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walls covered in bas-relief carvings depicting scenes of funerary
processions, often with the goddess Isis in attendance, and long
passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Th at night we stayed in a permanent luxury tent
settlement set up on a ridge overlooking the site. Nomadic
tribesmen passed in front of us on camels and shouted:
‘Salaam’. It was easy to imagine ourselves as the fi rst Victorian
adventurers who had just chanced upon the place.
And still onwards we drove, now across the sands, to
Naqa to see the beautifully preserved, dune-haunted Meroitic
temples of Amun and Apedemak – dedicated to the lionheaded
god, with their massive carved reliefs of Kushite kings
and queens. And afterwards we headed to the temple complex
at Musawwarat es-Sufra, where long ramped corridors and
carvings of elephants suggest a centre where elephants were
trained for war – although, as with much of Sudan’s ancient
history, nobody is exactly sure.
In Moheli, on a dusty, windswept plain just outside
Khartoum, we stopped at Sudan’s largest camel market,
where hundreds of camels were complaining bitterly, having
walked 600 miles from Darfur. After being sold, they would
be walking, and doubtless complaining, another 600 miles to
the dinner tables of Cairo. Men sat on their haunches in
PRIVATTRAVEL
pairs, drawing fi gures in the dirt with their fi ngers. A man
approached me, his face peering out from the tumbling white
folds of his turban. He gesticulated wildly in the direction of
a shelter made from rags and sticks and bade me to follow
him. Inside was a solitary camel.
‘Th is is a racing camel,’ my guide said. ‘Th ey come from
eastern Sudan and are world-famous. Th ey go to Saudi Arabia.’
Th e man in the turban drew a fi gure in the dirt.
‘He says he’ll sell it to you for £12,000,’ said my guide.
‘But fi rst, you’ll want to test-ride it.’
My protests that I’d never ridden a camel before, much
less the Formula One equivalent of the dromedary world, fell
on deaf ears and, before I knew it, I was perched precariously
on its back, high above the ground. Th e vendor handed me a
rope, slapped the beast hard on its rump and I was off ,
clinging on for grim death, fl ying across the desert, passing
crowds who waved and pointed and laughed, always with
that certain warmth in the eye I had come to know so well in
this remarkable country. I should have been terrifi ed, but I
was laughing so much I simply forgot.
Mike Carter travelled to Sudan with Journeys by Design,
specialist in bespoke African adventures, +44 (0)1273 623790,
Seventy-Six
Above: An elephant
carving in a temple at
Musawwarat es-Sufra
journeysbydesign.com PHOTO©DONMCCULLIN/CONTACTPRESSIMAGES