Pole to Pole
Day 69: Khartoum

Still feeling low on energy, I content myself with a game of table tennis, a lazy swim and a wander round the undernourished hotel bookshop, which must be the only one in the world which has Jilly Cooper next door to The Cultural Atlas of Islam and Jeffrey Archer side by side with The Sudanese Bourgeoisie - Vanguard of Development?.
I finish Alan Moorehead's The White Nile looking out across the river itself, swollen and grey, inundating fields and trees a few hundred yards from my window. If I could follow it, it would lead me due south across swamp and desert to the Equator and the Mountains of the Moon, the very centre of Africa, to which the great names of Victorian exploration, the Spekes and Burtons and Stanleys and Livingstones, had been drawn 130 years ago. Now it seems that my hope of seeing any more of the White Nile must be abandoned - a casualty of war.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Pole to Pole
- Day: 69
- Country/sea: Sudan
- Place: Khartoum
- Book page no: 149
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RELATED LINKS
- Table tennis
- Day 54
- Around the World in 80 Days
- Paris, France (fourth day)
- Hemingway Adventure