I woke up a bit earlier today as I had a few things to do and felt a bit bleary eyed as I sat down for my standard fruit, toast and scrambled egg breakfast. This was justified when I looked down at myself after talking to a few people and noticed my t-shirt was inside out.
My plans today were to Skype home, go for a little sightseeing then prepare Nigel for leaving tomorrow. The Internet was down so that prompted an early morning ride around Khartoum. Despite being a famous city I wasn't really grabbed with any tourist attractions in particular. There are coach tours that take you to pyramids that are quite a way away and I just wanted a quick ride around to see if I could find the odd award winning photo. The great mosque was my only target so I headed towards there first. There were two mosques within a couple of hundred metres of each other. To be honest, I'm a little bored of mosques, they're very lovely buildings but as always for me, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. They sort of remind me of bag pipes so I stood at a distance and tried to work out which one was "greater" than the other. One was bigger but the other was more ornate, I took a picture of both so I will upload them when I get back and we can all be the judge. I'm pretty sure it's the more ornate one.
After that I did a loop around my guesthouse and didn't really notice much else. I like cycling into the heart of villages and really seeing the real Africa. The tourist towns for me are a nice novelty compared to seeing the kids drawings on their house walls or the mother preparing dinner with all sorts of ovens and kilns on the go at once. There was none of that so I got back to my room around lunchtime. I still managed to rack up 20 miles on Nigel though so that may give you an idea of the size of Khartoum.
I arrived back to find my room spotless but something was missing. I couldn't find my socks that were festering on the chair by the bin. I didn't ask if they had been chucked away or cleaned but I know if they were in my house my mother would've got rid of them a month ago. I didn't mind really, the soles are now like cardboard and every morning I have to rip them into flexibility. It is literally a matter of time before I rip one sock into two! I have two pairs left, they're going to take an absolute beating!!!
I skyped home then cleaned Nigel and got him ready for the next stage. It's nice to be in charge of your transport in a way that you know it inside out and you're responsible for everything on it. I would love to have that ability with cars like a few of my uni mates and others from home do. An Engineering degree will give you the equations to workout the volume of airflow under and over a car at 120mph and help you to design a better shape accordingly but it doesn't tell you how to change a gearbox. The workings of Nigel are a little simpler and with somebody's old toothbrush in hand that I picked up a few weeks ago, I got to cleaning and at least making him look as good as new!
I sorted out receiving the rest of my money with Sinada and said my goodbyes as I look to leave early tomorrow morning after breakfast.
A productive day and an excited feeling for the next step. I got a message on Facebook from a guy that has just cycled up from South Africa saying "you get out of Ethiopia what you put in" this is code for you'll hate it if you fight it which I've experienced already. Good advice though, I just need to remember to stick to it!
No comments:
Post a Comment