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Africa: North to South, Part 3

Africa: North to South, Part 3: Chad and Sudan

Simon and Jennifer
2006-04-26 10:22:22

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Chad

Oooooh, Lake Chad! For years (well weeks at least) just the mention of Lake Chad was enough to send the shivers down our spines, not that we caught more than the merest glimpse of the lake even though according to the good old Michelin Map we drove round it's shore.

The checkpoints on the way out of Niger were helpfully positioned in the middle of a deep soft sand section, and nothing much really changed all the way round the lake! Sand, sand, sand and more sand, would the desert never end? This time we found ourselves having to regularly cross lines of dunes, often driving a few kilometres along the dunes before finding a spot where we could safely cross and where the hundreds of large trucks had not already passed churning up the sand (the only comfort in this was that having not seen any other vehicle for days at least we knew we were on the right route).

As we followed the deep ruts gauged in the sand by big trucks we soon grew tired of finding ourselves grounded with the diff stuck in the sand and all four wheels hanging in mid air, and so we often left the ruts to forge our own route through the desert, usually alongside the ruts, but this was not always possible and occasionally we followed other tracks or made our own way for a few kilometres. On one such diversion when we were rolling along merrily following tracks we'd nicknamed "Captain Jack's" for no apparent reason, we found ourselves faced with yet another line of dunes to cross. Normally we got out the vehicle and checked every crossing point on foot, this was getting very tiresome so we trustingly followed Captain Jacks tracks over the innocent looking crossing. Imagine our surprise to find a man at a well the other side of the dune furiously urging his cattle to turn the wheel and draw water so he could let them all drink. We can't have been nearly as surprised as he was, but he totally ignored us even when we tried to gain ...