Sudan 'next tourist paradise'
2008-07-22 11:09
Khartoum - After racing through spectacular desert, sleeping under the stars and enjoying boundless hospitality, three Westerners on a motorbike odyssey say they are convinced that Sudan is Africa's next tourist paradise just waiting to be discovered.
President Omar al-Beshir might be the first sitting head of state in history to face possible international arrests warrant for alleged genocide and war crimes, but two Canadians and an Englishman were spellbound by the country.
"I'm convinced that in a few years' time Sudan will be right up there with the other big African countries in terms of tourist spots," said Tom Smith, on three months' leave from the Bank of England to bike from London to Cape Town.
"If it stays like this, you know, has the same appeal, then yeah - I think they'll be flocking," added the 25-year-old, on a pit stop in Khartoum with the desert behind them and a two-day run to the Ethiopian border ahead.
Civil war
More than two years in the planning, their 24 000km ride through Europe, the Middle East, Sudan and down through Africa to the Cape was costing Smith and his Canadian mates a self-financed total of $60 000.
Inspired by film actor Ewan McGregor and his close friend Charley Boorman who rode BMW bikes from Scotland to South Africa for a BBC television series, the intrepid three were also raising thousands of dollars to help HIV sufferers.
They were apprehensive about the security situation in Sudan, bogged down in war in Darfur to the west and also trying to recover from a 21-year north-south civil war.
But such fears quickly dissipated after their arrival in Sudan by ferry from Egypt across Lake Nasser.
"The perception of this war-torn country has been the focus of the media, but the experience that we've had - nothing could be further from the truth," said Tyson Brust, a 30-year-old medical student from Toronto.
Sudan 'blacklisted by Washington'
He added: "It's probably one of the safer areas in the world, and we found that when we went through. The people were incredibly friendly - everyone was waving us in, wanting us to have breakfast with them and giving us drinks."
Such comments were music to the ears of a country slapped with United States sanctions, blacklisted by Washington as a sponsor of terror and on a diplomatic offensive to save Beshir from the dock of the International Criminal Court.
After driving dirt bikes through Europe, Syria and Jordan and enduring a horrifying crash that left 32-year-old Yarema Bezchlibnyk in pain and weary of "being completely shafted" in Egypt, they said their adventure really began.
Yarema, also a medical student, described the journey from Lake Nasser to Dongola, site of a mediaeval city, as a "spectacular ride, the landscape almost lunar" with rock formations jutting from the desert and blasted by the scorching heat.