Everyone has to register with the authorities and it took most of the morning to find that the office was closed, but consoled myself with gorgeous mango juices at the local juice bar, and watching what seemed to be a flock of storks circling to gain height.
We met up with our Sudanese "facilitator", Nazar, who will be with us until Khartoum, and then it was through what seemed more like a black desert than the one we saw in western Egypt, although frequently in view of the Nile and its green cordon. For perhaps the first time, there were clouds in the perennial blue sky - mares tails way up high which added to the scenery. We camped near the banks of the river for the night. It was seemed somehow special to be walking on the alluvial silt that has been brought by the river for countless millennia. A motorised rowing boat took us across the river to the west bank to visit the Temple of Solem, built by our old friend Amenhotep III some 1400 years BC - it was originally well bigger than a football pitch even though so far south. It is the best preserved Egyptian temple on the Sudanese Nile, and we enjoyed ourselves climbing over its remaining structures, as the sun set before us.
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