As I started to learn more about this man, I discovered a stash of photographs and postcards depicting his life in Khartoum in the 1930s.  With this window into the past, an idea began to form in my head, an idea which, as well as matching up the past with the present, would also see me receive a wedding proposal from an old woman, and a brief period of detention at the hands of the Sudanese authorities.

Have you been thinking about taking a trip, but don’t really know where to start?  If so then this blog post might just be for you!  The following certainly isn’t a complete compendium of how to plan a trip, and I definitely don’t claim to have all the answers, not by a long way, but I have planned a few trips in my time, so I hope that the A-Z of Adventure Planning might give you an idea of the sort of things you might want to consider when beginning to plan your own adventure, however big or small it might be… 

Khartoum is a fascinating city which sadly doesn’t often get a look in as a potential travel destination.  Fortunately, this is beginning to change, and in the last few years Sudan has witnessed a significant increase in tourism. With more and more people heading to its capital city to explore and discover it’s hidden delights, here’s my top 5 list of things to do in this off the beat travel destination.

Just downstream from the bridge was a slightly tired looking amusement park, normally this wouldn’t have been somewhere we would have visited, however after spying the ancient Ferris wheel slowly turning towards the sky an idea started to form in our heads, so we paid our entrance fees to the sleepy man behind the gate and made a beeline for the rusty attraction…

Pockets full of cash, we headed deeper into the airport complex towards the alien registration department which was counter-intuitively located in the departure hall.  Thanks to a helpful chap who had followed us from the money changing office, we were able to swan through the various security checkpoints with a combination of smiles and elaborate handshakes until we came to the correct office, where we were introduced to a stern looking soldier with a chest full of medals and impressing looking epaulettes…

Our luck had seemingly run out, and it looked like we would be spending our first night in Sudan sleeping on the streets of Khartoum.  If I was more of a religious person this might have been the time to send up a quiet prayer for guidance; instead I decided to employ the tried and tested combination of chronic optimism and the genuine belief that the universe has a way of ensuring that everything will work out in the end…