From Khartoum

The sky is dusky; day bleaching the darkness grey; the stars fading out. I tiptoe past the snoring policemen, splayed out on rope beds, and stop outside the hut. I let my eyes adjust and slowly trace the forms of the rocky outcrops across the road. The camels are sitting patiently where they were placed the night before and the cluster of huts behind is silent. It is cool and the wind not yet up and all I hear is the chain whirring gently as I ride. I pass a village and hear barking growing louder from amongst the huts. Three black dogs tear towards the bike and I shout and slash the air with waving arms, and they are close now, snapping and drooling. I kick out and hit one in the jaw and they sink back as I pedal wildly on.

There are two boys ahead tending to a herd of goats. One is tall with broad shoulders, wearing a jalibiya and skull cap. As I pass he turns from his animals and runs at me with a thick stick raised. He swings once, his eyes maddened, shouting frantically in Arabic. I swerve and fall, catching the bike, and he swings again, bringing the stick close above my ducking head. A younger boy behind is looking at the floor and I hear the clamour of older men rushing from a hut. The boy stands looking over me, eyes blazing, the stick raised, clasped with both hands, ready to swing again. I stumble backwards and get to my feet and yell at him. He stares, furious, and begins to shout and neither of us moves. The elders are all around us now and usher him back and I swear and shout and they look pleadingly and gesture food and apologies. I am shaking as I ride on.

Isolated villages give way to a sprawling line of low-brick houses, and the fields recede into the dust, as I head west. The houses are all the same; a low rise wall of sandy stone surrounding a single-storey square building within. There are no schools, or shops, or cafes, that I can see, just the monotonous trail of sand buildings, a few people milling about. An old man flags me down and ushers me into his courtyard. He brings a little table and bread and yoghurt and tomatoes and a glass of tea. He speaks no English and sits and grins as I eat. He leaves for a minute and comes back with a clean white t-shirt and gestures that mine is no good. I look down; it is torn and coated in dust and grease. He smiles when I have changed and waves me on gladly.

I am heading for Wad Medani, a town on the banks of the Nile, and just past midday I see the river I will follow to Cairo, for the first time since the Gorge in Ethiopia. It is wider now, lazy and brown near the banks, and rushing at the centre, where bubbles foam on the crests of the currents. I cross a broad, metallic framed bridge, beneath the stares of stern policemen, and turn off into town.

It is 190km to Khartoum and I wake early to try to reach the city before dark. Before long the sun is burning and a gale is blowing into my side. Grains of dirt and scraps of paper and swirling plastic bags sweep across the road and all I hear is the rushing breeze and the continual growing and fading roar of passing trucks. The tar is narrow and each time a lorry passes I am sucked into the road and I must swerve awkwardly back towards the wind. The houses are low and grim, the walls smoothed by dust filled winds, no one about. A group of boys saunter on the verge, and as I pass, they throw handfuls of pebbles into my face. I am tired and it is hot and when I feel the stones thud on my check and temple I am angry. I brake, letting the bike clatter to the floor, and run like a madman after them: across the dust, through a gate, into a courtyard, and then a house. I knock over a man praying on a mat in the first room and grad hold of a boy in the backyard. He looks helpless and ashamed and I feel the same. Sweat is pouring from my temples and I let him go. An older man comes out and screams at the boys and gives me water and holds my shoulders, saying sorry.

The wind is making me slow and the stream of traffic is continuous now. I am still far from Khartoum, riding through a wasteland. Strips of barbed fencing hang from metal poles, jutting from the dust, in front of endless plains of smoke and rubbish. There are small groups of children kicking bottles between pyres of burning plastic and goats grazing on rotting food from battered cans. It looks like the end of the world here. Every time the wind picks up waves of plastic bags sail towards the road: greens and blues and bright reds and blacks tumbling helter-skelter across the path of the deep red sun. They snag on the barbs or flutter to linger beneath the engines of choking lorries. Gradually the buildings thicken and the sun disappears behind the high wires that link the towering pylons to the west. Ahead, there are modern factories basking in the glare of their fluorescent lights, dropped like new toys in the sprawling dust-fields. I pedal hard and the road widens and I am in the suburbs of Khartoum as night falls.

It is enormous. I ride for mile after mile in the dark, down a four-laned industrial boulevard, past thousands of cloned square blocks, four or five stories high. Many are half built and it feels like the city has emerged overnight. There are no signs and I don’t know where to go. I am weary and stop outside a shop for food. A thickly set white man pulls up in a four-by-four and asks what I am up to. We talk, as he thumbs the tyres and looks disapprovingly at the chain and feels the brake levers, and he invites me to stay. Within an hour I have had a warm shower and have a glass of vodka in my hand, sitting in front of a big plate of pasta, with John and his girlfriend.