little setting by the road, but unfortunately camels think s this too and have crapped everywhere! We find the clearest spot we can, and set in for the night.