The final journey to Bir Tawil

Travel to Bir Tawil is not something done by many and certainly not the faint hearted. Today we would be entering Bir Tawil

Waking up in the desert

In the desert sunrise is your wake up call, so up we got and started to repack for the day. Breakfast was as usual with boiled eggs, tea and Sudanese bread.

By 7 am we were ready to hit the dust track and begin the final 8 or so hours to Bir Tawil.

The road to Bir Tawil

This was without doubt one of the most stunning road journeys I have taken, with the sheer emptiness only occasionally being interrupted by fellow cars following the smugglers route to Egypt, and random settlements of gold prospectors looking to make their fortunes. We ended up bumping into a bus load of people doing just that, who were happy enough to let us pose for pictures with them.

Journey to Bir Tawil

Travel to Bir Tawil – Mad Max Town

At about 1 pm we hit the last settlement of any description where we hunkered down for lunch. El Naabah we actually nicknamed Mad Max town, with the pictures explaining why.

Lunch was pasta, bread and ever reliable tinned tuna washed down with coke. The guys fixed up the caravan as best as possible and we headed off.

Border of Bir Tawil

In theory 2 hours later we would be at the hotel border of Bir Tawil. Theories are great in theory.

To read about the best Sudanese drinks click here

So the Sudan is hot, really freaking hot, and driving through the desert at mid day makes the cars overheat, particularly when dealing with dodgy diesel.

We stopped and the Sudanese team started on trying to fix one of the cars (we had 5). Filters were replaced and a whole bunch of other shit I didn’t understand, all the while whilst we were melting in the heat!

Sunset in Bir Tawil

Arriving in Bir Tawil

But then after just over an hour of false starts the call was made to dump two cars, move our shit to the remaining three, and snugly head off into the scorching sunset.

We duly arrived just in time for said sunset in Bir Tawil. An arduous journey, but we reached the promised land.

To read about how to travel to Bir Tawil lick here.

What to do next? We duly made camp and started to explore this unclaimed piece of earth. That night we slept soundly, little did we know that our adventure had only just begun.

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