When the rainy season hits the Republic of South Sudan, the dirt roads are flooded, cutting off connections with the north. There is only one route left: the Blue Nile.

 

I was in Juba, the capital of the new nation of South Sudan. My destination was Khartoum, in neighbouring Sudan. My mode of travel – the only one available – were the floating platforms pulled along by a motor boat, used predominantly to transport goods, but also the people who threw themselves aboard, apparently unconcerned about the total lack of suitable space for passengers. And then there was me.

The ‘ship of hope’, as my Somali travelling companions and I renamed her, proceeded slowly but surely, day after day, on the waters of the Blue Nile. We were surrounded by enormous expanses of grass and mud, from which popped up, every now and then, the curious face of a local fisherman from the surrounding villages.

The clouds in the sky were so perfectly reflected in the river water that sometimes the horizon disappeared somewhere between the air and water, only to be brought back into focus by the thick bushes growing along the shore.

Every evening, the sun died away beyond the riverbank, to rise again on the opposite side. The landscape was punctuated only occasionally by tiny villages consisting of a few huts placed in a circle.

 

Written by our guest blogger Marco Allegri
www.nonsoloturisti.it