16th Day - Dongola 1436km - Stil EFI - 6 days no beer

There must be something about a dog bark that is set deep within the human mind, the sound of danger or warning. Whatever it is kept me awake last night, i am not talking about the lone dog that barks down your street at midnight, i am talking about a steady incessant barking by hundreds of dogs all night long, barking, not near by, not loud, but a constant pollution of noise, if you could count the stars in the sky and gave each one its own individual voice that that was what it was like. I had gone to bed at 8.30 and as usual had inserted my earplugs to filter out the night time sounds of a camp of 60 sleeping people, but they failed me to such an extent, that i considered finding yet another use for my trusty duct tape and sticking it over my ears, as i lay there waiting for the dogs to be obliterated by the morning sound of the local tuk tuks, and supriseing large number of taxis for such a small town, i realised that before then we would have the delights of the dawn call to prayer by countless muliers in there mosques....I don't like Dongola!

We had set off from our desert camp at 7.54 that morning under slightly different circumstances due to the conditions we were about to encounter, at our briefing the night before, Duncan our tour guide, had quoted from his manual that the act of getting us all to the next camp was "one of the most differcult logistical challenges of the tour". The reason became apparent when we saw that the directions included things like "after 36km the road seems to finish" and "after 63km the road does finish, keep straight on"!!

The Dogs of Dongola

We were to leave behind the pain and suffering of the last 3 days on the washboard, and head for the open desert, for new pain and suffering. We were to travel in convoy, between two trucks for the first few km, and were then shown two smallish mountains and told to head straight "between the cleavage", "take your time, and find your own route". As the road/track/slightly flatter bit of sand that we were on meandered of to the right, the irrepressible Josh was heard to say "Just because the Sudanese cant build a road in a straight line, doesn't mean i have to follow it" and off he went, along with 4 others, the rest of us balanced a short uncertain route against the longer one, and with safety in numbers, wobbled and slithered and slipped off along the path. We got lost, well not exactly lost, we just went a bit off course, but because we were all together, it was not a problem for Duncan, the problem was the others who were now separated from us, so our police escort was dispatched to go find them and bring them back to the flock. As Josh said later "it wasn't us that was lost it was you lot"