Camel Market

After breakfast, I went to buy my bus ticket to Dongola for tomorrow. I repeated my receptionist’s instructions to the tuktuk driver. It didn’t get anywhere; he took me to somewhere else to buy the bus ticket and then another, all to no avail. I returned to the hostel and got the receptionist to write down the instructions which wasn’t too different.

Second time lucky, I had a tuktuk driver that got me there. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place. All sorted but the bus leaves at 0430 tomorrow. Red eye!

In the afternoon, I took two buses and a tuktuk to get to the camel market. I don’t know why, but the tuktuk driver dropped me off at the goat market instead of the camel. Perhaps it was my hand-drawn picture of a camel which I offered when he couldn’t understand me saying camel market in Arabic (I think I put the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first).

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I was a tad disappointed with the camel market. My benchmark is the one at Imbaba outside Cairo some 22 years ago. It was huge. I expected Sudan would have a bigger one since the camels come from here and work their way down to Cairo. But I suppose times have change and they don’t sell like hotcakes anymore.

In fact, I found the goat market more interesting. Sudanese goats are big and healthy looking, much like Sudanese people.  Soon it was back to the hostel for an early night so that I can wake up at 0300 for my 0430 bus.