Sitting in Room 713 of the Hilton at night 9.30 pm. It's been a long day. We reached here at 1.30 at night and managed to catch some sleep till 7.00 am. Then it was up and away to a working day.
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Throughout the day, Sudan emerged in a typical pattern of a big and potentially rich African country still waiting to awaken. The country is rich in agriculture and petroleum. It rains here 9 months in a year at some places and the Nile flows right through, irrigating the fertile plains. Sudan should be in a position to export foodstuff, and they do export fruit as well as livestock, but the people do not get to eat in the villages. Sudan is ravaged by civil war that drains away tremendous amount of money. The North has been fighting the South ever since the British left these colonies 45 years ago. They say that the Brits left this hatred as a legacy, as they had left communal hatred among Indians as a legacy, for them to fight and destroy each other after the rulers departed.
.In the last ten years in particular, apparently a lot of national money has been piped out and all development is at a standstill. The Sudanese dinar, that used to buy USD 2.50, now sells 250 to the dollar! In the last one year, with oil exploration having taken off, some money is again evident in the market.
.Khartoum could have been a beautiful city, but it seems to have given up half way through. Both the White Nile and the Blue Nile join at Khartoum and there is a sizeable waterfront. The stretch of corniche is extremely pleasant to walk along but there are hardly any tourist-oriented waterfront activity -- like restaurants, boat-rides, or simple secluded spots for for people to just sit and enjoy the evening. Very few people actually sit there..........
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We saw some beautiful structures like the St Thomas's Church that is more than 100 years old, and the President's Palace (the road actually runs through the grounds but photography is banned). The 'downtown' area is a crowded couple of square kilometers of upmarket shops, with too many people dawdling with nothing to do. Most of the roads are plain dusty tarmac roads, reminding me strongly of a mining town like Asansol.
The Sudanese are good-looking, dignified and generally well-educated. A large number of them go to India to study and they are fairly Indian-friendly. They mostly speak Arabic, so I was mostly smiling politely today.
.Oh yes, Sudan is a dry country -- booze is banned! What a waste of lovely riverside breeze.
Khartoum: 15.10.2000
Today we took a look at the confluence of the two Niles. The White Nile looks reddish, but the Blue Nile is definitely bluer, because when we looked at the point where the two Niles met and carried on as one, the line of separation carried on for as far as I could see..
Today we saw a bit of the upmarket localities -- villas and bungalows set in small gardens and looking quite prosperous. But the roads, rather the road-sides, are not at all well-maintained and are simply piles of the red dust that pervades this part of Africa. Apparently, there is no functioning municipal corporation at all! But there is a lot of construction activity going on and the oil exploration revenue, if managed well, should bring in a much-needed dollop of government spending into the economy..
At Khartoum, there is not much to see except the riverside, the palace and a few architectures of British times. The university has a sprawling campus -- typical brownstone. We did not get time to visit the souq at all, neither yesterday nor today. Yesrteday evening, in fact, I went down in all enthusiasm to splash around in the Hilton swimming pool. It was an open-air circular pool, around 20 m in diameter, with a maximum depth of 1.5 m. The water was cold and so full of chlorine that my eyes started burning in 5 mins. My Sudanese companions did not seem to mind. After 10 mins I gave up and returned to my room, having changed in the shivering open air. It's very very hot in summer, but right now the breeze is nice and cool..
I'd forgotten to mention the taxis here. They are mostly Toyotas, but a more dilapidated set of cars I've not seen elsewhere (even the Ladas of Addis come a close second). There's not a single one later than 1980 and they proudly display their year of manufacture by putting some sticker like '78 Corolla' on the body, like we'd put 'EFI'. Perhaps it helps them to find spares!.
On both the days that we were here, one of our big customers, Mawia, had taken us out for lunch. Lunch here is around 4.00-5.00 pm, so today I skipped dinner totally and drank some orange-carrot juice. Anyway, tomorrow we had to get up before 3.30 am to catch our flight to Cairo.
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