The southernmost frontier of the Egyptian Kingdom
After having travelled from the Mediterranean all the way south through Egypt in 30 days I was about to embark on an even longer journey through Sudan with Aswan being the city of departure.
And what better place to leave a lasting impression of Egypt than Aswan. A city on the Nile river bank, home to numerous monuments part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, vast plains of desert and extremely friendly people matched with a leisurely pace of life.
I spend a few days exploring all of what Aswan has to offer and gather information on where to get tickets for the Bus to Wadi Halfa in Sudan. Ghandi at GoInn Backpackers is extremely friendly and does all he can to give advice. He's excited being an avid traveller himself and being used to most people coming to Aswan to go north and see the rest of Egypt. Extremely rarely does he meet anybody going the other way. Little did I know at the time that I would not be doing this journey completely solo as initially planned.
After staying in Aswan for almost a week I get to know all the best spots, get comfortable with the local transport system which basically consists of hop-on hop-off minibusses which run only straight along the main road.
It's in the last few days I meet Florian. An extremely calm but attentive and friendly Dutch man. He is the only person along this trip who shares my goal of heading the much less trodden path south into Sudan. We spend the days getting to know each other and decide to do the border crossing together and see where it goes from there.
After picking up our tickets and being mostly certain that the bus leaves tomorrow night we decide to spend our last evening in Aswan on the Nile talking about our hopes, wishes and motivations for the coming weeks as the sun slowly disappears over the horizon.
Little did we know at the time that we would spend the next 5 weeks together exploring Sudan, hitchhiking and meeting wonderful people around the country, being interrograted by military police in corrugated sheet shacks, travelling on foot along the nile, camping in some of the most amazing places and forging a lasting friendship leading to many more adventures exploring the world.
