TDA - Days 13 to 16

Sudan

Nothing hurts, but my heart.

Cycling is awesome. The landscape is spectacular and the people lovely. Sudan is wonderful. But the pace of this thing is not to my liking and I desperately need to revise my perspective.

We are cycling through the desert offroad. This is probably mountain biking at its best. We camp in the desert in beautiful moonscapes. The sunsets and sunrises are dramatic. The desert flatness is interrupted by hills and bumps which are darker in colour and coarser in texture. They are rocky most of the time. From time to time there are lonely trees.
The settlements are small villages, each a small green oasis with tall palm trees, nicely lined up vegetable gardens and water supplies in huge clay pots standing under a shade.
The people are friendly and welcoming. They wave at us and some say hello. The children are cute and funny, some very timid others very excited and loud. The young women are extremely beautiful and the bright colours of their dresses only emphasize the perfect features of their faces.
The houses are flat and small, the same colour as the desert since they're made of clay and mud. Donkeys are everywhere and so are little goats.
There are 3 base colours here in perfect harmony. The blue of the sky, the green of the palm trees and fields and the brown of the desert. The women, the white donkeys, the children are small dots on this background.

The distances are considerable given the terrain. 120 km a day. And it goes up and down all the time and it's bumpy and dusty and rocky and sandy. All flavors to suit all tastes.
If you happen to have the local bus ahead you're in for a treat: with lots of dust and many friendly cheers. Then there are stretches where the sand is so deep that you need to get off and push the bike. The sun is burning though it's windy. But I enjoy the riding and the pushing and the sweating and this country. Given the sunscreen layer and the amount of dust by the end of the day your face is covered with a thick greasy grey layer of dirt. Baby wipes are your best friend then.

After doing the first 23km in a bit more than 2 hours I realize that at this pace (about 12km/hr) I'll never make it to camp by daylight. Therefore, no stops. And this hurts.

I would like to stop and sit there to watch the slow motion activity in the villages. To see the carts getting loaded and unloaded, the children playing, the women cooking and so much more. I would like to stop and play with these children. And take pictures of the wonderful colours and the awesome contrasts. But I have no time.

Painfully, and at last, I come to an understanding of the frustrations my ex has expressed in the past. The pace was never right on our trips and outings, always too fast. Well, at last the gods have decided to punish me. Dino, this should be your sweet revenge :-)

And yet I work on my revision.