From Dongola

I ride alongside the wall of a heavily guarded compound, encircling the towering mirrored fortresses of the security services headquarters. I cross the Nile, where a lone rowing boat drifts between metal pylons that rise from the murky water. Into Omdurman, around the crowded alleys of the souk, and further north, through scruffier streets, past lower dwellings, tattered flags and donkeys with bleeding backs. I have ridden fifty kilometres since leaving the cool sanctuary of John's flat, and still I am in Khartoum. Abruptly the city ends and the desert begins.

A straight band of smooth black tarmac severs the coarse brown sand in two. There is a low escarpment of pale sandstone far to the east and small mud-brick cubes stand isolated and crumbling on the silent horizon. The boat to Egypt leaves Wadi Halfa in a week and I must ride 950 km across the desert to make it.

Patches of thin grey cloud hang high above the sand, filtering the sun's strong rays into a grainy haze. On the roadside the sand is thick with dark pebbles and further off the grains merge into an indistinct plain of dull orange. Scrawny plants, the colour of parched lime flesh, cling to the barren earth and for long stretches worn acacias are the only forms on the endless flats. There are villages far from the road; clusters of twenty square blocks, camels and a beaten-up buggy and billowing white jalibiyas flowing from coal-black faces. I stop at a cafeteria and eat a bowl of beans amongst the flies and the praying truck drivers, and fill up with water from thick stone urns, shaded by a straw orning. Close to sundown I pull off the road and pitch my tent beside a derelict mud wall, to shelter from the wind.

I wake at three and ride through the dark. Twin lamps bob up and down, miles ahead, peering out across the sand, and the silence is broken as the truck passes, and then it is quiet and black. Gradually the fine contours of the sands become discernible and colour separates the desert from the sky. The horizon is pale pink and the sands moon-grey in the morning twilight. Soon the sun burns yellow, growing visible in fragments at a time, as wisps of morning cloud melt before it, slowly revealing a full circle. I am amongst high dunes of caramel sands, speckled with molten black rocks, rough amidst the shimmering smooth mounds of sand. The sparse patches of green have ended and beyond the frail telephone lines to the west there is mile upon mile of golden wilderness. Far ahead I see a faint outline of a rectangle, thickening into form as I approach. I wheel the bike through the deep sand and an old man gives me a glass of tea. His sons are sprawled out on straw mats, all in white jalibiyas. I wonder where the women are, and what they are doing.

Back on the road the air is hot and the wind floods towards me, gripping the thick tyres, and slowing me to a crawl. A constant gust rushes in my ears and I am already tiring. The sun is higher, the sand the same; pock-marked where the wind has whisked it up and set it, swirling, down. For sixty kilometres I see nothing and then over the brow of a broad dune, the crescent-tipped spire of a tall minaret, gleaming white, comes into view. I press hard on the pedals against the wind, and turn into a truck stop on the edge of the little village, where I spend the night.

Men talk till late into the night, and groaning trucks pull into the dust, and a butcher hammers his cleaver through legs of meat, thudding loudly on the wooden counter. My body is tired, but I cannot sleep, and a thick pool of sweat coats my dusty mat. I pack up and ride for hours through the cool darkness. The sun rises and the wind is relentless. Plains of bare sand stretch out to meet high dunes to east and west. And the road blazes flat and straight across it all. Far ahead I can see a line of green and as I get closer I see mosques and a petrol station and low, mud-walled homes. I cannot see the water, but I can trace the Nile by the long line of tall palms that rise from its banks. The villages are continuous here, low and sprawling, covering the sand between the river and the road. I ride all day and sleep in the courtyard of a restaurant in a riverside village.

It is a hundred kilometres to Dongola, the only town between Khartoum and the lake. The road archs back and forth between the desert and the river, and torrents of dry air flow heavily towards me, pinning me back, as if I were dragging an anchor. I turn into town after lunch and ride through empty streets. Metal shutters hide shop facades and the souk is desolate. It is Friday and everyone is praying. I sit for an hour beneath a tree and watch the streets gradually awaken; cars and bicycles slowly return to the roads, and shop doors are unlocked. I am given a rope bed in the courtyard of a guesthouse and sleep just as night begins to fall.